Word: gm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Stempel's defenders portray him as a scapegoat for errors that GM's now militant directors did nothing to stop. "He became captain after the Titanic had already hit the iceberg," Shaiken says. A strapping 6-ft. 4-in. former college football tackle with a booming voice but a gentle nature, Stempel took a conciliatory approach toward downsizing the work force. When a United Auto Workers strike shut down 14 of GM's factories in August and September, Stempel agreed to add 900 jobs at two Lordstown, Ohio, plants where workers had complained about being shorthanded. Earlier, Stempel had signed...
Stempel had the misfortune of becoming chairman just as the U.S. was sliding into recession. That hindered sales of GM's 1991 fall line, one of its best in years. The redesigned models included the full-bodied Buick Park Avenue and the luxurious Cadillac Seville. "Our sales depend on the economy," says Jamal Karmouta, who manages a Chevrolet dealership in Southern California. "When the economy moves up a little, we'll be selling more cars." But with GM strapped for cash, its new offerings for 1993 are limited mainly to a redesigned Cadillac Brougham and sporty Camaros and Firebirds...
...layoffs to come, brutality will have to be tempered. GM must restructure its business without further alienating workers whose cooperation will be crucial to the company's success. While the U.A.W.'s relations with GM have generally been much stormier than those with Ford or Chrysler, the union seems willing to give the new management a chance. Says former U.A.W. president Douglas Fraser: "There's a fundamental truth -- the workers can't survive unless GM survives." And Stephen Yokich, head of the union's GM department, says he wants to help the company become more productive. But Yokich adamantly opposes...
...GM must also mollify suppliers outraged by the high-handed tactics of J. Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua, a former European colleague of Jack Smith's who manages GM purchasing and is reportedly under orders to cut the company's $500 million weekly supply bill at least 20%. To do that, Lopez has been jeopardizing GM's long-term relations with its partners by demanding that they constantly resubmit their bids. At the same time, GM has been dragging its heels when paying bills. "GM's reputation as a gentleman in the industry is disappearing very quickly," says a leading supplier...
...GM's biggest challenge will be to shift from the top-down style of management that has characterized the company since Alfred Sloan to a more collegial style in which everyone from the shop floor to the executive suite participates in decision making. That is no longer a revolutionary idea among GM's rivals or industry at large. Ford developed its Taurus using nearly autonomous teams of workers, and Chrysler last year opened a mammoth $1 billion technical center that will bring together 6,000 technicians, designers and engineers to work on joint car projects. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ford...