Geeto67

Everybody has their "stupid union" experience where some werid union rule and mgmt clash to create an issue. I used to have them to when I had to deal with the teamsters union for loading and unloading motorcycles into conventions centers for trade shows. It's easy to blame the union because they are "visible", it's some union guy there telling you or doing something that seems like nonsense, but often it's really management's fault for not scheduling something properly, or even worse, having a system that doesn't take in to account the rules the union AND management agreed to. I found out just by asking a few basic questions why it took 3 hours to get my booth power hooked up: mgmt double booked the guy assigned to me and shorted the time needed to do the job (gave a complex AV hookup the same amount of time installing a power strip in a locked floor outlet). Honestly, I find management more at fault for these inefficient examples because they had the rules in advance, and the time to review and fix it and often they didn't. I dunno, I would need to see the math on that - some actual proof. The median assembly line yearly salary is around $30K, even with retirement and whatever the hell beanies are I don't see that suddenly making up $70K.

I told you man, it's because it was autotragic and not stick. No manual car is boring, but an autoXJ is like a rolling lullaby. Speaking of XJ's BTW, I saw a unicorn of one the Meijer parking lot over the weekend: a 2 door, 4.0L, 4x4, 5 speed rescue green metallic, pre-facelift Cherokee sport. I only remember ever seeing one in brochures when new, never one in real life before. It was bone stock too - no lift rolling on stock jeep alloys.

you are George Lucas?

no the giant wheel perpendicular to the picture is what's holding up the car. I think the smaller wire is the signal wire to tell it where the elevator car is but I am not really sure how it works.

It reminds me of a music box or a player piano.....wait is the elevator car "reading" (triggering?) things on the wall of the shaft as it descends? way cool. When I lived in Boston I lived in an old building that had a manual lever operated art deco trellis style elevator. Because I was a teenager I figured slamming it full one way and then the other was a way to make it jump on the cable. I do miss some of those old details these days.

First of all it is pretty laughable to think this conversation is all about you enough that you can just throw your opinion into the public and not have it challenged by someone. I mean, that's like Internet 101 and you are failing at it. Trying to control the conversation on a forum is as useless and futile as trying to make a giraffe fly. You are free to skip whatever content you want, just as I am free to respond to whatever I want, no skin off my nose. Ain't freedom great! Politicians are by their nature opportunist, so If there is something that speaks to a large demographic in their base, and gets a lot of free publicity then naturally they are going to seize the moment. I don't think the Democratic Party or any individual candidate has the clout to call up the UAW and say "hey, can you guys strike it would really help us out". Also if one did by some miracle, I don't think that could be kept a secret because there are just too many people involved. While the UAW does recognize that they do benefit from a democratic administration, if it was organized specifically to boost democratic support, they would have done it closer to the election. I do think they are also opportunistic when it comes to publicity, and if a bunch of politicians want to boost the visibility of their cause they won't turn them away, but I really don't think politics play all that much in when the union decides to strike. These things are on a calendar, and in this case the contract was up for negotiation.

If the UAW and The big three parted ways, I don't think any of the US automakers would loose any sleep over having the lowest paid employees in the industry. I thi it would take 2-5 years to do and they would probably start with the benefits. Part of this current strike is rooted in GM wanting to cut the cost of health care and make the employees carry a larger deductible. But I do believe GM would walk the employee compensation down in the traditional way it usually does: through a combination of scaring the workforce that their job might move overseas and Patroitic propaganda that working for an American car company is somehow better than working for a foreign car company in the US. The other effect I think it would have is you would see the compensation go down at those other non union shops as well. Even if your shop isn't Union, it has to match or better Union wages to keep a Union from forming. Without him that market pressure the other companies would readjust after they got their fill poaching good employees from the other automakers. But I also think that if the UAW exited the landscape, a new Union would form immediately. Why? Because there is a need for it. Unions are the advocate of the workers, any time you have a large company with leverage over a large semi-skilled workforce that workforce needs an advocate. Unions arose out of a need and as long as there are times where the interests of the company and the interests of the workers are at odds, there will always be a need for someone to speak for the workers.

