Big shakeup at holden

[johnydep]

Originally Posted by dddd

I must admit I find the recent comments over the last few months (on the subject of jobs going overseas ) extremely amusing.

About the only advantage Australian manufacturing had over other countries was cheap power

Rudd brings in the renewable energy policy whereby we must have a certain percentage of our power supplied by renewable energy and that this percentage must increase each year. Most people seam to think, great green energy sounds lovely,however what he didn't tell the people was that green power is approximately ten times more expensive to produce (per kilowatt hour) than coal fired power stations. Has anyone noticed that their power bill's have gone through the roof lately , do you believe that general industry is immune from these same increases

Next he brings in a new set of work place reforms that makes it considerably harder for our companies to compete, yes I realise we get better pay and conditions because of these new work place agreements but is any of us stupid enough to believe their will be no repercussion from all this
I believe Toyota Australia just recently awarded their employees a 13 percent increase (the unions should be proud) then started laying people off.

Then off course we cant forget the biggest change of all the carbon tax
The people that run large companies aren't stupid they know what the carbon tax is going to do to manufacturing cost in Australia, we are just starting to witness the start of a considerable shift in manufacturing off shore.

Of course the unions and the government (one and the same) will blame this loss of jobs entirely on the strong Australian dollar,which naturally isn't helping at this present moment in time, but if you take a look at the history of the Aussie dollar and in particular look at the building US economy its fair to say this strong Aussie dollar wont be here for long, I cant imagine anyone going to the trouble of shifting there company off shore just because of this alone as it would be terribly short term thinking

In the mean time people and the unions will be disgusted with the greedy fat cat companies shifting off shore simply to make more money and blame everyone but them selves

There is an old saying that goes "people get the government they deserve" I never really understood what it meant until the last 2-3 years

Bring back the Hawk ,Keating and Howard years at least they created situations that helped our industry survive as apposed to making things all but impossible for industry to survive ( are well at least the greens will be happy)

Yep, have to agree. Governments need to have long term plans, and it needs to be coherent.

[johnydep]

Originally Posted by Brazen

I think the government should come out with an actual plan with results instead of money being used here and there.

Come out and say we want 40% of cars sold to be locally made or we want to be producing 400,000 cars a year. If they dont have a goal then nothing will ever be achieved.

Once a plan is in place, talk to the car makers. Ask them what do they need to increase production to the levels the industry needs. Do they need to be making a Cruze SUV? Does Ford need to locally produce Ranger? Does Toyota need to make a Rav4 here. What about VW, do they want a Asian Pacific manufactruing hub? Does a temporary "currency alignment" tariff need to be introduced to offset the devastating effects of a high currency?

Continually subsidising cars which do not increase production for the industry is not thinking long term. Should the government be throwing money at Falcon when its only selling 18,000 a year? likewise with Commodore. The industry needs volume to be competitive.

Well said. All that's required is a plan.

[Joe5619]

Originally Posted by johnydep

It was common knowledge in the automotive media. The diesel Territory was dropped due to funding, and the Turbo I6 put in to cover the hole.

That wasn't the reason!!! You might want to look at the CEO at the time & his thought about Diesel & you'll have the answer.. But we are getting off topic

[2011G6E]

Originally Posted by Brazen

I think the government should come out with an actual plan with results instead of money being used here and there.

Come out and say we want 40% of cars sold to be locally made or we want to be producing 400,000 cars a year. If they dont have a goal then nothing will ever be achieved.

Dangerous plan...how exactly do you force people to stop buying foreign cars? Also, more importantly, if you somehow manage to do this, you are telling the makers that they've got a captive audience who is going to buy the cars like it or not...why try harder? Why include lots of extra features as standard? You wouldn't bother...it'd be the bad old days of protectionism all over again, when Australian cars were nice solid things, but had bugger all features compared to even basic foreign stuff, because makers here knew damn well that they didn't have to try harder as people were forced by high tariffs to buy Australian stuff, no matter how bad it was.

