Message: 8
Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:11:14 -0400
From: Frank Swygert<farna@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To:amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [AMC-list] Kenosha's been cheated: AMC factory shut down
by Mopar
Message-ID:<501E7F02.5080702@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Ah, but (my best Paul Harvey impression... which isn't good...) you don't know the rest of the story!
Just before Chrysler first took over the Kenosha AMC plant they promised the city/state/workers that they'd "keep it open as long as they could". Then they closed it about a year later. The problem was Chrysler didn't realize how much it cost them to keep Kenosha open. Part of AMCs problem in the 80s was that Kenosha was more expensive to run than other US car plants for two reasons -- 1) age of the infrastructure, needed more maintenance; and 2) the union contract paid Kenosha workers somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-40 cents an hour more than any other US car plant (I forget the exact number). THAT was the biggie. 20 cents doesn't sound like much until you add it up. $1.60 a day, $8.00 a week, $32 a month -- x 4,500+ workers is over $144,000 a month, x 12 = $1,728,000 -- just under $2 million. That doesn't include what the workers cost the company, and that's assuming the premium was only $0.20 an hour.
IIRC Chrysler asked the union to accept the same contract as other Chrysler plants in order to make it feasible to keep the plant open longer, and the union refused. So Chrysler had to close the old plant.
And now you know "the rest of the story"!!
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