Stellantis offering buyouts to many salaried Jeep employees

[2nd 392]

Are YOU speaking for the Administration?

If so I look forward to seeing you. There is a sign on the main gate: This Gate Locked for Your Protection, NOT the Owner; Owner has guns, John Deere and a Backhoe...LOL

US Army Infantry 1967-1994 you might note, I am NOT DEAD..YET

Nice— and water independent. A backhoe brings expanded meaning to “Shoot—Shovel—and Shut Up” congrats any “administration” comment would get me banned

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[Hennessey17]

LOL... this thread is great!

 

[OrneryBear]

Employee costs are a double edge sword for many companies. The more long term employees get grandfathered 5 weeks vacation and pension benefits NA to newer hires but the longer term more experienced employees on balance have a better work ethic and will work longer hours to “get the job done” per my boss who retired shortly before I did. (60-70 hr avg, often 80 when it was legal for truckers) Edit— since we retired pensions have been capped and vacation pay rates changed essentially eliminating the 5th and 4th weeks pay, hours worked dependent. Family owned business recently sold out to a huge nationwide one, expectations are not high.

That's not how it works in the auto industry. As you gain years, pay, vacation, etc, you also work less. Your younger hires cost less and are expected to work 60-80 hrs a week. They expect you to put in your time up front and then if you get along with everyone you are rewarded. In school for car design they expected us to work 80-120hrs a week in order to prepare us.

 

[2nd 392]

I will tell you what I tell ALL of your folks back in the rear. THANK YOU! Those of us who walk the killing fields KNOW that without you people back there we cannot make that bastard die for his country, without your support. Yea, we sometimes kick back and talk about you folks, you go to bed in a bed, have AC or Heat, 3 hots a day, and beer at night. I will say we have no regrets, none, yea sand gets in everything and the jungle is full of mosquitos, hot, we are hot, cold, we are cold. Glad I did for 26 years of my life...THANK YOU!!!

I worked on C-124’s, in one section of the hanger there were large rectangular boxes we sent empty and were brought back loaded. A constant reminder of how good we had it. I will never forget that stack of boxes.

 

[Heimkehr]

I worked on C-124’s, in one section of the hanger there were large rectangular boxes we sent empty and were brought back loaded. A constant reminder of how good we had it. I will never forget that stack of boxes.

Whilst on active duty, I had direct involvement in such matters from a different logistic perspective. Our process even had its own thinly disguised shorthand.

Yes, it wasn't anything that can or should be unrecalled.

 

[SoK66]

Ford is doing the same bull$#!+. They did this back in the late 90s / early 2000s on a discriminatory basis to rid themselves of older white male salaried roll workers & managers. They ended up in Federal court and paid out about $100 million in restitution and fines, not including settlements that weren’t part of the class action suits. So, they are now trying to broom the 20 somethings they hired 20+ years ago that are now mid 40s.

 

[Leisure Freak]

As a capitalist and former corporate world telecom engineer I see nothing different here from what has been normal corporate world operating procedures across all companies and segments for decades. Any excuse to drop from the books the older more benefited employees is always going to occur. Whether they get it right or not is another issue. We all have to gamble with investments, career, and future societal trends. That's why I ditched the rat race at age 51 with early retirement and became a transactional focused employment mercenary. Nearly 3 years into my first Wrangler ownership and I do love my Jl 2 door, so far. Whether it it will be a long term relationship is purely unknown. If I were a Stellantis employee offered early buyout, I would take it and run. Good for them.

 

[Whaler27]

Whilst on active duty, I had direct involvement in such matters from a different logistic perspective. Our process even had its own thinly disguised shorthand.

Yes, it wasn't anything that can or should be unrecalled.

Yes.

