OKKKKK, in response to the previous statements
1: Yes, it is. They are the ones responsible for fitting, installing and checking the product.
2: Yes, it is. If they were doing their job correctly, screw-ups would get caught more often, or dare I say, would get caught, period.
3: Cheap parts, top o' the line parts, whatever. If they're not installed correctly, who gives a crap? Nobody expects a perfect product, but if something does fail, it should be an easy fix, not fubar requiring days or weeks to remedy it.
4: That falls into the sagging sales area, not crappy products.
5: Well let's see, a customer has a problem that should be covered under warranty. Service manager or other says it's not (even though warranty package book clearly says it is) OR feeds customer line of BS OR treats customer shi**y in general, OR lies about repair, OR inflates price after estimate, OR lies about how long it's going to take, OR doesn't fix the problem, OR causes another, OR damages/dirties customer car and blames it on "Not Me", OR. . . do I need to go on, or do you get the point?

Dealerships treat average customers average or less, and by that I mean those who purchased median level or lower cars that fit into their budget. Sure, some guy w/ a GT will get taken care of no matter what. When was the last time you saw or heard of someone bending over backwards to take care of the owner of a Focus? See the difference? How many GT's vs. how many Focus' ? A little goes a heck of a long way when it comes to customer satisfaction.

SL

 

If this case was actually heard in any type of court system, then the judge,jury, and Toyota are in direct noncompliance with the Federal ADA
(Americans with Diabilities Act). I can not imagine that this actually took place......Where did you get this information????

 

Thank you for proving my point. If someone can make more money assembling a car than practicing law it should be perfectly obvious that they are way over paid. The average assembly job could be taught to a monkey. It is the same simple task repeated many times a day. For the majority of the jobs there is no special skill that is needed. Take an example from the airlines, recently the pilots, flight attendants and mechanics have taken big pay cuts. Why, do they just want less money or were they smart enough to realize that the company was going bankrupt if they did not agree to concessions they would not be getting a pay check at all.

Labor unions share the same fatal flaw as Socialism and its more sinister cousin Communism. They all fail to account for human nature. We all have witnessed the collapse of Communism and if you keep up with European news Socialism is not far behind. Under all three of these philosophies each person is to give their best and receive back the same as everyone else. The problem with this is that all people are not equal. Some are lazy, some work hard so that they can do better for themselves.

For example a company has three employees, the owner studies his finances and determines that he can allocate $3,000 for employee raises. Employee A is a stellar worker. He is the first in and the last out. Never missed a day of work and his work output is flawless. Employee B is an average worker. He shows up on time, does his job to the level required and then goes home. He will skip work occasionally, and never seems interested in doing anything above the minimum requirements. Employee C is a horrible worker. He frequently misses work, his work often does not meet the standard and will never do anything above what you beat out of him. So if you owned the company how would you pass out the raises? Would you give a big chunk to employee A, the remainder to employee B and a kick in the a$$ to employee C? Most would unless you were in a union shop, then everyone would get an equal raise. The two good employees see this and suddenly their desire to excel is gone. That is why the unions are bad. They coddle a system that rewards mediocrity, not rewards excellence.

Joe

 

Seems to me that as much as you can slam unions, I could easily start slamming the owners of businesses for paying crappy wages regardless of a workers output.

That's why you have people working 40 hour weeks and still qualifying for welfare.

 

Actually it was an article about a court ruling that I read, I'll try to find the link.

I read about court rulings everyday that I find hard to believe.

Toyota has another one where a lady was denied damages under the ADA because despite a valid disability that prevented her from doing her job at Toyota, she was able to perform routine tasks at home.

Let's see comparing things like combing your hair etc to standing on a line for 8 hours plus a day in a repetitive task, yeah that makes sense.

What we're seeing is American business trying to erode the standards that have been hard won by workers and people looking in from the outside only considering what's best for their bank account.

That's why people who wear "Tommy" could care less that a 12 year old girl who is basically a slave made them.

 

Those businesses pay what the market will bear. So you blame the business owner for paying low wages for a 40 hour/week job. My view is the job is low/no skill and is probably an entry level position. For what it's worth, entry level low/no skill jobs are good for those in high school or right out of school. They were not intended to raise a family on. If the employee is wanting to have a family they need to work their butts off and obtain some skills and move ahead in the job market. Staying entry level for more than about 2-3 years is a career ender at most businesses.

 

Let's see, the "market" says teachers aren't worth much.

Or firemen, or policemen, or ....

No offense, but generally I find that people who devalue the worth of others, would never accept their own being devalued.

My take is that each in our society contributes what they can, with obvious exceptions, it's baseline value we set that's too low.

