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>the EU doesn't have an answer except for tariffs and other protectionist measures. You can't have an answer if you're competing with a labor force that's work

>the EU doesn't have an answer except for tariffs and other protectionist measures. You can't have an answer if you're competing with a labor force that's working 9-9-6 while your labor force is working 35h weeks on paper (much less in practice), gets 40 vacation days per year, get paid sick leave whenever they don't feel like coming to work, and highly paid underperformers are unable to be fired due to unions. German workers could afford that cushy lifestyle when their auto industry was the most cutting edge and valuable in the world, but once it's not anymore, they'll have to accept a new reality of more work for less pay if they want to have jobs or an industry.

Retric 2y ago
Hours worked translate into annual pay for workers, but productivity and hourly wages determine how competitive a company is. Fast food is filled with part time employees because those companies benefit from doing so, it’s one way to keep their costs down.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  Employee productivity is a flawed metric in most large companies, which are filled with dead weight cashing good paychecks but they're profitable because they monopolized certain markets or sectors which means they can afford all that inefficiency. The knives and chopping block come out the moment profits drop, and that time is neigh for a lot of German companies.
  - Retric 2y ago
    It’s unusually difficult to be dead weight on an assembly line. There’s definitely more and less effective employees inside of auto companies, but when you can directly measure productivity people can only slack so much. Rather than competition the larger story is companies trying to managing the EV transition. It’s inherently difficult when most buyers are still choosing ICE but EV’s need huge R&D investments and are generally unprofitable. We just entered the territory where sales aren’t small enough to simply absorb per unit losses as irrelevant.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >It’s unusually difficult to be dead weight on an assembly line I never said the dead weight is on the assembly line, because it's never there, it's in the offices and board rooms. VW for example is full of useless employee swinging their nutsacks (German expression for doing nothing) and cashing in near six figure wages and being unfireable. Meanwhile the workers on the assembly lines will have to loose their jobs.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Chinese companies are full of such dead weight. Their success depends on the factory floor and massive investments not an efficient bureaucracy.
        Cumpiler69 2y ago
        Well yeah, a bumper on a car being bolted by a German worker is not gonna be held on better than if it were bolted by a Chinese worker. Germans can't compete with Chinese on a assembly lines. The advantage western manufacturing used to have to compensate for expensive labor was automation but guess what, China also has automation now in factories now. So what's gonna be VWs answer?
        Retric 2y ago
        > So what’s gonna be VW’s answer? As crazy as it sounds if you know anything about the industry, better management and increasing wages in China. Chinese firms are generally extremely dysfunctional internally. That didn’t matter when they paid people a small fraction of western wages, but significant wage growth for years adds up. Continue ~9%/year wage growth and things would be at near parity in a little over a decade. Obviously, that’s no guarantee but rapidly developing countries eventually develop. Things are about to get really interesting.

Retric 2y ago

Hours worked translate into annual pay for workers, but productivity and hourly wages determine how competitive a company is. Fast food is filled with part time employees because those companies benefit from doing so, it’s one way to keep their costs down.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
Employee productivity is a flawed metric in most large companies, which are filled with dead weight cashing good paychecks but they're profitable because they monopolized certain markets or sectors which means they can afford all that inefficiency. The knives and chopping block come out the moment profits drop, and that time is neigh for a lot of German companies.
- Retric 2y ago
  It’s unusually difficult to be dead weight on an assembly line. There’s definitely more and less effective employees inside of auto companies, but when you can directly measure productivity people can only slack so much. Rather than competition the larger story is companies trying to managing the EV transition. It’s inherently difficult when most buyers are still choosing ICE but EV’s need huge R&D investments and are generally unprofitable. We just entered the territory where sales aren’t small enough to simply absorb per unit losses as irrelevant.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >It’s unusually difficult to be dead weight on an assembly line I never said the dead weight is on the assembly line, because it's never there, it's in the offices and board rooms. VW for example is full of useless employee swinging their nutsacks (German expression for doing nothing) and cashing in near six figure wages and being unfireable. Meanwhile the workers on the assembly lines will have to loose their jobs.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Chinese companies are full of such dead weight. Their success depends on the factory floor and massive investments not an efficient bureaucracy.
      - Cumpiler69 2y ago
        Well yeah, a bumper on a car being bolted by a German worker is not gonna be held on better than if it were bolted by a Chinese worker. Germans can't compete with Chinese on a assembly lines. The advantage western manufacturing used to have to compensate for expensive labor was automation but guess what, China also has automation now in factories now. So what's gonna be VWs answer?
        Retric 2y ago
        > So what’s gonna be VW’s answer? As crazy as it sounds if you know anything about the industry, better management and increasing wages in China. Chinese firms are generally extremely dysfunctional internally. That didn’t matter when they paid people a small fraction of western wages, but significant wage growth for years adds up. Continue ~9%/year wage growth and things would be at near parity in a little over a decade. Obviously, that’s no guarantee but rapidly developing countries eventually develop. Things are about to get really interesting.