From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
>The three biggest American automakers are banking on health care
>benefits for the partners of gay employees as a low-cost way to lure
>new workers in a tight labor market.
I work in Visteon, the part of Ford that's being spun off. We're seeing people leave like crazy here, to the point where things which were improving are now dropping (I think that we might have erased two years of improvement in the last six months).
But what's *really* interesting is that people in Ford itself are fleeing like rats (judging from personal observation, of course - Ford HR isn't releasing statistics).
The Big 3 seem to be terminally fucked up. And with a New Economy booming, there is an option for those with technical or business skills (the Big 3 still seem to think that they are a leading-edge sector of the economy).
Since a career with the Big 3 is not likely anymore (with their abandonment of their Japanese-style lifetime employment policies), it's become even more unattractive to go to one of the Big 3. The pay is good, as are the benefits, but the system is f****ed up, and the odds are now that you'll be laid off in a decade or so anyway. And the auto industry goes into a depression when the country goes into a recession, so good luck getting a job when you're pink-slipped.
Barry