Originally Posted by prrriiide

Who decides who the good workers are?

At my company, managers are under strict policy guidelines to NOT give any employee an above-average rating (thus a bigger raise) unless it is cleared by BOTH the Sr. V.P. over that employee's area and the Sr. V.P. of Human Resources. The reason being that the company does not want to give raises over and above a 2% COLA every year, which doesn't even match the rate of inflation. We know this, because the e-mail detailing the policy and the reasons for it were inadvertently sent to a rank-and-file worker in our department.

No matter how I busted my ass for four years, I never got an above average rating until I learned a process that increased my productivity 5 fold. There are managers that have been at the company for over ten years that have told me over beers that they have never received an above average rating, yet they were promoted multiple times.

So, who decides the good employees? IOW, who decides who gets a raise and who decides the criteria? Left up to their own devices, management as a general rule, isn't going to give you shit.

Originally Posted by Caltex

My quote should read is not isn't in the first sentence. I must have made a typo there ><. It should read: "I didn't say the problem is with the American workers". If that caused any confusion.

Toyota and Honda are both publicly traded companies. So many people own them. They are originally Japanese companies if that makes a difference. Their American operations are mostly run by Americans though.

The unions are part of the problem, but by no means the entire problem. And the problem isn't that unions exist. The problem is that unions protect employees who under the free market should have been fired long ago. The unions would do themselves well by stop protecting weak performers, and instead work towards increasing the wages of the good workers.

Yes, much of the parts are manufactured no union, that doesn't change the fact that the unions are keeping the American car manufacturers from being competitive, and are thus actually hurting the workers they represent. Nixing the seniority system, stop protecting under performing employees, and reducing overhead union costs would all greatly help increase the efficiency of the car companies. Unions can still stand for their workers for better wages, but they really need to stop protecting employees who don't carry their own weight. They only drag everyone down by doing so.

The car companies need to run better business practices, design better cars, better manufacturing process's, reduce the number of defects, etc. And they need to do it all more efficiently to stay price competitive.