You will never be able to to convince me that anyone who works 40 hours a week should be paid so little that they need public assistance. I agree that if you want to make more money, you have to make yourself into something employers will pay for. That doesn't mean if you aren't the hot ticket of the day, you should destined for a life of poverty if you're at least putting forth the effort.

When the values of our society have devalued people to that point, it concerns me. When I see "ministers" raking in 6 digits, it doesn't surprise me.

 

Someone put the vehicle together and deemed it fit for sale; it certainly didn't assemble itself.
I agree. Management and executives are to blame as much as the typical assembler.
Yes, parts from the lowest bidder have a role in this as well, but as snappylips mentioned, when the vehicles aren't assembled right regardless of parts quality, that doesn't mean much, does it?
Perhaps, but if Ford saw to it to release the products that people want, would they get assembled properly?
What satisfaction do you require from the dealerships? We file misbuilt claims at least once a week, sometimes more. But then again, I guess the plants don't want to know about the things that got screwed up, do they? No, dealerships aren't perfect, but just tell me, what satisfaction do plants need from dealerships?

 

Actually there is no "market" for those jobs listed above. Actually the market is the tax payers and since we have to fork out so much cash to pay for some many useless and lazy people to begin with theres not that much left over for really good people as you listed above.

I agree that those listed above should be payed very high wages, higher then NON-skilled jobs like people who assemble Fords, which anybody can do. However, I just don't have the cash left over to pay the people above as well as I would like to because I am busy spending my money for the fat lady down the road to stuff Big Mac's down her fat throat while sitting on her butt all day...

 

The corrupt school districts are the ones wasting our tax dollars by underpaying teachers. Just like the city beaurocracies are wasting our tax dollars by underpaying needed policemen and firefighters while eating at fancy restaurants. The government is to blame for the waste of every taxpayer dollar spent on loafing welfare recipients. The companies that employ the "unskilled manufacturing laborers" are to blame for what they pay their employees, union or not. What's so hard to understand here?

 

somebody is getting closer to the real problem. Most of you union or not, probably don't deserve to get paid what you do. I know that I don't. I'm in the navy. Should I get paid the same amount as the 19 year old kid getting shot at while I sit in my air conditioned shop 40 miles off the coast? No, but I do. Should I make $60k a year for what I do? Maybe, but I doubt it. Should I live in a 1 bedroom apt making that salary and barely make it month to month. Probably not. Some of it's my fault. A lot of it's society's fault. We all drive $20-40k trucks. Why? What will they do that a $5000 truck won't do? Most of them would probably be out performed by the cheap old beater that you did a little work to. I love the way my truck rides though and the cold ac and the cd player and the adjustable pedals. It's all our own fault. We pay the inflated prices to have what we want. Then we need more money to get more things we want. Everybody is looking out for number one. It's the american way. Until that changes, some union workers are going to be overpaid, all executives are going to be overpaid, all politicians are going to be way overpaid. Stop buying stock in companies to profit. When they stop profiting and there are no workers or wages left to cut, they'll go under. The next great depression. That's the only thing that will fix it. Big companies are greedy just like every one of us. When we all stop trying to get rich, they'll stop getting rich. I'm not going to be the one that starts it though. I like my stuff. I wanna get as much stuff as I can as quick as I can so when I'm gone my kids won't have to want it, they'll have it. Any of you want to be the first? Give it all up? Maybe I'm crazy. Flame me if you want. That's how I see it though.

 

You raise some perfectly valid problems, but there can certainly be some very valid reasons those errors occurred that have absolutely nothing to do with the assemblers on the line. As someone who started on teh line and worked his way up to a skilled trades position, as well as a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering with a concentration in manufacturing, let me provide some examples by putting myself in the assembler's shoes for a minute:

If I'm new on the job, how the hell am I supposed to know that tere are supposed to be 4 bolts on that part? If there is no hole in the pan and no nut welded in place, why would I assume any different?

Do you think that the assembler that put the wiring harness in or different assembler that installed the bumper fascia had any clue whether or not the other assemblers installed the proper modules in the front end of the vehicle? As long as tab A fits slot B, my job is done and I've got another job in about 4 more seconds. I don't sequence the parts, I just install the parts that show up in the bin. It's not my place to question whether every one of the 500 other people did their job, I just need to make sure I do mine to the best of my ability.

The installer does not test the parking brakes. The final inspector has a process to follow for that inspection, and generally that test happens on the chassis dyno at the end of the line. That's like saying that the assembler should test the water pump before loading the engine into the crate to ship to the assembly plant. Just doesn't work that way. Yes, it should have been caught at the factory, but maybe the new guy or the substitute wasn't aware of that check. Maybe the regular guy for the job had to pee at an odd non-break time, and the relief man didn't regularly do that job and missed that check.

