Making Sense on Detroit

by Will Wilkinson on November 17, 2008

Jim Manzi tells the story in numbers in response to Cohn’s story from the GM public relations department: 

A dollar invested in a diversified basket of S&P 500 stocks twenty years ago would today have a face value of about $3, while a dollar invested at the same time in GM shares would today have a face value of about 7 cents (though to get true comparability you would have to calculate Total Shareholder Return, including dividends). There is no five year period that I could find in the last thirty years for which GM’s stock price outperformed the S&P 500. The market capitalization of GM is now under $2 billion, which is substantially less than that of such icons of our economy as Cognizant Technology Solutions, DaVita, Inc., Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, and the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. GM is in danger of becoming a small-cap. Investors apparently don’t buy (literally) Cohn’s thesis.

In the face of all this evidence, Cohn wants us to believe that this time it’s different – that in spite of the forecast of the stock market, in spite of the judgment of consumers voting with their own money, and of in spite of the actual financial results, we can put tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money at risk based on the opinion of some academics and interested parties that really, things are about to turn around.

Here’s my colleague Dan Ikenson noting that there is in fact an effective and profitable U.S. auto industry, and that, as the steel industry shows, consolidation can be a very good thing,  

If GM fails - or even GM and Ford both fail - we are not facing the loss of the U.S. auto industry. There are plenty of profitable operations, particularly those operating outside of Michigan. In 2008, the Big Three accounts for roughly 55% of light vehicle production and 50% of sales. To speak of the U.S. automobile industry these days, one must include Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, BMW - and other foreign nameplate producers who manufacture vehicles in the U.S.

Those producers are the other half of the U.S. auto industry. They employ American workers, pay U.S. taxes, support other U.S. businesses, contribute to local charities, have genuine stakes in their local communities and face the same contracting demand for automobiles as does the Big Three. The difference is that these companies have a better track record of making products Americans want to consume and are not seeking federal assistance.

If taxpayers are forced to subsidize automobile producers, they should at least be able to subsidize the successful ones.

If one or two of the Big Three went into bankruptcy and liquidated, people would lose their jobs. But the sky would not fall. In fact, that outcome would ultimately improve prospects for the firms and workers that remain in the industry. That is precisely what happened with the U.S. steel industry, which responded to waning fortunes and dozens of bankruptcies earlier in the decade by finally allowing unproductive, inefficient mills to shut down.

In 2001, 12 firms accounted for 75% of U.S. hot-rolled steel production. In 2007, three firms accounted for more than 80% of hot-rolled steel production. The consolidation has afforded the steel industry an alternative to requesting bailouts in the face of declining demand.

Following the steel industry’s lead to an auto industry reckoning makes more sense - to the taxpayers, to the country, and ultimately to the auto industry - than another bailout.

Uiversity of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan notes the whole thing would be a massive upward transfer of wealth:

Workers at GM, Ford, and Chrysler are not among the poor by any definition: those workers’ salary and benefits total more than $70 per hour!! Yes, I typed that correctly.Very few American workers earn that much per hour.

GM, Ford, and Chrysler shareholders are not among the poor either: the poor own little if any stocks. So a GM bailout would benefit rich workers and rich shareholders. I guess the argument is that a GM bailout would trickle down to people who really are poor, or at least middle class.
… 

A rapid and decisive GM collapse would allow us to continue to hope that President-elect Obama represents genuine change: leading politicians of the Democratic party will no longer tax the average American to bail out the rich, regardless of whether those rich do business in Detroit or in New York City.

The issue isn’t whether unemployment will surge. It will.  Or whether recovery will occur. It will. The issue is whether a small portion of American workers will be able to maintain stupendous advantages over similar workers of similar skill and productivity. Louis Uchitelle in the NYT writes:

The elimination of many more workers, most of them union members and earning upwards of $20 an hour, would be devastating in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, where the American automakers and many of their suppliers are concentrated. In fact, many of those jobs may disappear even if the companies win government assistance.

But other employers would take their place over time. As the foreign companies stepped up production to replace what would be lost by an American company’s collapse, the transplants would add to their existing work force of 78,000, replacing many of the lost jobs, although at lower wages, with fewer benefits and at nonunion factories in other parts of the country.