[Brazen]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Dangerous plan...how exactly do you force people to stop buying foreign cars? Also, more importantly, if you somehow manage to do this, you are telling the makers that they've got a captive audience who is going to buy the cars like it or not...why try harder? Why include lots of extra features as standard? You wouldn't bother...it'd be the bad old days of protectionism all over again, when Australian cars were nice solid things, but had bugger all features compared to even basic foreign stuff, because makers here knew damn well that they didn't have to try harder as people were forced by high tariffs to buy Australian stuff, no matter how bad it was.

I dont know how you are saying that I think the vehicles will be inferior.

It's no different to Thailand wanting to be the biggest producer of 1 tonne utes in the world, or Germany wanting to be the biggest exporter of luxury vehicles in the world. The governments of these nations put in policies and subsidies in place to achieve these goals.

The Government should have a plan to encourage more production of vehicles, vehicles people want to buy.

Giving money for 18,000 Falcons a year does not help component makers and other ancillary industries. All it does it subsidise Ford's local sales.

Instead if you gave money to Ford to help build Ranger, Kuga or Focus. You are encouraging more production of vehicles in this country which will have a ripple-on effect to the rest of the industry.

[EgoFG]

I think we should not give the money to the manufacturers.
Rather have the spending on vehicles in Government departments tied to Australian content.
for example reduce all budgets by 10%, and give that 10% only for expenditure on Australian produced items.

[Bossxr8]

Originally Posted by johnydep

It was common knowledge in the automotive media. The diesel Territory was dropped due to funding, and the Turbo I6 put in to cover the hole.

No it wasn't. The diesel was scheduled to be released in 2008, significant development was done before Tom Gorman took over as CEO, and canned the project, because his opinion was no one wants diesels.

He was even asked by a journo when a diesel Territory is due, and his reply was "why the hell would anyone want a diesel".

He was just a dumb american with no understanding of the Australian market, and its no wonder the company went downhill as soon as he took over from Polites, who was a genius.

He obviously wasn't held in much regard by Detroit either because he ended up quitting and went to work for Chep?, because they wouldn't give him a promotion, they just left him to rot here.

[Bossxr8]

Originally Posted by jpd80

January sales of Caprice PPV....92.

Yet the Holden CEO is still claiming they will sell thousands of them in the US this year.

Selling at the current rate of 150 a month at best, only adds up to 1800, and they are already off to a poor start.

Someone needs to tell him that to sell thousands implies more than 2000.

I would put money on it that it ends up selling less than that, as the high aussie dollar is putting the screws on an already massively overpriced PPV. No wonder they aren't buying them. Their direct competitors are thousands of dollars less, and in terms of Fords interceptor the equipment can be swapped straight from Crown Vic to fit, not needing a price increasing fitout like the Holden PPV's do.

Caprice has gone under 100 sales for the month too, how much longer before that gets killed.

[burnz]

Originally Posted by Polyal

Well true..but...hopefuly someone picks upt he stark contrast between the two. I mean in the last couple of years Ford have invested in TDi, LPI and EB4 to attack the fuel consumption issue....what have GMH done?

sidi, turbo iti4, Tdi, Lpi..very similar if you ask me

[johnydep]

Originally Posted by Bossxr8

No it wasn't. The diesel was scheduled to be released in 2008, significant development was done before Tom Gorman took over as CEO, and canned the project, because his opinion was no one wants diesels.

He was even asked by a journo when a diesel Territory is due, and his reply was "why the hell would anyone want a diesel".

He was just a dumb american with no understanding of the Australian market, and its no wonder the company went downhill as soon as he took over from Polites, who was a genius.

He obviously wasn't held in much regard by Detroit either because he ended up quitting and went to work for Chep?, because they wouldn't give him a promotion, they just left him to rot here.

I remember those days, the quotes are somewhere in the Territory section.

