As key General Motors parts supplier Delphi continues to wend its way through the bankruptcy courts, on Tuesday the struggling company posted a loss of $2.3 billion for the second quarter, compared to a $338 million loss in the same quarter last year.
In order to offset the loss of production from the departure of 12,600 workers accepting retirement buyouts, Delphi announced yesterday that it has hired some 2,000 temporary workers. The temporary workers will earn $14 an hour where the union workers they're replacing earned $27 an hour. The company admits it will experience a loss in the short term due to lower productivity, but the savings realized from lower wages will more than compensate. The temps are being trained at Delphi's U.S. plants
It's not often that a company gets excited about 35,000 workers jumping ship via early retirement packages and buyouts, but when that company is General Motors, the bailage is a very good thing. The news means that General Motors is two years ahead of schedule in terms of shrinking its workforce, way ahead of analysts' expectations. What's more is 12,600 workers from Delphi are taking advantage of an attrition plan offered up by the United Auto Workers and General M
Al Koch helped see over the revival of Kmart, so he knows a thing or two about financial difficulty - and that's exactly what he sees in the auto-part industry. Koch specially mentions decreasing production from domestic automakers as potentially causing severe trouble. While a move away from incentives has increased the profitability of the Big Three, it puts the squeeze on suppliers by decreasing production (you can bet that none of that profit make
One of the bullet points in Delphi's announcement of their new fuel cell power system is so enticingly exciting, until you finish the sentence. The exciting part is "SOFC auxiliary power systems can save 85 percent of the billion gallons of fuel consumed annually in the U.S." and that's gotta leave a few environmentalists and fuel consumers breathing heavy. The end of the sentence, though, reads, "during extended idling of
It looks like General Motors will have no problem meeting its goal of cutting 30,000 jobs in the U.S., according to United Autombile Workers president Ron Gettelfinger.
Within the auto industry, it's something of an secret that most suppliers prefer to work with Asian "transplant" OEMs, who are perceived to be easier to work with. Planning Perspective's recently released survey shows that the Big 3 are making substantive improvements, but still have a long ways to go until becoming Best Friends Forever with the companies that supply parts to them.
Speaking to General Motors' Annual Meeting of stockholders, the company's Chairman and CEO, Rick Wagoner, was generally upbeat about the progress of GM's restructuring plan, pointing to a profitable first quarter in Europe, strong growth in the Asia Pacific region (particularly China), and rising sales in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East as evidence of the company's success globally.
Delphi's MagneRide semi-active suspension is building quite an impressive list of clients. The system's electromagnetically controlled dampers than can instantly be switched between Comfort and Sport settings first appeared on the Chevy Corvette and Cadillac STS. Then Ferrari announced the technology would appear on its new 599GTB. Now Audi has announced it will rename the technology Audi Mag
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An analyst from Merrill Lynch had good things to say about General Motors' future prospects, and the automaker's stock leaped nearly 10 percent on the news, closing at $26.51-- a substantial increase over its recent low of $18.33, but still a long ways away from the Kerkorian-fueled high of $37.70.
United Auto Workers members at 21 Delphi plants have overwhelmingly voted to authorize the union leadership to call a strike, according to a UAW statement released Tuesday.
The word is out that General Motors' Chief Financial Officer Fritz Henderson told a meeting of investment analysts this week that he expects a deal with Delphi and the United Auto Workers within 30 to 60 days - a prediction that left some analysts shaking their heads, believing that Henderson is being overly optimistic given the complexity of the situation.
Bankrupt auto parts manufacturer Delphi and the unions representing its 33,0000 workers had their first day in court Tuesday, as the U.S. Bankruptcy Court opened its hearing on Delphi's request for permission to terminate its labor contracts with the unions.
Rather than cancelling labor contracts on its own with court permission, Delphi Corp. filed yesterday with the federal bankruptcy court, saying that the court can terminate its contracts if the supplier and the union can't come to terms on a new agreement. Analysts suggest that this makes a strike likely for the auto supplier. Delphi originally asked that it be able to void the contracts on its own (rather than allowing the judge to do so) because execs wanted
Apparently ignoring the terms of its UAW contract, Delphi has posted this ad for hourly workers at its Athens, Alabama steering systems plant:
"Restructuring, improving base operations and growing global business" were the Big Three for Visteon in first quarter, who turned a profit, despite lower revenues. Following the news, shares rose $1.14 to $7 on the New York Stock Exchange, a substantial 19 percent improvement.
While most observers in the slow-motion Delphi bankruptcy train wreck assume that General Motors will step in to help bail out its struggling former subsidiary company (and its ex-GM workers), apparently there are limits to GM's largesse.
Warren Brown of the Washington Post opened his article by summarizing the GM-Delphi-UAW fiasco: Delphi wants to restructure itself, the UAW is displeased and is threatenening to strike, and everyone's looking at GM.
While much ink has been devoted to Delphi's bankruptcy court request to terminate its labor contracts with the UAW and other unions, that event was only one step along the path to possible confrontation with the unions (albeit a very big one).