One of the biggest challenges in our country is the absence of common experience and a shared understanding of how the world really works and what things actually cost. That’s true whether we’re talking about manufacturing, employees, or freedom itself. Today, too many people live in little self-defined media bubbles that insulate them from facing things like where hamburger really comes from, what violence really looks like, what it actually takes to defeat a determined and committed enemy, or how economic competition really works. The new focus seems to be on what we “ought” to get and how people “ought” to treat us, as opposed to how to take care of ourselves, what a job is worth, or what it’s really going to take to overcome a serious challenge.

Companies like Stellantis have to make choices based on what the market will support or tolerate, and if they consistently get it wrong they go belly up. That seems like such an obvious concept to everybody over 50, but it’s not at all obvious to today’s average thirty year old, because their worldview has been focused on how the world “ought to be”, not how it is. The problem, of course, is that the rest of the world doesn’t share our views or give a crap about our feelings. They’re competing to maximize their own self interests, and they understand that any competition produces winners AND losers — even if our kids were raised to think everybody “ought“ to get a trophy.

My dad served in WW2. His little brother, my uncle, served in Korea. I can only remember one classmate whose father didn’t serve in WW2. All the kids in my class knew about the war and understood it through the eyes of family and friends who lived it first hand. We were raised to understand and value commitment, grit, heart, and honor, all of which were also emphasized in the movies and entertainment from the 40s through the 70s. Nobody wanted to be a weenie or a whiner. Somehow, we’ve traded all of that in for the new self-focused, snowflake model.

I don’t see how we can remain competitive in any environment unless and until we recover a shared cultural understanding of what competition for limited resources really looks like — and how completely irrelevant our “feelings” are to achieving anything worthwhile.

 

[aldo98229]

That's not how it works in the auto industry. As you gain years, pay, vacation, etc, you also work less. Your younger hires cost less and are expected to work 60-80 hrs a week. They expect you to put in your time up front and then if you get along with everyone you are rewarded. In school for car design they expected us to work 80-120hrs a week in order to prepare us.

Well that certainly explains why that Jeep employee still hasn’t figured how to seat fuses properly...

 

[Cycle11111]

I see this “charge off peak hours” stuff thrown around constantly. During those hours is when we are also encouraged to run our dishwashers and clothes washers. What happens when a ton more people are charging vehicles during those hours? Usage will skyrocket, and it won’t be so “off peak”. Not to mention, as someone who works what I think are typical office hours, I don’t want to stay up until 11 pm to wait to charge my vehicle. I want to plug it in when I get home from work because I am an early riser.

Another thing to consider: emergencies. Living in SoCal, we always make sure we are prepared for earthquakes. This includes not letting our fuel tanks get below a certain level, as well as keeping a few Jerry cans of gas and diesel for our vehicles or generators that double as emergency use or recreational. I do not like the idea of getting caught with my pants down because the grid gets knocked out when my vehicle battery is depleted.

I think forcing the changeover to EV’s is wrong. It should happen organically because the market and technology demand it, not because someone in an ivory tower deems it so.

As I said I do not agree with forced EV conversion but natural plus reasonable incentives. Off peak is literally truly off peak and I see it every day as my system tracks my energy usage and after 10pm it plummets. All EVs allow your charging to be scheduled automatically or via and app - you just plug and walk away and it charges according to settings you provide - I wait for offpeak power and but that is done without any physical intervention from me. Also I live in the mountains in NorCal and being ready for either 10+ft of snow or wildfires is our daily life and our EV has never been and issue of being ready to roll when we needed it.

 

[ChuckQue]

As I said I do not agree with forced EV conversion but natural plus reasonable incentives. Off peak is literally truly off peak and I see it every day as my system tracks my energy usage and after 10pm it plummets. All EVs allow your charging to be scheduled automatically or via and app - you just plug and walk away and it charges according to settings you provide - I wait for offpeak power and but that is done without any physical intervention from me. Also I live in the mountains in NorCal and being ready for either 10+ft of snow or wildfires is our daily life and our EV has never been and issue of being ready to roll when we needed it.