Have you heard of the saying 'fall guy'? There has been more info come out recently about the Territory diesel saga, and in the end it came down to $$.

Ford did not want to spend the money to set up a diesel Territory, the next best cheapest option was the I6 turbo.

At the end of the day, no matter who made the decisions, it was/is Ford Management that stuffed up. If they were savvy, smart, responsible, decisive, and convincing, they could have sold the ideas to the boss or bosses. It didn't happen and as usual it's the shift workers that get the cut.

I wish people would stop making excuses for these car manufacturers and Governments. It's very simple, as described by Brazen and dddd.

[jpd80]

Originally Posted by johnydep

I remember those days, the quotes are somewhere in the Territory section.

Have you heard of the saying 'fall guy'? There has been more info come out recently about the Territory diesel saga, and in the end it came down to $$.

Ford did not want to spend the money to set up a diesel Territory, the next best cheapest option was the I6 turbo.

At the end of the day, no matter who made the decisions, it was/is Ford Management that stuffed up. If they were savvy, smart, responsible, decisive, and convincing, they could have sold the ideas to the boss or bosses. It didn't happen and as usual it's the shift workers that get the cut.

I wish people would stop making excuses for these car manufacturers and Governments. It's very simple, as described by Brazen and dddd.

Ford were very slow to pick up the switch to diesel, still are because their US masters are so anti-diesel.

[Bossxr8]

Originally Posted by johnydep

I remember those days, the quotes are somewhere in the Territory section.

Have you heard of the saying 'fall guy'? There has been more info come out recently about the Territory diesel saga, and in the end it came down to $$.

Ford did not want to spend the money to set up a diesel Territory, the next best cheapest option was the I6 turbo.

At the end of the day, no matter who made the decisions, it was/is Ford Management that stuffed up. If they were savvy, smart, responsible, decisive, and convincing, they could have sold the ideas to the boss or bosses. It didn't happen and as usual it's the shift workers that get the cut.

I wish people would stop making excuses for these car manufacturers and Governments. It's very simple, as described by Brazen and dddd.

Think what you want, I know what happened internally. Turbo diesel and turbo petrol were both choosen for production, petrol wasn't choosen when diesel was dropped, it was already in production by then. Diesel wasn't due till 2008, petrol had been in production for a few years by then I think, 2006?

There were also issues with it potentially costing I6 production numbers.

[Joe5619]

Originally Posted by johnydep

I wish people would stop making excuses for these car manufacturers and Governments. It's very simple, as described by Brazen and dddd.

For the love of god you have no idea!!! It is very easy to play with millions of dollars & thousands of people jobs isn't it!! If you think it is that easy, what company are you the CEO of??

Also, looking back at the past & seeing all the wrong moves is easy compared to trying to predict the future!! This is all just easy stuff to you!!

[mik]

just my opinion
the cost of living and the cost of business go together imo,
i do believe that half our problems today where in fact policy`s implemented decades ago, and the machine that is government, has no intentions of changing anything, they have the information, they have the power , they just keep the machine going by putting a bit of oil on the squeeking part(giving out some handouts.....cough.... incentives) to quell any unrest in the population, are things going to get better before they get worse.....not likely imo, i don`t know where that leaves our car industry,
i remember when we had a pretty stout textile industry, at one stage i worked for 5 years in a huge factory that nearly took up two blocks(it`s now a car park), yes i know this is a car thread but you will see where i am going,
have a look at this little snippet and see if you notice any similarities to the car industry with regard to tariffs and the end outcome.

(re wikipedia)
Until trade liberalisation in the mid 1980s, Australia had a large textile industry[citation needed]. This decline continued through the first decade of the 21st century[5]. Since the 1980s, tariffs have steadily been reduced; in early 2010, the tariffs were reduced from 17.5 percent to 10percent on clothing, and 7.5–10% to 5% for footwear and other textiles.[7] As of 2010, most manufacturing, even by Australian companies, is performed in China.

