Word: automen
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...automen, however, no longer expect to make any significant progress against imports this year. "Under the circumstances, the best we can hope for is some leveling off," says Elliott M. Estes, a G.M. group vice president. So long as total sales approach record levels, of course, the automakers are consolable. If Detroit had not introduced the subcompacts, the imports might well have grabbed a third of the U.S. car market...
...Foreign automen insist that they will withstand the challenge. G.M. and Ford each hope to sell 400,000 of their minicars during the new model year. Volkswagen predicts that its sales will rise by 12% to 600,000, and Japan's Toyota and Datsun expect to sell a combined total of 250,000 cars to U.S. customers. Unless the market for subcompacts expands faster than most analysts anticipate, somebody is likely to be disappointed...
Crisis of Costs. For their part, the companies complain that absenteeism runs as high as 10% on Mondays and Fridays and 15% the day after payday. Sabotage-paint scraped with screw drivers, upholstery slashed-is common. Numerous defects have roused consumer complaints about quality control. Automen complain that hourly pay and benefits have increased nearly three times as much as productivity since 1965. The resulting increase in the price of U.S. cars makes Detroit increasingly vulnerable to foreign competition, which now accounts for 13% of the U.S. market. As long ago as last February, G.M. Chairman James Roche...
Despite the smoldering animosities on both sides, the negotiations so far have proceeded almost as though the U.A.W. and the automen had taken George Meany's proposition to heart. Leonard Woodcock's low-key style is in sharp contrast to Reuther's combativeness. The companies, too, have been less belligerent than Roche's tough words would indicate. At the Norwood, Ohio, Chevrolet assembly plant, workers staged a nine-day go-slow without audible protest from General Motors. Last week a jurisdictional strike halted work at the Lordstown plant, the home of G.M.'s subcompact...
With their profits down, automen hint at some tough demands of their own. G.M. Chairman James Roche has complained vehemently about absenteeism in car plants, wildcat strikes and shoddy quality production. "In the negotiations of 1970," he has said, "unions and management must strive together to achieve regular attendance, eliminate unnecessary work stoppages and cooperate in improving quality...