welcome to the real world...

welcome to the real world...

well, i live in wichita, kansas now. i live here because, frankly, american automotive tanked. as the big 3 fell, so did all of their suppliers. there are a lot of things that were and/or are wrong with american automotive. (note if you know me, i always capitalize "American"...as i do any country reference normally, but i'm not sure automotive in the USA deserves "American" status.) automotive in the USA was eaten alive--by its own greed. by the greed of boards of directors that thought a taurus and an explorer which cost them the same to make should be priced in two different time zones--the explorer selling for more than double the taurus. by the greed of high school graduates that entered into unions created by the silent generation that thought they were owed more than what they were worth. you cannot make more than a college graduate with student loans less than 4 years out of college. it's not realistic. you cannot sweep floors for $10+ per hour more than minimum wage. no company can afford to pay that to anyone with no value add. period. greed, expectation, want, want, want. no one can ride that gravy train and realistically not expect that rooster to come to roost eventually.

and roost it has come. automotive has tanked. the detroit to cleveland area, better known as the automotive corridor, has deteriorated. the recovery for the area is currently estimated at 20 years. yes, twenty years. we that are from the area all know that to be optimistic. detroit has been in the sh*tter for years. there are no, NO, supermarkets within the detroit city limits anymore. imagine a major city with nowhere to purchase all your groceries within a few miles of where you live, and yet, that is detroit. you're almost lucky to find gas stations with convenience stores for milk and basics within the city limits. this is detroit. this is many of the towns in the automotive corridor. my hometown used to have 3 major grocery stores. it now has one, and the town is bigger (population-wise) than it was when we had 3.

why? because we cannot get something for nothing. we cannot make $17 per hour to be a janitor. it's not realistic. we cannot pay college graduates--engineers, professionals--less than what we pay our hourly to sweep floors. why get an education? what message have we sent to our children? in the automotive corridor, the message has been clear: you can join the union. the union will make sure that you make a great living. i'm not faulting the union of my grandparents. the union back then was for "fair" pay, "fair" wages, "fair" benefits, but the automotive union of today has become representative of the same thing of the wall street fat cats: greed--something for nothing. there is a cost for that shallow view: wall street collapses for questionable trades, automotive tanks for greed uncontrolled. while the gravy train is all good, none of us can debate whether these things are out of line, well we can, but no one will care. but now, well, we can't pretend the problem doesn't exist anymore.

i fled the automotive corridor--not because i didn't want to live close to friends or where i had grown up. i wanted my boys to have the life i grew up with. but it wasn't the life i grew up with. my grandparents taught me that life was earned--you work hard and you get what you deserve based on how you worked. it wasn't that. greed changed it. it has become all about what someone owes someone else--especially the uaw. the uaw president made more than 7 figures a year while plants closed left and right. the automotive workers demanded more money while the big 3 and their suppliers laid off, downsized, every single salary person outside of "managers". then they wondered why the plants were relocated overseas!!!!

here's why: all of us have a job to do. production creates the product. salary well..., some are genuinely zero value add: payroll, for example. ah, but no one in production considers them non-value add--they do the paychecks afterall. but, engineers, project management, quality techs and engineers. all non-value add. but in reality, all of these people create the need for each other--all interdependent. engineers improve the product and the productivity of the machines on a line, quality assures the product is what the customer wants, project management ensures that constant improvements keeps the plant competitive with competition. with the unions, all those people are the first to go. production keeps its jobs the longest. but as those other roles end, so does the capability and the ability to expand, grow, and be more effective. as that ends, so does the ability for production to compete--the slow death of the plant and its abilty to produce at a competitve rate. this is the lifecycle.

as i stated earlier, i now live in kansas. i live here, because, well, automotive tanked. we, the salary, that had the opportunity, didn't always leave. i know plenty of my friends--other engineers, senior to junior, other project managers, other highly skilled educated salary employees--that are still unemployed because automotive, the automotive corridor, has not recovered. if we were not willing to relocate, then most of us are still unemployed. that is our reality. the reality is now the hourly, union, uaw jobs, are just as bad off. but they didn't give a sh*t when it was us. we have student loans and made less per hour right out of college than 10 year union members--hell than a lot of 4 year union members. why go to college for an engineering degree when you start in a plant and the people on the floor for the last 4 years make more than you do???? and you have an 8% student loan for $40 to $100K??? what is the motivation? the answer is simple: there is none. you're the first out the door, because you are "work at will". it's not like the union. there is no union rep to argue for your job. there is no possibility to come back after a 4 week vacation (fully paid in some cases) because your union rep won the argument. your job is gone. end of story.

i hear the aircraft unions making these same arguments that the automotive unions made. it scares the hell out of me. the wichita area is all aircraft--they are on the upward swing. they currently estimate 5 years to full recovery. most of the aircraft companies are shooting for 7 year contracts--makes sense for both sides in the long run. 5 years to recovery and 2 years to make sure that both sides are protected as the recovery starts to blossom. the automotive corridor is estimated to 20 year recovery or more. or more. homes in wichita haven't lost much of their value so people here can't grasp 50 to 60% reduction in their home value because of over-inflated pricing because a janitor at a ford plant wasn't worth $17 per hour. duh. a janitor is a minimum wage job--unless a supervisor over several other janitors. and even then, $17 per hour is outrageous for that supervisor. way, way overpaid, unless 20+ years and 2 dozen reports. that's just fact. the automotive corridor is suffering from the outrageous greed. don't get me wrong. there is plenty of blame to go around the corridor--who charges double for a product that costs the same as a product half its price to produce--welcome to the greed that drove our automotive stateside. welcome to what was one of the primary factors in almost destroying the global economy. this is our world now. greed unchecked will effect us all--not just those in their product, not just those in their country or their region or hemisphere...we all pay for those mistakes.

aircraft has been fairly insulated--well, until very, very untimely obama comments (the untimeliness which is a complete different blog)--but they aren't anymore. the economy has suffered and we are all feeling it. and i hear the aircraft unions, not all mind you but some, whining about how unfair it is to them. here's unfair: being college educated, student loans, and knowing that your job is first on the chopping block because the high school grads got into a union. it's unfair to assume that the salary don't feel the pain--they are typically the first to go, because union contracts require the companies to make cuts everywhere else first before cutting union employees--even if they have no work for them. it's unfair that salary benefits are typically worse than union benefits because the companies make cuts to salary benefits to pay for more extravagant union benefits based on their contracts. it's unfair, but that is how our system works. it also means as those salary jobs go away that eventually so will the hourly. just slower, just in bigger numbers when it happens. that's the nature of the beast. we are not "exclusive" of each other; no salary to do the jobs that make production improvements and improved productivity means that production cannot compete. the end result is those union jobs no longer exist.

it's a vicious circle. it's no longer mutually exclusive--we are interdependent. salary depend on hourly to be productive. hourly have to depend on salary to keep their plants competitive. there is no room for the shallow view of hourly versus salary, union versus "management" (of whom most "management" have little to no control over any union negotitations anyway). i hope that the aircraft unions are smarter than the automotive corridor was. if not, a place that has become my home, more so than that small town on the lake is now, will fall into the dark hole that the automotive corridor has.