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6,000 Nissan Jobs being cut in Tennessee


highriser

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In this thread we are discussing Nissan as that is who has plants and Headquarters in TN. I believe in your text you were aiming some salvos at TN being a "Right to Work State" and that being such cause a "lack of business regulation" therefore putting your own personal spin on situation. Ask the folks in Michigan how the labor laws are working for them.

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I think they would answer the laws are working well for them.

GM & Ford are suffering greatly because they made the wrong decisions in the automobile market. Both companies have said as such and are doing what they can to change their product line. Neither are saying their misfortunes are due to their unions. In fact, they are laying off a great deal of their non-union workforce. However if you want to present some evidence beyond an opinion then of course I will be willing to look at it.

I am not putting any spin on anything. If you think what I was wrong then lets address it rather than just call it spin. I suspect however you don't wish to do this simply because you know there are not any facts to prove otherwise.

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GM and Ford are suffering greatly because of the legacy pensions they are paying to a retired workforce that outnumbers their current workforce. These penions are costing the companies billions of dollars each year, in fact the medical costs alone add over $1700 to every new Ford product. Over 100,000 jobs have been lost in the past few years and 70% of those were Union jobs. The "cost of doing business" in these Union States is a major factor in the decline of the American Motor Companies. This has been written about over and over again and better labor conditions are the primary reason many auto manufactureres are moving to the SunBelt and "right to work" states. I am not saying that there should not be guidlines but the greed of the Unions over the past several decades is as much or more to blame for the auto industry issues in Detroit as anything else.
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Unions had their place early in the 20th century considering the abysmal working conditions in factories and the use of child labor. Unions helped force corporations to pay OT, give work-time off, set a 40-hour work week, etc. Problem is, unions eventually became more greedy than the corporations and began demanding benefits that were above and beyond what they should have been asking for. Corporations began closing down factories and going places without the strict rules of a union.

In today's America, there are corporations that figured out how to provide benefits and competitive salaries without unionizing. They see the benefits of coming to a "right to work" state and they know that they have to provide certain benefits to their employee or the workers will unionize. That's what will happen at Nissan if they're not careful, but we have to give them a bit of a break. They've given decent jobs to over 6000 Tennesseans and sometimes that number will have to fluctuate due to the economy. In any job I've ever had, if the boss didn't need me anymore, he could lay me off. I've always understood that that is the way life is. At least at Nissan, they're offering voluntary $100k buyouts, which is way better than the alternative.

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Perhaps, Monsoon, you should read this:

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...6/1003/business

Here's a quote:

Union status is a plus

One big plus in Tennessee's recruiting efforts among auto makers and suppliers is that it is a right-to-work state, Alexander said. That means workers do not have to be union members to hold a particular job, as is the case in Michigan, where the United Auto Workers union historically held sway over the auto industry."

... and regarding the incentives -

"The choice by Volkswagen does not come without reciprocal help, in the form of incentives from the state and local levels. Those incentives need to be fully revealed to Tennesseans, although Volkswagen officials say the incentives were not the driving force behind the move, and state officials are either being coy or genuinely don't know the full package yet to give details on incentives."

from - http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar.../807200365/1008

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One thing that can't be overlooked about Nissan is its impact on peripheral jobs that have come along since Nissan opened up in the early 80's.

First, who knows if we would have the Saturn plant or the upcoming VW plant? We probably wouldn't have the Nissan parts plant in Decherd. Smyrna would probably be a much smaller town than the 38,000 it has now...and the same goes for Springhill. Many of those homes wouldn't have been built in those towns, thus many construction jobs would not be needed. I would imagine the new Stonecrest Hospital in Smyrna wouldn't be needed, plus the 100 new shops along Sam Ridley Parkway that have opened in the last 5 years or so.

How about the Nissan North American headquarters that just moved to Cool Springs from California? I doubt they would have ever even thought about Tennessee if it hadn't been for our pro-business example over the past 20-30 years...or the fact that the Nissan Manufacturing plants have done so well in Tennessee and have had very little in the way of employee problems. This HQ coming here is already blowing up Cool Springs with more businesses moving in and more homes being built, with an increase in property value. This HQ relocation will bring 1000's of jobs here beyond what's in the bldg overlooking I-65.

Nissan in Smyrna and Decherd buying out 1200 of over 6000 employees is not the whole picture.

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I'll ask again, corrected: an example of absence of right to work laws keeping a plant open indefinitely despite said plant losing money big time would be _____? Please fill in the blank. You offered a "statement of facts". I'm looking for a fact here, because you had stated:

"Normal" logic applied to your words would derive the following meaning: industrial concerns owning a money-losing operation would close that operation only if there were right-to-work laws in force in the locale of said operation. So please give us an example for the blank in my first sentence.

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