And there’s the issue. This chart by University of Michigan, Flint economist Mark Perry sums it up:

Perry asks:

Should U.S. taxpayers really be providing billions of dollars to bailout companies (GM, Ford and Chrysler) that compensate their workers 52.5% more than the market (assuming Toyota wages and benefits are market), 54% more than management and professional workers, 132% more than the average manufacturing wage, and 157% more than the average compensation of all American workers? 

Maybe the country would be better off in the long run if we let the Big Three fail, and in the process break the UAW labor monopoly, and then let Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen take over the U.S. auto industry, and restore realistic, competitive, market wages to the industry. It might be the best long-run solution.

It really might be!

Viewing 25 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I think Manzi is great support for my previous argument - let's pull the policy rope sideways on this one. It doesn't have to be bailout or no bailout, you know. We can be smarter.

    I'm still interested in hearing why we can't have the government take advantage of the low market caps here and just loan UAW the cash to buy all 3. Force a merger - with foreign players active in the market there's no danger of monopoly - and make UAW bring in German management.

    UAW would probably reform itself quick, once workers and the union have ownership interest, and also they would probably adopt Obama's "green car" initiative pronto. Bankruptcy/acquisition seem slower than this plan - as we saw with Bernanke's whirligig, when the Feds & Congress want to, they can move fast.
    • ^
    • v
    Felix Salmon is on the right track: if Chapter 7 bankruptcy is too disruptive, and Chapter 11 bankruptcy is not clearly an option, then why not use a limited amount of government money to enable (possibly expedited) Chapter 11 proceedings? This gives GM the ability to renegotiate the exorbitant labor contracts (as illustrated in your graphs) that have been killing them for decades, forces the hard reorganization decisions that will be necessary if the business model is to be revived, and prevents severe economic dislocation at a time when markets are extremely sensitive to more bad news.

    It's worth repeating that unemployment insurance for tens of thousands of workers is expensive -- to the government!

    You may not accept that these particular circumstances are sufficient to overturn a general presumption in favor of letting failing businesses fail. But at least you should allow that the choice between "no help from the government" and "no-strings-attached help from the government" is a false choice. There is a whole continuum of possibilities here, and something in the middle is likely to be the best option.
    • ^
    • v
    Here again is a peculiar anti-domestic bias in the Ikenson quote you provide. 3 US companies on one half and 7 (plus "other") on the other half, but it is the more numerous companies whose products are described as more desirable. Isn't desirability determined by purchases? By that standard cars from these three automakers are exactly as desirable as the cars of all other competitors combined. And yet the glass is read as "half-empty", and an indication that they are less desirable.

    Certainly the big 3 have lost market share over the years, and have missed pretty big on a number of opportunities. But its worth mentioning I think that Toyota only really challenged GMs position as top of market share after they started selling the now derided full-size trucks and SUVs they had cribbed from undesirable automakers like GM and Ford.

    I'm really not a Detroit apologist (I did work for GM but have never owned one because they weren't desirable to *me*) but its really astonishing how heavily people are putting their thumb on the scale after the fact.

    Of course the labor situation is untenable. But can you tell me how a graph that shows that the Big 3 pay their workers almost twice as much as their competitors is an indication that the situation is hopelessly beyond repair and not an indication that restructuring of contracts backed by a government loan could completely transform them in a short period of time? It seems the latter is a far more rational deduction from that data. Rather than point out how hopeless the situation is, it puts a bright highlight on the most urgent need for change.

    I'd also argue that it is not the UAW worker that is the primary beneficiary, as they are very likely to lose pay in any new arrangement. The beneficiary is the $7.25/hr plastics plant worker who gets to keep her job. Is that sufficiently poor for you?

    Still, I don't know that a bailout is necessary. But overemphasizing how terrible the management is doesn't really serve anyone. Its bad enough without making things up.
    • ^
    • v
    Fun fact: Apple's CASH ON HAND is more than twice the total market cap of General Motors.

    http://rationalitate.blogspot.com/2008/10/relat...
    • ^
    • v
    ...sorry. By twice as much, I meant ten times as much.
    • ^
    • v
    ish, market share and/or sales aren't really good measures when some market participants, i.e. the domestic makers, are selling their products at a loss. If, for example, Toyota were selling half the cars on the market and making $1000 on each one, and GM were selling the other half and losing $1000 on each one, it would be perfectly reasonable to conclude that GM is producing undesirable goods.
    • ^
    • v
    It's spectacularly dishonest to include outstanding obligations to retirees' healthcare and pensions - as these numbers do - in the figures for the hourly compensation of their current workforce. Look at the data: the nefarious fatcat UAW members are averaging the median wage. Do you really think they're getting $45/hour in benefits? Really? 54% more than management and professional workers? I guess it's one way to manufacture baseless resentment, but it completely misidentifies the sunk cost.