I agree with some of your points, but down south here I’ll tell you our energy use goes up as we hit around 4pm most of the year. We have a pretty overbuilt Enphase solar and battery setup and I can monitor usage. Our plan is to do more work to our house to improve energy efficiency in the way of solar screens on certain windows, high CFM gable fans for our attics, etc.

Eventually we do intend to buy a hybrid electric. That to me is more appealing because I can get the redundancy I want. We were seriously considering replacing my wife’s 2016 Ford Explorer platinum with a 4xe (she loved it at the OC auto show), but after the absolute crap experience we’ve had with my JLUR order we will not be buying any other Stellantis products so it’s back to the drawing board.

 

[J_Winslow]

The EV push will not last. There is not enough material to make the batteries and the grid cannot handle it.

Once the government funding for EVs goes away so will the ev.

 

[Old Jeeper]

2 things.

1) They are not banning ICE vehicles from usage, just restricting the purchase of NEW vehicles.

2) This would make ICE vehicle more desirable by those not ready to make the move to EV, therefore increasing the resale value during the first few years maybe couple decades. It won't be until maintaining and fueling ICE vehicles becomes more difficult or cost prohibitive that the resale might start to fall.

You are overlooking a KEY element.

We are being FORCED out of the Petrol business. Diesel, was $5.49 a gallon yesterday.

I do not care where you are at this moment in time, but I ask you to look around 360. Show me something that did not depend upon a TRUCK to get it to you, your desk, your home, where ever. I drive a diesel, in fact on my 6th one. The cost of diesel has almost doubled, which means that every single thing those trucks haul cost double just in fuel alone.

I have a business trip coming up, I will drive about 2500 miles, I average 10.5 mpg with my diesel truck. If Walmart was selling Diesel yesterday way off the beaten path of major traffic and I now need fill up on the Interstate offerings I can figure I will pay $6-7 per gallon of diesel, well past the 2x cost.

So while your point number 1 above is correct it fails the makes sense test. You want to bring the economy of the US to its knees, then increase the cost of Petrol and especially Diesel!

We depend upon TRUCK and TRAINS to deliver our goods, and both run on DIESEL!

 

[TheRaven]

I feel like i've posted this same thing more than 10 times on this site but perhaps it's just different members reading it each time:

The EV push is going to hit a brick wall in the 5-8 year timeframe. There are so many hurdles, which at this time and in the near future (within the next 10-15 years) are insurmountable. The grid is a massive one, and that's a 30-year project, minimum. Resources to build enough batteries is another. The COST of batteries is also a problem. Then there's the recycling of batteries which right now pretty much doesn't exist. None of these technologies are advancing fast enough to get to the point where we need to be for any major automaker to have an all-EV lineup by 2035...at least if they want to remain profitable, that is. Earliest we are getting to a 50% EV country is 2050. No one reading this now will see ICE go away in their lifetime.

Seems like the popular rationalizer in this thread is "off peak charging". First problem with that is that "off-peak" is a concept that only exists in certain regions. Up here in the NE we don't have such a thing because of our wide range of possible weather. For instance, in the cold months, nighttime grid load is actually HIGHER...so that's a deal-breaker right there. But even for more temperate climates, "off-peak" is not a solution because you don't have enough "off-peak" time to charge two vehicles (many locales don't even have enough time to charge 1). Furthermore, regardless of where you are in the country, you have at best a 200A residential feed. That's enough for ONE level 2 charger. If you are willing to sleep in the dark with no AC or heat you can probably squeeze two in there (obviously this is assuming they are charging "off-peak" or what we in the NE call "overnight") but I doubt anyone who has the cash for a BEV is going to be willing to rough it like that on the regular. That doesn't even address those who are saddled with a 100A feed and can't even use level 2 chargers...so they'll be waiting 2+ days for their EVs to charge, one at a time. Incidentally, those also tend to be the lower-income folks who live and die by reliable personal transportation.

