Why did General Motors die?

Answer 1

Well, there are a lot of reasons why General Motors died. Being from Detroit, it hurts to say this, but it't the truth. First: When gas prices started to skyrocket a few years ago, Chrysler(who is now defunct) and ESPECIALLY Ford (who is doing ok right now) started focusing on smaller cars. Ford pushed the hell out of the focus and let the F-150 take the backseat. GM however, chose to keep pushing the Silverado and the Sierra, along with all of their gigantic SUV's. GM kept focusing on the best Truck in the world, and for some reason, didn't realize that people weren't interested in trucks anymore, they wanted fuel efficient cars. By the time they started pushing the cobalt (which is relatively unheard of) it was too late. Second: And most importantly, a reason why most car companies will fail is the union. The UAW was probably the single biggest cause of the demise of GM and Chrysler. You see when gas prices go up, and the economy takes a poop, less people buy cars. But even though less people are buying cars, the UAW still requires auto companies to pay their employees $30 and hour for sweeping floors in the factories, cleaning the bathrooms and doing other mindless jobs. They paid their employees way too much money to do stupid jobs like that, and in the absence of automobile sales, they weren't making enough money to pay all these outrageous wages. I'm all for equality of jobs and what-not, but seriously? Some guy who barely graduated High School is going to get paid $30+ dollars an hour to clean a factory while people who work their hard going to college and paying tens of thousands of dollars for a degree can't even find jobs? Something is wrong here. If the government is smart, the jobs will come back, but the Unions will not. That way, GM/Chrysler can hire back 1/2 to 3/4 of the people they used to have, and pay them at a much lower wage (which will still be good enough to live off of) and not have to worry about the mob--er--union protecting all of these employees who aren't needed anymore.