What a marvelous piece of horsehit information from Kipp/Dickey. Perhaps you could take a bit of time to do a little research before you throw out opinion that isn't based in fact. What has killed Detroit is not it's overpaid, lazy workforce. Every single piece of data available shows the US autoworker as the most productive in the world. And every bit of data available shows that the Big Three are failing because of their bloated middle and upper management levels. The problem with those companies lies square in the middle of bad management practices.

And they bitch about the "legacy costs" of the fairly negotiated benefits. The real reason that they are struggling to keep up, again, lies in greed and mismanagement. Anyone remember the pension raid era of the late 80's and early 90's? Of course not, because no one wants to talk of this. This was a time when unions fought, and lost the fight in the right wing Reagan courts, to not allow corporations to raid the excess earnings in the pension plans. We said then that these funds would be needed to maintain benefits in slow times. But the courts allowed them to strip out the earnings of these negotiated benefits. I still don't understand that one. My money earns better than projected and you get to take the earnings. The offshoot of that some 15 years later is you have funds that are underfunded (another gift of the Reagan administration, being allowed to underfund pensions)and folks talking about cutting the fairly bargained benefits that workers planned on for retirement.

Kipp/Dickey ...... just admit that you are over your head in this discussion.

Mick