no GM's a shitty company because they focus on short term and paying the top first which creates long term instability when the market changes. When the employees complain, they throw them concessions to shut them up. This is not sustainable long term and it hurts the employees most because they are most affected by sweeping layoffs and changes in market and even is partially responsible for the bankruptcy and bailout. Yeah they feel like it's a great place to work if they work in a plant that doesn't close, or experience a reduction in force, or isn't able to pivot because of market changes. I wonder if all the people who were laid off at the lordstown plant still feel positive about GM. Yes compared to a lot of jobs they make good money and benefits, but compared to the rest of the market they are slightly worse on pay and slightly better on benefits, and they have to fight with GM just to get that. so they just do alright but it's a much harder fight to do alright. If you are a GM line worker you are only pulling down about $18K a year more than the federal poverty line, so I wouldn't say you are out buying brand new cars and eating in restaurants every week. GM's employees make market salary and benefits, but their upper management make as much as 10 times more than their foreign counterparts. That's money that could be used to shore up the company and give the employees more stability. A lot of what the striking employees are asking for are things others get in the market already, so yes they feel they deserve it because it's a market adjustment. The big issue is the two tiered compensation system which served it's purpose and is no longer necessary for GM to be competitive. A lot of these are issues tied to soundness and stability.

Do any GM Assembly Line workers make 6 figures? I highly doubt that. so do they (that last link is really interesting): https://www.indeed.com/cmp/General-Motors/salaries?job_category=manufacturing https://www.careerbliss.com/gmc/salaries/assembly-line-worker/ https://www.payscale.com/career-news/2008/12/are-ford-workers-really-paid-73-an-hour

No I am illustrating a point that at one point GM was so lax about employee management that it probably seemed like a sweet gig, when in reality it was hurting the company overall. It's that lax management that led to the agreement with Toyota and the NUMMI plant that was supposed to be the change in GM. Toyota proved that if you ditched GM management culture the plant went from a drug and booze addled production facility with the highest defective vehicle rate to a lean and efficient facility with the lowest defective rate. And then GM old culture stepped in and squashed it. here read this: it details it nicely: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125229157 yes the union contract there frustrated a lot, but GM management made that deal, and GM management had to have done something pretty bad to give UAW enough leverage to push for that deal. And even when you read about it, the Toyota approach really would not have been affected by the union contract for that plant. Even today, there are no criminal laws against drinking on the job, that's a safety item the union and the company have agreed to and become common practice.

No. Look I come from a GM (specifically Chevrolet) family. I am sympathetic to GM, and always look at their products when considering a car, even if they don't have a product that speaks to me. I don't think they deserve to go bankrupt at all, but I do think it will happen again in my lifetime. I am probably in the minority here in thinking that the bailout was a good thing that ended up being executed poorly in the end (the taxpayer losing money in the sale part anyway), because it helped stabilize the economy quicker. yeah I don't think it's fair, or accurate to say they should go bankrupt because of the sins of the past. I do think it is fair to say they haven't learned their lesson from the past and some traditions that are alive and well today at GM that will continue to hurt them, such as their management first culture. I think Mary Barra has been the best thing GM has seen in mgmt since Bunkie Knudsen. I think she is changing a lot of that, but as recent layoffs and the shutoff issue from a few years back have shown, I don't think enough has changed yet. GM has historically employed millions of people, so it's fair to say a lot of them probably had a very positive experience. However, your grandfather probably didn't work at the Van Nuys Plant in the 80's or maybe he was at the Lordstown plant in 1972 but thinks of it fondly, and in 1948 he missed by 3 years the war effort which suspended all workers rights claims until after the war, and subjected employees to dangerous conditions like improperly handling radium (which was known to be toxic at the time) which caused a lot of workers to be injured without recourse. Or maybe he thinks of it fondly because GM management in the 80's was lax about employee welfare, esp drug and alcohol use in their assembly plants, as long as the factory kept churning units (not saying he was drunk or anything, just that he was probably left alone to do his job). Again it's a matter of perspective, if i am a worker and my boss doesn't hassle me about having a beer at lunch and operating a heavy piece of equipment right after, I'd think it was a pretty sweet gig too, even though it's bad for product, bad for the company, and bad for the workers as a whole. I am hard on GM because I want them to be best. But lets not blame the workers and the unions for a company that didn't learn from it's past.

