[Jason]

10 days ago we reported on the closing of BMW's South African Rosslyn Plant due to a strike by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA. We're happy to report that the strike is now over and the plant has resumed 3-series production.

The union has negotiated a 3-year wage increase and its members will receive 10% wage increase this year and 9% increase in the next two years. The strike resulted in the lost production of approximately 17,000 vehicles among the BMW, VW, Toyota, Ford, GM, Nissan, and Daimler manufacturing plants.

Source: Autonews

[JoeyBananaz18]

damn, id be pissed if i was waiting for my car lol. its agonizing enough to wait the 6-8 weeks- then to find out there's a strike going on at your plant? man, thats heartbreaking.

EDIT: fortunately it was only for 10 days. my father works for MTA. whenever there were talks about strikes, everyone got ready.

[graves4r6]

BMW needs to be more generous to their employee. They charge their customer too much already .

[NewYearsBoy]

Originally Posted by graves4r6

BMW needs to be more generous to their employee. They charge their customer too much already .

That would mean the price of cars would go up more....

[JoeyBananaz18]

Originally Posted by graves4r6

BMW needs to be more generous to their employee. They charge their customer too much already .

it doesnt really sound like BMW's problem. it was more a of a national thing.

[Mu Mu]

Originally Posted by JoeyBananaz18

it doesnt really sound like BMW's problem. it was more a of a national thing.

U sir are correct!

[Oulixes]

Originally Posted by graves4r6

BMW needs to be more generous to their employee. They charge their customer too much already.

The employees need to be be more reasonable to their employers. Many parts of the world may welcome a car assembly plant and may be willing to work without strikes.

[bavarian19]

[Imola.ZHP]

Union's ruin good gigs...

[Evan Fitz]

It's illegal to do what you're doing in CA. I hope you find another source of entertainment that doesn't involve just killing stuff for the hell of it.

[Hu99]

Originally Posted by graves4r6

BMW needs to be more generous to their employee. They charge their customer too much already .

The Rosslyn plant operates independently of BMW GmBH.

[manicm]

Originally Posted by Hu99

The Rosslyn plant operates independently of BMW GmBH.

Not quite, BMW GmBH owns it whole - it was bought out in the 70s.

[scheherazade]

Originally Posted by Imola.ZHP

Union's ruin good gigs...

They're also why we have weekends, and 8 hour work days.
Without them, you'd be working 16/7 with a day off for xmas.
Odds are, you would not be part of the lucky few.

Originally Posted by Oulixes

The employees need to be be more reasonable to their employers. Many parts of the world may welcome a car assembly plant and may be willing to work without strikes.

Give someone a hand, and they take an arm.

Inevitably you'll have people working for a pittance, in company owned lodging, buying company owned goods - as history has shown, when there is no power [politic] in labor.

Originally Posted by maxnix

And exactly what makes you think the increased labor costs will not be passed on to the customer?

Not sure what BMW's labor costs are.

During the bailouts, it was shown that Ford/GM labor (all benefits included) is about 10% of the car manufacturing cost.
Tacking on profit, you would still pay over 90% of the price of a car if labor was free.
And you'd pay under 110% in order to double every worker's wages and benefits.









Labor keeps wages in check.
When wages get too low, people's ability to buy ultimately suffers.

Car makers were initially the first powers to support labor, precisely because they needed a way to sell cars to people that only work and sleep and have 0 time and 0 money for life.

Local optima is a big problem for business, and it has to be countered by some force (eg. labor or regulation) to prevent mis-optimization.

It's like commodities. Buy gobs of something, and the price will inevitably go up (oil, houses).
Then you can sell it off for serious profit.
While it's good for you, it's bad for everyone else.

Same thing with wages and car manufacturing.
You can cut, cut, cut, cut some more, and it's great for your profits, but bad for your employee's buying power.
But in the end, you're hurting all other business' ability to sell.
Which hurts their profits, and their wages, and their employee's abilities to in turn buy more products (a chain of effects)
Which inevitably comes around and bites people in the arse when less people can afford to buy their cars.

The local optima is to cut wages, and improve your local profits. (helpful at first, painful in the long run)

The global optima is to raise wages (improve money velocity), and way way down the line improve your volume. (painful at first, helpful in the long run)

Labor and regulation are the counter forces to business' ability to simply not pay fair wages.
So long as they are balanced, the net effect is that the economic environment floats between short and long term optima.

Eliminate or severely weaken either side, and things go bad.
You either can't make a profit (labor too costly), or you lose demand (labor is underpaid).

Point is, labor and regulation exist for a very good reason.
As fun as it is to complain at them, they are in place after many years of growing pains, suffering, and learning that came out of industrialization.




TLDR summary :
You want to pay low wages to improve local profits
You want everyone else to pay high wages so you have lots of customers
Business vs Labor struggle & regulation keep the balance reasonable.

-scheherazade