Flint Artifacts: Chevy Employee Badge

Bonus Bonanza

It's almost bonus time at G.M.

Christina Rogers of The Detroit News reports:

General Motors Co.'s hourly workers can expect some of the largest profit-sharing checks ever, when the automaker pays bonuses for the money earned in 2010, a top union official said Monday.

United Auto Workers' Vice President Joe Ashton, who oversees the union's labor relations with GM, said the bonuses are likely to top the average $1,775 workers got for 1999, the company's biggest payout to date.

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"I would think so," he said.

G.M., Jobs and the Bailout

With G.M. stock climbing eight percent in early trading today, it's easy to forget that the main purpose of the government bailout was to preserve jobs in the midst of the Great Recession.

Michael J. de la Merced and Bill Vlasic of The New York Times report:

On Wednesday, the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research released a study saying that government aid to G.M. and Chrysler saved more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 and 314,000 jobs this year — the highest figure yet reported.

Revenge Motive: The 1998 U.A.W. Strike and the Future of Flint

Last week, I had an interesting discussion with a Flint Expatriate who still works in the automotive industry. We talked about the reasons G.M. abandoned Flint, covering the list of the usual rationales, including cheaper labor elsewhere, etc. But he also mentioned a motive I've never really heard before — revenge. Specifically, revenge for the 1998 strike that started at the Metal Fab Center and spread to Delphi East. Before it was over, the strike lasted 54 days, cost G.M. $3 billion in lost profits and $12 billion in sales. It closed 27 of G.M.'s 29 assembly plants and over 100 parts plants in the U.S., Mexico and Canada. While both sides made concessions to reach a settlement, he said, G.M. never forgave Flint, and the corporation abandoned any hope of maintaining a large presence in the city where it was created.

Has anyone else ever heard this theory before? I'm just wondering how prevalent this idea is in the Flint area. Is this something people believe or talk about? I was not really writing or reporting about Flint in 1998, but I was surprised that I'd never heard it before. Wondering if it's just one person's conjecture.

AutoWorld and Penguin Parks: Tourism at Home and Abroad

I was reminded of Flint's brief but expensive flirtation with tourism in the eighties when I read Hiroko Tabuchi's story in today's New York Times about Kyoto's attempts to attract vacationers:

A dolphin pool, a penguin park and a giant wave pool could soon join the imperial-era townhouses and ancient Buddhist temples in Kyoto, Japan’s former imperial capital.

As early as June, work will begin on a mammoth aquarium complex in central Kyoto, in leafy Umekoji Park at the center of the city. A brainchild of the Orix Real Estate Corporation, the project could breathe new life into Kyoto’s tourism industry by attracting more than two million visitors a year, developers say.

But to opponents, the proposed aquarium, set to open in 2012, is a misguided enterprise that threatens to destroy Kyoto’s historic ambience. Adding to the disgrace, they say, is Orix’s plan to showcase dolphins in a 19,000-square-foot pool at a time when the nation is under fire for hunting thousands of dolphins and porpoises each year.

In the postwar period, Kyoto has shown little concern for preserving the traditional neighborhoods that would most appeal to foreign tourists, he said. The pace of destruction gathered speed in the 1990s; more than 40,000 old wooden homes disappeared from central Kyoto that decade, according to the International Society to Save Kyoto.

Though ancient temples and gardens remain in the city, they are overwhelmed by the sprawling mass of gray buildings and neon signs that dominate the skyscape — the product of ineffective zoning policies in the city, Mr. Kerr said.

If you've forgotten the misbegotten experiment called AutoWorld, here's a video reminder:

March Madness for Car Dealers

March was a great month for automakers.

Nick Bunkley of The New York Times reports:

Nearly all automakers reported increases for March, and several analysts projected that total sales for the industry surged about 30 percent from a year ago.

The Ford Motor Company said its sales rose 40 percent. Ford’s sales rose 36 percent in the first quarter over all.

General Motors said sales of the four brands that it would continue to operate increased 43 percent and that its total sales rose 21 percent. Buick sales jumped 76 percent.

Singing with the Sit-Down Strikers

A video on the Flint Sit-Down Strike featuring Dan Hall singing a strikers song written by David O. Norris.

Invasion of the Factory Snatchers

In Brazil, Ford factory workers wear matching uniforms, much like Catholic school kids. They're also young, lean, efficient, and eerily happy. You have to see this Detroit News video to believe it.

What the hell is going on down there? Well, according to Ford, there's no U.A.W. in Brazil. Apparently the News didn't seek out other opinions.

Thanks to Grumkin for passing this along.

Unrequited Love

G.M. apparently courted Ford without luck before turning to Chrysler.

The Far Eastside

Flint rises from the ashes as a high-tech automotive manufacturing center...in Changchun, China.

People's Daily Online reports:

Changchun, the capital of Northeast China's Jilin Province, is speeding up efforts to build a comprehensive auto industrial park.

An inauguration ceremony, marking the beginning of the construction of the Everpower Automotive Industrial Park, kicked off recently in the Changchun Economic and Technological Development Zone.

Officials from the Changchun municipal government and Jilin provincial government, executives from local auto and component makers and financial institutes, and representatives from auto industrial associations, attended the event.

The auto park is expected to sharpen the competitive edge of Changchun, a famous auto city in China.

With a total investment of US$300 million, the auto park will cover a land area of 690,000 square metres, focusing on manufacturing special-purpose vehicles and truck chassis.

Thanks to Jim Holbel, Haskell Community Center bowling shark, for this item.