I'd been thinking about this for a while,
and finally decided to ask here. Then I did some quick googling to find out and stumbled on this editorial, which asks the same question but comes up with a totally different answer. (They want to say that the difference between GM and Toyota's respective homeland operations is that if Toyota were paying what GM were paying for its retirees' healthcare, Toyota wouldn't be making a profit. That doesn't mean that GM /would/ be, and being unable to export cars from the home market is a sign of weakness on GM's part, not of a lucky bonus on Toyota's.) My question was this: there's an assumption that Toyota is badly skimping on healthcare costs for its transplant factories (rather than saving money, by say, competent management and lower salaries for what is, after all, generally unskilled labor). Is that really tru? Could it be used as a protectionist lever to get universal healthcare in the US?
Another article from a while back basically said that GM was paying for health care on three times as many people as Toyota because 2/3rds of GM's healthcare recipients were retired, which could limit the scope of the health insurance discussion... although from what I understand, GM has mostly kicked a lot of them off to another company/trust it will fund with a huge one-shot pile of cash and then spin off.
I was going to go check Toyota's corporate website to see what they said about their healthcare plan, but the 'careers' link is, you guessed it, 404.
Anyway, the comparison I really wanted was GM/Toyota productivity and expenses per worker in the US. In terms of a bail-out and other politics, the question is of what's possible in the US -- not how much better of GM would be if it spun off its American operations and let them collapse. (GM of South America (no idea) and GM of China (high-quality Buicks, oddly enuogh) made a bucket of money last year, from what I've heard. I think GM of Europe (read: Opel) isn't in bad shape either.
Another article from a while back basically said that GM was paying for health care on three times as many people as Toyota because 2/3rds of GM's healthcare recipients were retired, which could limit the scope of the health insurance discussion... although from what I understand, GM has mostly kicked a lot of them off to another company/trust it will fund with a huge one-shot pile of cash and then spin off.
I was going to go check Toyota's corporate website to see what they said about their healthcare plan, but the 'careers' link is, you guessed it, 404.
Anyway, the comparison I really wanted was GM/Toyota productivity and expenses per worker in the US. In terms of a bail-out and other politics, the question is of what's possible in the US -- not how much better of GM would be if it spun off its American operations and let them collapse. (GM of South America (no idea) and GM of China (high-quality Buicks, oddly enuogh) made a bucket of money last year, from what I've heard. I think GM of Europe (read: Opel) isn't in bad shape either.