See? There are just too many major hurdles that have not even begun to be addressed...also note that none of these issues are being discussed at a level that's being picked up by the talking heads. Most of you have probably never heard of any of this stuff but you certainly have heard all the news about how California is going to be banning ICE vehicles and putting huge taxes on ICE vehicles...and how several major automakers plan to have all-EV lineups in 5-10 years. I think we can pretty easily see why that is.

 

[Old Jeeper]

Younger, less expensive, employees make sense if they’re fully committed, and capable of following direction. I guess that’s especially true if the organization is heading in a new direction, but America’s generational change in work ethic makes the analysis more complicated.

In my world we regularly receive special funding for overtime shifts, as we have for decades. When that happens sheets are posted listing available assignments and time slots that need to be filled with volunteers. Employees who want to work an extra shift just pencil in their names in the appropriate time slots.

Years ago we implemented a rule prohibiting anybody from signing up for more than one time slot until the sheet had been posted for at least two weeks. We did that because employees on other shifts complained that the guys who were working when the sheets were posted were signing up for all the opportunities before others even had a chance to sign up for a single shift.

In the 80s and 90s almost everybody I knew wanted to work as much as they could at time-and-a-half. The rule was needed to protect opportunity for folks who worked nights and weekends, or they’d never get a shot.

These days we don’t need any OT sign-up restrictions, because most millennials don’t want to work OT. In fact, it’s not uncommon for the OT sheets to be taken down after several weeks with many shifts going unfilled. These days our biggest struggle is finding people to cover critical shifts, as so many of our twenty-and-thirty-somethings just don’t want to work that much/hard*.

*I don’t mean to unfairly tar and feather every member of the newer generations. We’ve hired some fantastic farm kids and post-military folks who are as committed, eager, disciplined, fit, hard-working, and durable as anybody in my generation were/are, but the more general trend we’re seeing is scary. Many of our recent high school grads are fatter, lazier, slower, weaker, dumber, and more entitled than ever. Many would need months of structured diet and exercise just to qualify for what the Marine Corps used to call the “fatty platoon” in boot camp. They’re completely unprepared for mental or physical challenges. When this is what the employment pool looks like the expensive guys in their 40s 50s look like a bargain.

I often find myself wondering where our country will find competent recruits if, God help us, we ever get into another large scale war, or even a more leveraged and punitive trade war. After all, it’s the folks who voluntarily yoke themselves to our economic plow and grind away that keep our country in Jeeps and Cheerios.

For 20+ years I had had a LOT of people working for me, all engineers (IT), what I know about people is this: 10% are problems 100% of the time and they eat my day up. This 10% came in all races, colors, creeds, ages, you name it. Interesting, in that there was little to no correlation with the quality of work they produced. Some of my best people in terms of quality of work were also some of my worst dedbeats.

NOTE in all those years only fired 1 guy and that was to keep from pressing charges and sending him to jail. If I had someone who was not cutting it (usually I was the last guy to know since I was the boss). I would gather issues that applied to them. Call them into my office on Wed am. Go over it and then tell them take the rest of the week off and on Monday be here first thing and let me know YOUR decision to stay or go. If go, then I will write you a letter of recommendation and you can use me as a reference anytime, you will not leave with a stain! Often I would help them find a job if I knew a CEO that was hiring. I put one guy in a job after the could find one for several months. He was one of my best engineers but the overhead on him was to the point I gave him the choice of stay or go and wanted to go. He excelled in the position I found for him and had done great.

Some of my folks did not like the way I ran my org. I did not care if or when you came to work, how long of a lunch hour you took or anything else, we had FEW rules. My 1 overriding rule was RESULTS. Example: I would ask them how many lines of executable Lightspeed C can you write per day? Sir, 50 as they smiled. OK, sign here: I JimBob agree to write 250 lines of executable Lightspeed C per week. There has to be metrics on performance...

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