yes I do think unions are still necessary today, but I do think they need to evolve somewhat. For starters, unions do drive a lot of labor laws as a lobbying group. While I do detest our money based and semi transparent lobbying system on the whole, I do find that they they are still the largest advocate for worker safety and soundness in the government. Also a lot of labor laws are at the state or local level and there is a lot of inconsistency, unions help smooth out those wrinkles by pushing for an agreed to standard that meets all state requirements. two national issues which they are poised to address are wealth inequality and automation. Maybe the unions need to pivot more and be worker assistance for phasing out jobs (retraining, etc...which a lot do but can still step up their efforts). But I think one area they are gaining relevance is in emergent tech, and some of the "innovative" business structures some tech companies utilize to avoid even having "employees". A prime example of this is Uber/Lyft where they classify their drivers as "independent contractors" and as such the drivers are collectively trying to negotiate on Uber practices such as shorting the driver and not having a voice in dispute resolution. It's a fight right out of the pre-union days, complete with union busters. The UAW will and always be a bad case for unions because it is plagued with corruption, which by the way is mostly the people in charge of the union stealing from it's coffers. Yes that hurts workers, and it sometimes put the UAW in a position to negotiate more aggressively to feed the pipeline, but the core mission is still there and still functioning. the problem with the UAW and the big three is trust and scale - both entities have acted in bad faith so often in the past, it's hard for them to fully trust each other and a lot of public grandstanding to help leverage position, and the other thing is that GM is just too big and their culture too ingrained for UAW to drive for the meaningful change that really needs to happen - lower executive management pay and a reinvestment in the business model toward efficiency and safety. At the end of the day though, workers will always need a representative, because it's very rare that in a large corporation a worker will have any leverage to negotiate their position or safety with the company. Without a union they don't have that representation.

a lot of what cstmg8, said about historical practices. Only let's not forget that some of those practices were employees were not permitted to talk to each other (even on break), overwork it's employees, run an onerous company store that kept the worker in debt, hire and fire at will for any discriminatory reason (like race, gender, etc). cut pay, not pay over time, and if employees struck they would have striker breakers and the police beat the crap out of them. During the 1936 flint sit down strike, 14 employees were shot and injured (not killed) by police. They would actively threaten, menace, and intimidate employees who showed signs of unionizing or asking for increase in wages or conditions. Just because everyone was doing it (and lets not forget the may coal strikes in ohio where strike breakers killed women and children) doesn't mean we should normalize that behavior and not pretend that those companies would go back to it in a second if all restrictions were removed. Also let's not forget that some of these practices lasted well into the 1980's. But that's the past.... These days if you are an employee at GM, life probably feels pretty good. There is a union, benefits, decent hours, worker safety, some flexibility depending on position, provided you were hired pre-2007. A lot of their problems these days stem from corporate culture, how they value employees, how they value management, and how that affects whole swaths of workers. For a long time GM was (and still is to a degree) decentralized which made corporate changes hard to implement, and led to a lot of plant closures when those plants resisted a change in direction. They tend to hamper employee movement and transfer in the company (an issue in the 2 tier system) which lends itself to a workforce that is static and also suffers when they can't relocate and have to close a plant. They sometimes over-hire and in the past have made bad deals with the union, to try and reduce worker cost without really affecting the upper management pay scale. compared to other plants, GM workers get paid slightly less than those at toyota or honda (about $1 difference per hour on average) while their benefits are slightly better than that of the others (unless you are one of those post 2007 employees then you are under par). However, the GM executive management earns twice to three times what executives at the japanese automakers make. Toyota's CEO, Akio Toyoda, makes the lowest CEO salary and also has the highest returns on efficiency and productivity. Why? reinvestment in the company, in worker safety, in productivity and efficiency, and diversification of the business to make it less susceptible to market fluctuation. GM does some of this, but not to the same scale and the money it saves goes into the upper management's pocket as compensation. Because of this feed the top model, the company is more prone to market fluctuations, regulatory violations, and general malaise and corporate mediocrity - all of which impact workers the most. GM isn't the only one to blame in this. The Union has at times asked for some pretty onerous things, but usually it got that leverage by GM breaking some law or doing something that ran against public opinion. the UAW is always at a slight disadvantage to GM unless there is some extenuating circumstances. When your nearest foreign competitor is paying their management 1/10 of what you are paying yours, and for that extra money your managers are trying to skint the workers on some benefit or wage that others in the market have to save money and justify their expensive salary - it's not hard to see what the issue is.