[JG34JA]

Originally Posted by dddd

I must admit I find the recent comments over the last few months (on the subject of jobs going overseas ) extremely amusing.

About the only advantage Australian manufacturing had over other countries was cheap power

Rudd brings in the renewable energy policy whereby we must have a certain percentage of our power supplied by renewable energy and that this percentage must increase each year. Most people seam to think, great green energy sounds lovely,however what he didn't tell the people was that green power is approximately ten times more expensive to produce (per kilowatt hour) than coal fired power stations. Has anyone noticed that their power bill's have gone through the roof lately , do you believe that general industry is immune from these same increases

Next he brings in a new set of work place reforms that makes it considerably harder for our companies to compete, yes I realise we get better pay and conditions because of these new work place agreements but is any of us stupid enough to believe their will be no repercussion from all this
I believe Toyota Australia just recently awarded their employees a 13 percent increase (the unions should be proud) then started laying people off.

Then off course we cant forget the biggest change of all the carbon tax
The people that run large companies aren't stupid they know what the carbon tax is going to do to manufacturing cost in Australia, we are just starting to witness the start of a considerable shift in manufacturing off shore.

Of course the unions and the government (one and the same) will blame this loss of jobs entirely on the strong Australian dollar,which naturally isn't helping at this present moment in time, but if you take a look at the history of the Aussie dollar and in particular look at the building US economy its fair to say this strong Aussie dollar wont be here for long, I cant imagine anyone going to the trouble of shifting there company off shore just because of this alone as it would be terribly short term thinking

In the mean time people and the unions will be disgusted with the greedy fat cat companies shifting off shore simply to make more money and blame everyone but them selves

There is an old saying that goes "people get the government they deserve" I never really understood what it meant until the last 2-3 years

Bring back the Hawk ,Keating and Howard years at least they created situations that helped our industry survive as apposed to making things all but impossible for industry to survive ( are well at least the greens will be happy)

Top post. Doesn't matter which party made these policies, it's the results of the policies we are seeing, and the results are eradication of industry and peoples' livelihoods. I love to produce physical products for market and let's just say I get a lot of satisfaction these days doing it as a hobby.

[DanielXR8]

Two simple rules will fix Australian industry in my opinion. A fixed percentage of your earnings from within Australia must be reinvested into Australia. Factories, wages whatever you like, but it must be demonstrably spent in Australia.

Second the highest earner in the business and everyone below must not earn more then a multiplier of 12 of what the lowest employee earns. Your the boss and think you deserve a payrise? Get ready to give the cleaner and everyone above them one too. Put some equity back into the pay structures of companies.

Finally if these rules are to restrictive etc, move your company out, because there will always be another company happy to go along with this to service a population of over 20 million.

Sure we might have a little less choice in some areas and pay more for some things, but we will all have a decent wage and a future for our kids. I'll trade some cheap crap from China for that.

[Nikked]

Originally Posted by DanielXR8

Two simple rules will fix Australian industry in my opinion. A fixed percentage of your earnings from within Australia must be reinvested into Australia. Factories, wages whatever you like, but it must be demonstrably spent in Australia.

Communisim

[mik]

being a patriot

__________________

[galaxy xr8]

Originally Posted by dddd

I must admit I find the recent comments over the last few months (on the subject of jobs going overseas ) extremely amusing.

About the only advantage Australian manufacturing had over other countries was cheap power

Rudd brings in the renewable energy policy whereby we must have a certain percentage of our power supplied by renewable energy and that this percentage must increase each year. Most people seam to think, great green energy sounds lovely,however what he didn't tell the people was that green power is approximately ten times more expensive to produce (per kilowatt hour) than coal fired power stations. Has anyone noticed that their power bill's have gone through the roof lately , do you believe that general industry is immune from these same increases

Next he brings in a new set of work place reforms that makes it considerably harder for our companies to compete, yes I realise we get better pay and conditions because of these new work place agreements but is any of us stupid enough to believe their will be no repercussion from all this
I believe Toyota Australia just recently awarded their employees a 13 percent increase (the unions should be proud) then started laying people off.

