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Ontario Stellantis workers vote to strike (thenorthstar.media)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/ndp@lemmy.ca
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Workers at Stellantis auto plants in Windsor, Toronto, and Brampton have voted overwhelmingly to go on strike, producing a 97% “yes” vote. Currently, bargaining between Unifor which represents the workers, and the auto giant Stellantis are at an impasse.

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[–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

When I worked in the auto industry the Ford auditor we worked with said labour was the highest cost in production. Materials were on the low end of the scale.

However its now also the amount of bullshit they piled into the car now. Like rear entertainment and separate climate controls, all the electronics for everything, all the add on a etc.

I rented a car a while back on a business trip, they had no small cars left so gave me a Mercedes. Led lighting across the dash, and across the door panel. And you could alter the colour values to suit the colour you wanted. Why, why do we need garbage light strip accent? It wasn't the light for ease of exit that shines on the ground, just rgb rainbow vomit

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    When I worked in the auto industry the Ford auditor we worked with said labour was the highest cost in production.

    Of course they'd say that, but what's the % when you remove the C levels and upper management? They're your real labour cost, and they never admit to it. The people putting vehicles together are absolutely a cost to each vehicle, but they're not so expensive that it made medium sized cars starting point $45,000+.

    Materials were on the low end of the scale.

    This is entirely unsurprising.

    However its now also the amount of bullshit they piled into the car now. Like rear entertainment and separate climate controls, all the electronics for everything, all the add on a etc.

    The fluff is how they increase prices to the consumer, because at the end of the day consumers are pretty stupid and will buy gimmicky bullshit

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    The labour costs that unions quote are often invalid because they quote the hourly rate of everyone divide by number of cars that come off the line per hour. However a car doesn't come in at one end of the plant and out in one hour, there can be many hours/days of assembly before exit. Its period vs leadtime issue.

    Also they aren't counting all the labour that went into feeder plant prep of components. And some accounting may capture overhead tooling cost as a total and not the labour that went into the tooling.

    As automation improved labour cost is reduced (obviously). And after COVID materials costs have risen.

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