is that the only solution? I don't think so, neither does GM and neither does the union. The core of that issue isn't the wage, it's the flexibility and benefits. GM already has the same regular tier'ed pay scale that the military and most large companies have by job function, why do they need the pre and post 2007 qualifier as well that allows them to discriminate on something arbitrary like pre and post recession? If there is going to be headway made here, the workers know there is going to have to be some kind of concession, wage reduction, maybe even layoffs. Assuming they can make headway at all.

you and I agree on this. I even said it - Japan doesn't have a union and doesn't have worker problems because they aren't a piece of shit. No GM is still a piece of shit company, just because they were a bigger piece of shit in the past doesn't mean they stopped. Don't let ford and chrylser off the hook too - they are equally as bad, just GM is bigger. bullshit, American jobs are moving because of a lot of things, not just unions. And guess what, lots of businesses are coming here. In the last 20 years we have seen all the Japanese automakers and some of the Germans open plants here, and the prospect of a union isn't' scaring them any. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are global brands now, and the biggest driver of foreign plants is really being competitive in foreign markets, not running away from the unions. You want to hate the Corruption at the UAW, be my guest, I hate it too and I hate it more than the american auto mfgs, because they were charged with protecting the workers and they abused that. But even with corruption they still do good things for the workers.

What is the "awful lot" they want exactly? as far as I can tell the workers want: - An end to the 2 tiered wage system. For those who don't know there are 2 classes of GM employee - pre 2007 "first tier" employees, and post 2007 "second tier" employees. The difference in pay can be as much as 45% an hour between the two employee classes for the same work. This system was fought for by the automakers to help recover from the recession (and ultimate bailout). But guess what, that happened a long time ago. The second tier workers are basically treated like short time employees - they can't transfer without losing benefits and seniority and are subject to pay cuts, while 1st tier workers don't have this problem at all. doesn't sound like a lot to ask for GM to get rid of a pay relic that creates division in it's work force. It also doesn't sound like everyone at the big three get great pay or great benefits. GM has made record profits under this tier system, and could have gotten rid of it a while ago without affecting that, but let's feed the top and not the worker, amirite? - they are also looking for job security. GM has closed a lot of plants recently, is this really asking a lot for the rest of the workers to want to...ya know...make sure they aren't next? - a path for temp employees to become permanent. Temp employees get very little as compared to permanent employees, and not all temps want to become permanent, but for those that do, shouldn't there be a path like at a lot of other places? doesn't seem unreasonable to me. - a standard wage increase to meet inflation, healthcare with lower costs, and profit sharing plan for more than executive level employees. Every other industry already has a lot of this stuff, why is GM lagging, and why is it "a lot" for people to want it. the sad part is, I don't think UAW is going to win this one. GM has been chipping away at worker's leverage for decades. They carry high inventory and have moved a lot off shore so that even if a strike shut down all US production it would only affect 28% of GM's operations. Also even at a cost of $50-100 million per day, GM's profits are enough for them to wait it out for longer than the UAW's strike fund will last.

yeah fuck unions, we should totally go back to the days when large corporations used local police to kill workers when they were insolent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes Also fuck higher productivity, lower employee turnover, improved workplace communication, and a better-training that comes with a union. Do you know why the UAW has so much power? It's because the culture of the big three is to fuck over their workers first and foremost. When they are prosperous they feed the top of the chain and not the workforce, when they are lean, they hurt the workforce to continue to feed the top. They over collateralize during production and then have to make massive cuts when the economy changes. It's depressing, but it's been a fight since the dawn of the automobile. Germany has unions and doesn't have this problem in BMW/ Mercedes/VAG, Japanese automakers don't have unions in most of their plants and their workers are pretty happy - because the corp doesn't treat them like shit. Current GM mgmt is light years from where they were just a decade ago, but they are still lagging behind the rest of the world. Yes the UAW corruption sucks and it hurts everyone, esp the workers. But workers who have health insurance have it because of a union, companies have HR departments, and dispute resolution paths because of a union, if you have a living wage in your industry it is because of a union whether you are a member or not.

