GM's recent layoffs at their Oshawa Ontario light truck production facility– the plant that builds the automaker's once-upon-a-time Silverado savior– will idle 1100 workers. While we're sure the Canadian Auto Workers union's most excellent contract will keep those paychecks coming for quite some time, you've got to feel for their future. Meanwhile, over at GM Planworks, the future's so bright they're wearing shades. And playing videogames. Crain's Detroit Business reports that the company that handles all of GM's $2.9b media spend piles up the perks. "Employees who reach 10 years of service can take a four-week sabbatical at half-pay. There are 20 paid holidays on the schedule, shorter Friday workdays in the summer and three- and four-day workweeks…. The company also has digital conference rooms with the newest technology, such as TiVo, DVRs, editing equipment and video game consoles." Howzzat? “Having the newest technology has always been a priority,” said Mary Carpenter, GM Planworks' president of strategy and operations. Hey, where's MY iPhone?
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Heckuva job, Mary.
I’ve got a hip, fresh, exciting idea for the braintrust at GM — why don’t they just take stacks of $100 bills and burn them? At least they’d generate some useful heat.
Hmmm, an elightened employer trying to recruit and retain bright, creative, skilled staff. Explain to me why that’s a problem?
The problem is that GM is circling the drain, and it is 100% due to the fact that they have produced an inferior product. For decades.
Retaining the “best and brightest” PR or media minds will do little to stem the their market share loss.
Brand loyalists and fleet owners will stay with GM until they die, with little marketing genius required. The rest of the country isn’t going to believe any marketing hype unless the product drastically improves.
If I were in charge, i’d probably save the nintendo wii’s for the engineering group….
$2,900,000,000 for marketing.
Hard to fathom the beancounters believing the ROI exists for that spend in marketing.
Pity they don’t know spending for improved product quality yields a higher return. All they have to do is ask the biggest (Toyota) and most profitable (Porsche) what makes a great investment.
Hmmm, an elightened employer trying to recruit and retain bright, creative, skilled staff. Explain to me why that’s a problem?
That’s easy. Why do they need to prime the pump for such work in the first place. Are marketing types hard to find? If sales are an indicator of success, then marketing gets to share in the blame the same as technical design and the rest of them.
Job description= Put lipstick on a pig
2.9$b = priceless
If you believe that Toyota is overhyped in every way, then THOSE marketers are the smartest and brightest, and probably do deserve their video games.
Saying that GM’s marketers need to be retained is like saying that their management is so good and hard to replace that they deserve their salaries and golden parachutes.
Funny.. I read that article on Planworks yesterday as well..Arms-length ad firm on-site.
There was a hilarious piece in the Star by Buzz Hargrove the same day blaming closed foreign markets and a lack of gov’t incentives for the loss of 23,000 Ontario manufacturing jobs.
Link to that article is here:
http://www.thestar.com/article/252549
Extract:
In the last five years, one in five manufacturing jobs has disappeared from Durham Region. That represents hundreds of million of dollars in lost wages, and is a crushing blow to the local economy. If we include the truck plant layoffs and the job losses that will follow GM’s consolidation of its two car plants in the coming year, that brings the manufacturing job loss toll in Oshawa alone to more than 10,000.
Many analysts blamed the GM layoff on the struggling housing market, the high price of fuel, and the overall decline in pickup sales. Unfortunately, this only tells half the story.
In total, the Canadian auto assembly and parts sectors have lost a combined 23,000 jobs in the last few years – most of them long before anyone heard of the U.S. housing crisis. And remember: Every direct job in a major auto plant like Oshawa supports 7.5 jobs in total in the national economy – everything from parts makers to doughnut shops.
“The root cause of Canada’s auto woes runs much deeper than shorter-run economic swings south of the border. Rather, the industry faces deeper, structural challenges, largely due to irresponsible government neglect of a sector that is so important to our economic and social well-being…”
It’s funny, plants run by Toyota and Honda still seem to be doing well…
What I would like to know is… Does GM treat its engineers as good as its PR people? How about its beancounters?
As far as PR people getting better “perks” than plant workers… Deal with it. These people actually went to college, they should have something to show for it.
Just a couple of facts here folks As of today there is NO! production people layed off in Oshawa, nobody as in zilch. Yes maybe as many as 2 or 3 thousand might be layed off some time?
Dec ? maybe Jan 08?
Sales up 5 % or so? Maybe the media people are earning thier keep.
Mikey
Plant consolidation at Osgoode = guaranteed layoffs.
The truck plant is cutting a shift in Jan 08 unless the US housing market turns around.
Kurt B Yeah you are correct,but 4 months is a long time in this buisness,The buying public is very fickle and unpredictable.Remember it was 2yrs since we heard the first doom and gloom, so far {touch wood}we are still rockin and rollin.
What, pray tell, does Mary do? Seems to me that defective strategy and operations are GM’s two main problems.