    You've got over half a million retired autoworkers on healthcare and pension plans that aren't included in the denominator: liquidating the union isn't going to sever those old contracts, slashing present labor costs isn't going to save GM's bacon.
    • ^
    • v
    @buerman: You beat me to the punch!
    Also, if GM tanks, we'll all be paying for those retiree's pension and healthcare benefits anyway, through PBGC.
    • ^
    • v
    The PBGC doesn't cover retiree medical, nor is there a dedicated trust for future payments - coverage is dependent on the financial health and good faith of the guarantor.

    PBGC does cover pension benefits, but it also takes in premiums. The taxpayers won't pay a dime unless the PBGC goes bust, which, while possible, is a separate problem that should be dealt with explicitly.
    • ^
    • v
    "PBGC doesn't cover retiree medical"

    There is this little program called medicare...
    • ^
    • v
    What is happening here in Detroit right now isn't just 'creative destruction' as some would describe it. Some of what is going on is very uncreative destruction that the government (both national and Michigan State) has had a hand in.

    Recently the UAW agreed to 'two tier' wage systems, fewer job categories and is absorbing retiree health care costs. Also the car makers are (or were) about 2 years out (with current best practice product development cycles) from producing more fuel efficient vehicles. The problem is, both of these situations will not be effective until 2010 at the earliest.

    What hit the Big Three so hard when they were already weak was the perfect storm of the unexpectedly high gas prices this last summer and the fallout in the financial sector from the subprime mortgage fiasco. The mortgage fiasco is at least partially the government's fault, from legislation passed during the Clinton administration to encourage lenders to loan to more 'economically challenged' Americans to own a home, the pressure applied to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae for the same purpose, and the inflationary monetary policy that fueled the housing bubble. It is worth keeping in mind that the transplant companies (Honda, Toyota, BMW etc.) are all losing money in this climate as well, but they have more cash on hand to weather the storm.

    Then there is the issue of the union. I doubt the union would have had such influence, to create such an unsustainable situation, if it were not for US labor laws and the specific state laws of Michigan. It isn't a mystery that all of the profitable foreign transplant manufacturers have built all of their plants down south in 'Right to Work' states. Michigan just lost out recently to Tennessee to get a VW plant, which would have been a tremendous reversal of what has been happening for the last 30 years.

    I am not necessarily arguing that a bailout is necessary or even a good idea, but it will do us all well to remember that if one or more of the traditional American auto companies goes under, it was partially killed by bad government policy.
    • ^
    • v
    You captured the facts, Jim. THe labor contract negotiations in 2007 will within 5 years put the average rate at less than Toyota's average rate. The work rule changes allowing, for example, more team/ empowered employee and two tier wage rates are historical by UAW standards. It won't happen on Obama's watch, but the distortion of the labor market favoring unions keeps a cement jacket on any unionized firm.

    So.. they are making great strides in the major factor affecting their success-- the union straight jacket. They are winning many quality contests and their cars are inching up on satisfaction surveys. They have a larger array of high mileage cars coming on stream-- the Malibu is very good.

    They face a credit storm diminishing their marketplace place from 16m sales to 11 millioin sales. Not of their own doing... their competence is not on the line. The 200,000 or so employees of suppliers across the country are at risk and so the famous SYSTEMIC risk exists that TARP was designed to address.

    Most of the arguments beg the fact that we are trying to prevent a fiasco from descending into a disaster. $25B is a small amount to offer to insure that an auto bankruptcy isn't the tipping point to a depression.

    Further, they asked for a LOAN not a bailout. I know... it is a higher risk loan, but the term is important.

    Bill
    • ^
    • v
    GM needs to go thru some kind of bankruptcy to escape the retirees' healthcare and pensions -- yet the gov't bailout of using Medicare & Social Security is already in place.

    Great charts, based on fine Chrysler data (OK, estimates for other carmakers).