Then off course we cant forget the biggest change of all the carbon tax
The people that run large companies aren't stupid they know what the carbon tax is going to do to manufacturing cost in Australia, we are just starting to witness the start of a considerable shift in manufacturing off shore.

Of course the unions and the government (one and the same) will blame this loss of jobs entirely on the strong Australian dollar,which naturally isn't helping at this present moment in time, but if you take a look at the history of the Aussie dollar and in particular look at the building US economy its fair to say this strong Aussie dollar wont be here for long, I cant imagine anyone going to the trouble of shifting there company off shore just because of this alone as it would be terribly short term thinking

In the mean time people and the unions will be disgusted with the greedy fat cat companies shifting off shore simply to make more money and blame everyone but them selves

There is an old saying that goes "people get the government they deserve" I never really understood what it meant until the last 2-3 years

Bring back the Hawk ,Keating and Howard years at least they created situations that helped our industry survive as apposed to making things all but impossible for industry to survive ( are well at least the greens will be happy)

[BENT_8]

Originally Posted by bobthebilda

The car advice figures sounded way too high. The latest NEWS release states they are currently running at 400 per day.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/s...-1226259558573

If they were to cut it to meet current sales (3000 commodores, 600 utes, 2500 cruzes, 650 local and export caprices and 350 NZ exports) = 7200 in a 21 day month = 342 per day (almost pre GFC one shift production rates). With the current stock they must have, and no suggestion that sales will spark anytime soon, its a safe bet the shifts will resort back to working alternating weeks (either that or the cull will be greater than casuals and temps)

They are currently pumping out 440 per day combined.
The new target will be 400, so only dropping 40 cars per day.

The layoffs will only affect the general assembly areas, there will still be arvo shift in other areas.

Holden have been doing this for years, helps them cull the unwanted...

[.FoMoCo.]

Green power will come down in price, just like any new technology. We simply have to move away from coal dependance. The power companies jacked their prices up in anticipation of a carbon price, not because it literally cost them more to produce.

[mik]

Originally Posted by .FoMoCo.

Green power will come down in price, just like any new technology. We simply have to move away from coal dependance. The power companies jacked their prices up in anticipation of a carbon price, not because it literally cost them more to produce.

i wish i could be as optimistic as you on that.

[dddd]

Originally Posted by .FoMoCo.

Green power will come down in price, just like any new technology. We simply have to move away from coal dependance. The power companies jacked their prices up in anticipation of a carbon price, not because it literally cost them more to produce.

"Green power will come down in price"

I have no doubt that it will eventually come down in price in the decades ahead, but at this point in time it's nowhere near being "commercially viable". But it is very trendy and definitely a vote getter and that's the important thing (just for gods sake don't let the people find out how much its costing them) so I suppose it comes down to whats important to the government.
I personally cant see many decisions this government has made that have been for the good of the economy and to preserve the living standards of the people, they seem to base all their decisions for the good of their short term political survival

"We simply have to move away from coal dependance"

Why ?? we have many hundreds of years worth of proven coal supplies, with technology increasing at the pace it does I have no doubt that a "commercially viable" alternate will be available long before that point in time

" not because it literally cost them more to produce."

Green energy is approximately ten times more costly to produce (per kw/h) than coal , there is no getting around that, its just not commercially viable at this point in time, but that doesn't seam to mean much to this government
eg the fibre optic broadband, every report on it says its just not commercially viable (there's that phrase again) in a country as big as Australia with its relatively small population spread over such vast area's,in other words there will not be enough customers to pay of the hugh cost of it, it will be a burden on tax payers for many many years to come.
But that doesn't matter, just so long as it gets them votes