Are we just going to gloss over that there is a Lancia Delta Integrale 16V in the background of those pics? Neat! Nice job, keep plugging away.

define "good", in perfect stock trim it's 120hp and 140ft/lbs gross (not net), so it's slow. like glaciers give it a run for it's money slow, esp in something as heavy as an XJ cherokee. The only advice I can give you is to drive it to make sure you can live with how slow it is. If it is an a/c equipped XJ, you'll lose 20hp every time the compressor comes on because of the old WWII tank compressor Chryco used in that era. That said, it's a nearly un-killable engine. AMC/Chrysler put it in everything from AMC Eagles and CJ7s to dodge dakotas. Don't expect it to get good mileage, I don't think that is what it was designed for and you really have to flog it anyway. Mopar paired 4.11 gears with the 2.5L so it will crawl up the side of a wall if you need it to, it's shockingly capable offroad provided your offroad is crawling and not desert running.

Pontiac G8 GT. It's basically a 4 door chick (autolol) camaro and if you look hard you can find nice ones in your price range: https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/782487465/overview/ if you don't like pontiac you can find a 6.0L detective sped caprice for about the same money (maybe cheaper). A MK7 VW GTI is also a good option, plus you can get it in stick. an e90 BMW 325/328 I or XI: as much as I loathe recommending old german cars to people, if you want stick, awd, and not to be mistaken for a subaru fanboi this is one of your only options. NA so it doesn't have the turbo problems the 335i has, it's kinda slow as they made between 215 and 270hp through the run but it will still do 120mph on the highway without much effort, and it's comfy. I dd a 2006 now and for a car I bought for $2500 that smelled like a wet dog inside when I bought it, it's been a lot of fun to drive. IT does break because it's a german car with 100K miles on it but nothing catastrophic and I do most of my own maintenance outside in the driveway. I got it with 70K it's got 134K on it now and leaks about a quart of oil between oil changes, but still sees 22-23mph mixed and 28-30 on highway road trips. Subaru wrx. I think you can find a rex for $15K, right? that's a thing. Dodge charger R/Ts have to be down to $15K for older ones, I see magnum R/Ts for less than that. Both are decent. actually, some SRT8's are in your price range: https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/785479437/overview/ or you can get this unicorn (AWD V8) if you stretch the budget: https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/776626889/overview/ but really I think we all know the answer is an s197 mustang GT with some bolt ons and making your kids climb into the back past a folded seat is a small price to pay for being fundad :gabe:

Some of the libraries around town have both drafting software and a 3d printer. They have people on hand to assist to, might be worth it to check times and availability. I know westerville has one: https://www.westervillelibrary.org/3d

Since I got a lot of questions about VT titles, I am just going to post this here: This is a youtube tutorial of how to do the process via mail: yes this is legal. It was originally designed as a process for out of state residents to register the cars they leave at their vacation summer cabins in VT year round, but has grown into a source of revenue for the VT DMV. Yes they know people use this to replace lost titles , and their DMV office in Burlington is super helpful and knowledgeable and will answer any questions if you call - (802) 828-2000 it is a 15 year rolling transferable registration which means the car has to be 2004 or older. If you are worried about the car being stolen then you can have the vin run at your local police station and can also do a national insurance crime bureau search: https://www.nicb.org/vincheck . VT DMV will do their own search and won't issue any plates to a stolen vehicle so don't think you can steal an old car and register it this way. there is no limit at how many you can do. I do about 5 a year for personal vehicles (mostly old motorcycles I clean up and flip). I did one this year where I told the BMV clerk I was only changing it for an ohio title to make it easier to sell and she honestly couldn't care less. I sold the bike a week later at Mid-O VMD and the new owner was super happy and had no problems. It helps that it was in my name and not in some title company's name, as I have heard from friends that some BMVs will reject it if you use a title company, so do it yourself through the mail.

Gerg is right, NY, Vermont, New Hampshire, Georgia, Alabama, and many other states don't require titles to transfer ownership of the vehicle is of a certain age. Vermont doesn't require you to be a resident and you can do it through the mail. Pm me and we can discuss.

looks great!

Hot damn that's a nice interior. I'm still disappointed that Audi has given up on life and puts automatics in these things. That said the car is extra sexy.