    Instead of a bailout, what should be the focus of discussion is the post-bankruptcy business plan for the car factories and the workers.

    The gov't should probably offer matching loan dollars to the highest equity bidder for buying the factories, at an ARM starting at current Fed rates (of 1%) plus 1%, or some such.

    What I don't know is whether union pension debt comes before or after bond holders in bankruptcy -- I know that equity investors get wiped out. And they should.

    Gov't helping UAW buy GM after a bankruptcy seems excellent -- let the management work for UAW and decide about the workers and management salary levels. All prior UAW 'benefits' should have been funded by stock grant purchases to the UAW account.
    • ^
    • v
    These numbers seem to be about 4 years old. As far as I can tell GM shirked off most of the legacy costs for its retiree healthcare plans with the VEBA stuff in 2007, so going bankrupt isn't going to help much to escape costs they've already escaped.
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks Mr. Wilkinson, this is the single most informative blog post I've seen on this topic. However, I think the last two commenters are right; those hourly labor cost figures can't possibly refer just to current workers. So maybe it's true that the UAW is making unreasonable demands, and that the current workers are making way more than the average taxpayer who's being asked to bail them out, but that bar chart you reproduced is very misleading I think.

    Could you possibly look into this and give us a more appropriate factoid? I am all for union-bashing, but I want to be fair about it. :)
    • ^
    • v
    In 2007 UAW agreed to half-price wages for new workers. I believe though, that all these workers have probably been fired, because these new workers would have such low seniority during a layoff. Therefore, UAW concessions on labor were likely a sham, and have had no impact on labor costs thus far :

    http://www.aam.com/index.php?s=217

    "Does AAM already have a 2nd Tier wage structure?

    Yes. In 2006, AAM and the UAW agreed to an all-in wage and benefit package for new hires at the original U.S. locations. This agreement is more closely aligned to what AAM’s competitors pay. Unfortunately, as a result of the decline in market demand for its products, AAM has not been able to hire any associates under this second tier wage and benefit structure."
    • ^
    • v
    We all know that it's union salaries that are the only problem here, right ?? I mean, there would be nothing wrong with GM management would there ?? Oh, and by the way, Global Warming is a Crock of Shit ... Bob Lutz, GM's CEO, said it himself :

    http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idU...

    That's a great way to build your customer base, IMHO.
    • ^
    • v
    I checked out that Mark Perry chart which you provided. It was derived from a Forbes magazine article which is now dead-linked. No way to tell if his information is correct, no way to evaluate the methodology used to gather the original data..

    Maybe the best "long-term solution" for all of us would be for anti-worker blog-sites to go the way of the dodo bird. They sure as hell don't provide the public with much reliable information.
    • ^
    • v
    I think it is far past time for Wilkison to correct the false claim that the auto workers make over $70/hr, even if Mulligan can't quite bring himself to do so.
    • ^
    • v
    Umm, the 70 an hour figure includes health and welfare benefits that Toyota does not pay because Japan, like every other industrialized country, has the government pay that.

    It also divides all current retirement benefits among current employees.

    Thats just wrong.
    • ^
    • v
    Exactly. Which is why the statement,

    those workers’ salary and benefits total more than $70 per hour!!

    is false.
    • ^
    • v
    The numbers are based on a Daimler-Chrysler press release. This data is crap. Looking at the data source, you find that the average hourly is about $30.

    How did they do it? One trick is to add in 2005 profit sharing because the 2006 number was zero.

    Another trick, apparently, is to include all payments to retirees (and dependents) in the costs, but not in the number of workers. From their figures, it appears that there are twice as many retirees as current workers. That's a good way to inflate costs.

    I suppose, in some dubious libertarian fantasy world, these numbers could be seen as labor costs to the car manufacturer. However, these numbers are being reported as what the workers get paid - a real perversion of math and economics.
    • ^
    • v
    If this automaker fails we will see much more people finding jobs. GM and Ford should think of other money making scheme to help their sale.
    • ^
    • v
    Auto industry specially GM and Ford have problems financially all over their company. They layoff people to survive. I think they should keep the higher rank people pays low. So people that really make the cars can have a job.
    • ^
    • v
    I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reade. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

    If you want to visit my site www.nfcu-org.com.
 

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus

View My Stats