Word: gm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...milestones on the road to GM's bankruptcy...
...auto industry - by encouraging southeastern Michigan's reliance on this single, lumbering mastodon - Dingell has in fact played a signal role in destroying Detroit. He was hardly alone; if you wanted to get elected in southeastern Michigan, you had to support the party line dictated by the Big Four - GM, Ford, Chrysler and their co-conspirator the United Auto Workers. Anything that might limit the industry's income was bad for the auto industry, and anything bad for the auto industry was deemed dangerous to Detroit...
...average American. In 1947 and '48 the union even offered to cut wages if the Big Three would reduce the price of their cars. But by the early 1980s, the UAW had entered into a nakedly self-interested pact with the auto companies. After the union's president joined GM's chief congressional lobbyist to defeat a tougher mileage standard in 1990, the lobbyist declared that "we would not have won without the UAW." It was, he said, "one of the proudest days of my life...
...members - that game required two players, and the automakers knew only how to say yes. But the union leadership's fatal mistake was insisting that workers with comparable skills and comparable seniority be paid comparable wages, irrespective of who employed them. If a machinist at a prosperous GM deserved $25 an hour, so did a machinist who worked for a barely profitable Chrysler or for a just-holding-its-own supplier plant that made axles or wheels or windshield wipers...
...Roxboro, N.C., makes a 3-in. gadget called a lash adjuster that keeps pressure constant on engine valves, increasing fuel efficiency. Last year Brian Whitfield, a supply-chain analyst at the factory, had plenty of work scheduling orders for raw materials, components and packaging. But with the collapse of GM and Chrysler, business ground to a halt, and when Whitfield arrived at his cubicle on Jan. 20, he found an e-mail from management announcing layoffs. He looked around and saw people leaving, carrying boxes. Then his boss called him into the conference room. "Basically it was, 'Sorry...