Readers weigh in on Detroit’s troubles

With news of massive layoffs at General Motors and shrinking U.S. sales plaguing the nation’s major automobile manufacturers, the American automotive industry is facing one of its most challenging periods in decades.

MSNBC.com’s readers felt compelled to weigh in on the woes now dogging Ford, GM and the Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler, and those problems are certainly serious.

As gasoline prices have risen, consumer demand has shifted away from Detroit’s gas-guzzling SUVs and toward smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, and the Big Three have not positioned themselves well to capitalize on that demand swing. At the same time, Detroit’s big car makers are facing rising raw-material costs, massive overcapacity and crippling healthcare and pension costs. Indeed, GM recently announced plans to close nine plants and cut some 30,000 jobs to reduce production in the face of a shrinking market share.

Detroit’s losses have become foreign car makers’ gains. Companies such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan, which have been at the vanguard of new consumer demand for cars with fuel-efficient hybrid engines, have seen demand shift their away. Last month, Detroit’s share of the U.S. auto market hit a record low of about 50 percent, according to Don Butler, assistant Director of the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University, while Japan’s share rose to about 35 percent and the rest of Asia and Europe claimed about 15 percent, he said.

MSNBC.com readers are quite concerned about the downturn in Detroit's fortunes, a glimpse inside our mailbag shows. Many readers wrote us recently in the wake of GM's cost-cutting announcement, dismayed at the decline in U.S. manufacturing.

The market share swing is “just one example as to how U.S. manufacturing business is in decline,” wrote Samuel Watkins, of Clarksville, Tenn. “First, it was the struggling steel production industry during the late 1980s to the 1990s. Now it’s the auto industry.”

Randall Rowland, of Michigan, blamed poor service for Detroit’s woes. “Repairs always take longer than estimated, and I frequently get my car back with more defects than when I took it in for service,” he said. “My Honda breaks down much less often, is always repaired properly, and [repairs] frequently take less time than estimated. Guess why I now do not buy Big Three autos.”

Jim Curtice of Kailua, Hawaii, said the U.S. automotive industry’s woes can be attributed to worsening U.S. education standards, especially in training for skilled manufacturing jobs: “The American auto industry is dying,” he said. “We can’t compete in production cost, nor do we produce stilled craftsmen. We need more technical schools, and skills learning at a younger age.”

With GM locked in difficult negations with its unions over benefit cuts, readers like Chuck of Tulsa, Okla., said that, in order to compete more effectively, GM and other U.S. car companies should divorce themselves completely from union control.

“How can the employees and unions justify their benefits and salaries for standing in a line and installing a windshield wiper?” he wrote. “I say the motor companies should restructure and the first step is to kick the unions out of the auto industry, and they should pay the employees what their services are worth and that should be what is in line with the rest of the nation. The unions were once a necessity; now they are nothing more than a cash cow sucking the life out of business.”

Jimmie James, of Houston, Texas, echoed the union comments:

“It’s all the union’s fault; unions are for lazy people,” James said. “If the automakers would grow a spine and get rid of the unions, then they could pay an autoworker a more realistic wage — something like $10 to 12 an hour. These folks are getting $30 and more. They simply do not deserve it. In China, the same worker gets $3 an hour. The unions are killing American autos. Get rid of the unions and the problem is solved.”

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