Holden quitting

[mpower]

the govt cant force people to buy a particular brand of car.

Part of the job of govts is to provide incentives for industry to develop and grow, innovate and well stick around - right now all we've got is a mass exodus.

The UK, US and Germany have all fostered the right conditions for innovative manufacturing to flourish.

What have we got? Rocks, tourism and real estate barons....

 

[Grennan]

...and how is Holden selling large sedans innovative manufacturing when the market is trending towards different vechiles?

The solution is you keep giving them hand over fist in cash and impose tarrifs on overseas products? How does that support innovative manufacturing? It allows local sellers to be lazy.

 

[crew_man]

At the end of the day there were a few options available to GM to make the Holden plant more viable but the fact is that a publicly listed company needs to pay dividends to it's shareholders. A global company like GM will leverage it's global footprint to reduce costs and increase revenue in any way that it can - one of those ways was to close Holden manufacturing and have it rely solely on imported models, increasing volume and revenue for it's profitable plants around the world.

 

[Rajesh Koothrappali]

The UK, US and Germany have all fostered the right conditions for innovative manufacturing to flourish.

Those governments also aren't held to ransom by greedy, corrupt and criminal unions, forcing the price of manufacturing labour so high that manufacturers take their business offshore!

 

[mpower]

Those governments also aren't held to ransom by greedy, corrupt and criminal unions, forcing the price of manufacturing labour so high that manufacturers take their business offshore!

The US is the home of the big powerful union.

Now look at Telsa - a true innovator.

The UK is famous for unionised workforces, yet they continue to flourish (did you see the TG special on the UK motoring industry?)

Blaming unions is weak and patently wrong, the buck stops at the govt who for too long played with GM as a political football.

Wages are only one part of a larger equation and not the be all and end all.

 

[nathanVY]

You obviously know nothing about Unions and how much they have done for workers.

Forced companies to raise wages to an artificially high point to justify their own existence? Yeah I can see how that resulted in long term job security...

 

[Troy711]

Union says "pay these guys more money for the same job but less hours or we'll walk off the job"

Car manufacturer says "sales figures are drastically down due to cheaper cars bought in from overseas, we can't afford to"

Union says "too fkn bad, we're on strike"

Car manufacturer says "no worries, we'll source labor overseas to protect our and out share holders dwindling profits"

Union says "fkn Liberal government always screws the workers"

Unions - fking their members since forever with outrageous demands and not seeing the bigger picture.

 

[Grennan]

Blaming unions is weak and patently wrong, the buck stops at the govt who for too long played with GM as a political football.

Wages are only one part of a larger equation and not the be all and end all.

Why does the buck stop with the Government? GM is an overseas private sector company that has been demanding money for many many years. If Holden or Ford wanted more hand outs, perhaps the Governments here should have adopted the strategy the US took with them and told them to change their structure or piss off.

Wages are only one part. However they are a very large part. One of the largest costs of any company is people. If the front line workers are on ~80k (plus super and other associated costs) and they really only deserve 50-60k for what is a no skill job, what do you think any dimwitted finance person is going to do? Cut/Freeze wages and get rid of some of the paid downtime or alternatively, reduce the workforce and find ways to increase productivity.

 

[mpower]

Why does the buck stop with the Government? GM is an overseas private sector company that has been demanding money for many many years. If Holden or Ford wanted more hand outs, perhaps the Governments here should have adopted the strategy the US took with them and told them to change their structure or piss off.

Wages are only one part. However they are a very large part. One of the largest costs of any company is people. If the front line workers are on ~80k (plus super and other associated costs) and they really only deserve 50-60k for what is a no skill job, what do you think any dimwitted finance person is going to do? Cut/Freeze wages and get rid of some of the paid downtime or alternatively, reduce the workforce and find ways to increase productivity.

all countries provide subsidies to industry, GM are not unique in this respect.

the fact that this gets trotted out over and over again means that yes you've listened to all the dribble that the media presented and the subsequent dribble that the govt spat out.

 

[Grennan]

I actually work in the industry but yeah I get my facts from the Herald Sun trolololol 10/10 good laugh. "Trotted out facts" are you denying that they were getting paid above what they deserved? Do you think no skill manufacturing deserves to be rewarded with an income that is towards the upper echelon of the middle bracket?

Yes all countries provide subsidies, Germany offering Volkswagen Audi is different when Volkswagen Audi is not bleeding money (well, wasnt). It is not prudent of any government to provide long term financial support to ANY company if the underlying issues are not addressed. It was quite clear that GM in the US had absolutely no desire to change to suit the AU market and just wanted to continue "surviving" until they had an excuse to pull the plug. The underlying issues of GM in AU were higher labour costs, high material cost and lower export/import value due to the USD being worth ****, lack of advertisement around the brand as a whole focusing only on the commodore, slow to react to a change in market in Australia to smaller cars and their small medium car variants being absolute dog **** in comparison to the Toyota, Mazda and Ford offerings and again behind in the SUV market to the Territory as well as other supplier variants.

No amount of money was EVER going to stop the inevitable and to blame Government for that is simply incorrect - Labor or Liberal, its not their fault. Overseas companies were looking for a reason to pull out of Australia, any reason and theyve been looking for years.