This Ain't Your Daddy’s Oldsmobile

Or his job at Oldsmobile, or GM, or Ford, or Chrysler

Now that the new year has arrived, all of the American auto makers are issuing their sales figures for 2006. GM down 9.6%, Ford down 8% and Chrysler down 7%. The American automotive worker down ¼ million jobs. Toyota which posted record-breaking US sales of more than 2.5 million vehicles in 2006.

Thomas Hartley of Business First of Buffalo wrote: “Not since the end of World War II, when the nation's military economy reverted to a consumer economy, have automakers and suppliers faced an economic tsunami like what hit them in 2006 and 2007.”

Mr. Hartley also writes that at Delphi Thermal Systems Inc. “more than 1,330 - or 87 percent - of the 1,900 eligible production workers… took buyouts and incentives to leave by Jan. 1, 2007. Some of the loss was offset by 900 lesser-paid workers who were hired after June. But most of the new hires receive $14 an hour - half what the workers who left or are leaving were paid.”

In an AFP article on Breitbart.com: “The world's biggest auto show revs into gear this weekend with US carmakers facing a tough job to protect their home turf from determined Asian challengers.”They further write: “Japanese makers Toyota, Honda and Nissan, and South Korea's Hyundai, are all planning major introductions of new models as they seek to whittle away further at the dwindling market edge enjoyed by the Detroit giants.”