That's likely exactly what happened. The guy on the left doesn't see what the guy on the right is doing, and they're not working off a common build sheet. There's one on the left, and one on the right. It's possible that the sequencer stuck the wrong tag on one vehicle and there was another vehicle that came off the line with the exact opposite arrangement too. Tell you what, draw a circle, then draw a square, then cross your eyes, draw a heart, tap your head three times, ring the bell, and clap twice. Now, do that same exact process every 20 seconds for a total of 400 times. I'll bet at least once you draw the square before the circle, no matter how hard you try not to. Even if there's a sign telling you what comes next, you're bound to get mixed up once in a while. You do your best, but you're never 100%. It's not humanly possible.

 

Yup. Agreed. Assemble shouldn't have done it, and inspector should have caught it before it was shipped. No doubt about it.

The installer just does what the tag says, or the sequencer sends. It's not the installer's job to question it. Sure, someone might inqure if they thought it wasn't right, but how would you know? The sequencer sent a cloth seat, so the logical assumption would be that the sequencer did his/her job properly and sent the correct seat. Unless I have something that says it shouldn't be a cloth seat, I'm going to install a cloth seat. I may question it at the earliest opportunity, but I'm definately not going to stop the line to ask a question (the wrong mentality too, I know, but that's the way it is on an assembly line, union or not)

I highly doubt this was something that happened from the factory. Keep in mind that once the vehicle rolls out our doors, there are a whole lot of other people that handle them before they reach the dealerships. An improper tie-down could easily cause those issues, and that's not the assembler's fault in the slightest. While you may have recieved tham in that condition, I'm quite sure ford didn't intentionally or knowingly ship them in that condition. Let's play devil's advocate here, and say you're right, though. The installation of a tailgate involves no less than 6 people that I can think of. One installs the hinges on the gate, one mounts the gate to the vehicle (or possibly a robot does), one fits said panel after it's been installed on the body in white, one fits the strikers, one fits the latches, one fits the motor/actuator, and one inspects the fit and finish after e-coat/paint. Keep in mind, none of those 6 people probably even see each other in the plant, and they do their jobs minutes if not hours apart from each other. It's not a simple process of saying, "Employee # 1365 didn't do his job right. That's why it's out of adjustment."

Not sure which engine plant that came from, but I suspect that engine plant gets their oil pans from a supplier that ships it as a finished assembly, plug installed and torqued. That supplier *should* tighten the drain plug at their factory, and apparently didn't. Odds are the pan is installed by a robot, although the pans may be hand-loaded or started by a human in the assembly process. Now, if I've been building these engines for a year, and the plugs are always shipped torqued from teh factory, and all of a sudden, we get a couple of pallets that our supplier screwed up by not torquing the plugs, how would I know? I have nothing in my process that says I'm supposed to check, and on visual inspection, they look like the other 35,000 of them I've installed. How am I to know they're not good to go?? I worked as an air tool (and electric tool) repairman in the Dearborn Assembly Plant. I know the guns malfunction occasionally. Given the sheer number of fasteners and guns to drive them, one here and there on occasion doesn't come as a shock.

As for the whole union debate, don't get me started. I'm a 4th generation UAW/Ford Skilled Tradesman in the Rouge Complex. I work every day in the heart of the company and the home of the Union movement. I bleed Ford blue.... Y'all can guess where I stand on all the issues.

-Joe

 

1) As other have stated there is no market forces to play with when you work for the government. I deleted anecdotal evidence out of my first post by will include the Reader''s Digest version here. A subject in an unfounded case I was interviewing was a driver for Waste Managemennt. He seemed a little embarrassed when he revealed his pay. He had a GED. His pay was $20 less per week than mine. My job required at the minimum a 2-year degree. The main difference is his job had market forces increasing his wages, nobody wanted to be the garbage man. My job was government and did not have any market forces to help raise the wage. I don't complain about it, just accept that I should have stayed driving a garbage truck and not switched to a police officer.

2) You don't receive a pay check for putting forth an effort. Most businesses if you put forth an effort then you will receive promotions and pay raises. Putting forth the effort normally results in the person becoming very good at what they are paid to do. Only when the person has proved they are competant at performing and producing income for the business should they be given a pay raise. Many people who are receiving government assistance and are still in an entry level position in their late 20's and 30's have not put forth the effort. The receipt of government assistance can not be used to justify a pay increase. The person with six kids is eligible for assistance at a much higher wage than I am with my one kid. If you and Joe Blow are doing the same job at teh same quality but he has 5 more kids than you does not mean he deserves to be paid more than you. Unless you're willing to give him your pay raise every year until he is at an income level you deem suitable.

 

LMAO at this comment about the frog guy. Couldn't have been said it better myself RP!

You devote a month to creating a list of all the off the wall comments or threads this guy has made since he joined.

Duke