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Free PCs Not AfFordable
rakerman writes: "Ford Cancels Computer Giveaway Program. I guess their 'Model E' program turned out to be an Edsel." We did at least one story about this at the time (and a Katz essay). A lot of people pointed out that the United Auto Workers union was the driving force (ha-ha) behind this program initially.
didn't they see that other commercial when they gave a free puter to everyone and the omish peeps took the wire...................
anyway, they should do more research first.
Runnin' On Empty
Why not charge for the PCs and more for internet access to cover their costs and still be a good deal for the employees?
I know people that have it and love it. I'm sure they'd be willing to pay more for it.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
It seems like a lot of companies are abandoning those visionary benefits they began to offer a few years back. My company had planned to equip EVERY computer for videoconferencing. Can you believe?
They could have kept the program alive because it would have been more cost effective.
You can read even more into this than Ford is saying. Not only is Ford making a statement that they can't afford to give PC's to their employees, they're also implying a couple of other things.
First, giving your staff free PC's isn't enough of a benefit to impress most of your staff. Let's face it, if you're working for a union-driven company like Ford, you're not living on Ramen Noodles, and you can probably afford any one of the dozens of el cheapo PC's being served up for the masses. Most of us would rather be given a credit at Best Buy to purchase the PC we really want, or maybe even peripherals if we already own a PC.
Second, in this economy, employee perks are the last thing from anybody's mind. Ford started this when employees were hard to find. Fast forward to today: due to massive layoffs everywhere, people are much easier to come by, and you don't have to go flashing perks in order to get people on board. Giving stuff away to your staff is an increasingly hard sell to the shareholders.
Third, the shareholders just got informed that they're getting decreased dividends for the first time that I can remember. Ford's always been a dividend-heavy company, and I'm sure it's hard for them to rationalize giving away PCs to their staff when their investors are getting less returns. Giveaways are associated with a dotcom, and typically the giveaways are cut just before the jobs are cut. Look out...
What's your damage, Heather?
Right, just like how they cleaned up their emissions, and built new factories when Reagan gave them the tax incentives to do is in the 80's.
Oh wait... they didn't.
They squandered the corporate welfare on bonuses and lobbying, and now we still have a bunch of rusty favtories.
And when everything is fully automated, exactly what do you propose we do with the hundreds of thousands of auto workers? make them all linux Programers?
If it wasn't for the auto-unions, most people would still be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and most the people reading ./ would be working in those (or other) factories.
Organized Labor: The people who brought you the weekend.
Spoken like someone who has never set foot in an auto plant.
I work for Saturn as a Controls Engineer, and you can forget about getting rid of (many) more folks through automation. The low hanging fruit has been plucked, that being the welding robots, and in our case, some of the powertrain operations.
The simple truth is that humans are still required to do most of assembly (urethaning the glass & roof not included), and to get the fit and finish of a car looking good. It will be some time before these operations are relegated to robots.
And why bother? Since if breaking the union is what you want to do, then the way to do that is to set your plant up as a "X" plant. That is where your plant does nothing but assembly (as opposed to doing the stamping, welding, painting, etc). The way this works is that you bring in the guys who make the radios, and have them install them on the line instead of a UAW worker. This not only cuts your overhead, so it's cheaper (it's pretty much certain that these guys aren't going to get UAW scale -- and never mind the benifits), but you also lessen the impact of the union.
It's already happening in South America, Ford does it, I think that we do it too (that being GM). Volkwagen planned on doing it too (in fact they stole the plans from us, and lost in court over it)
Reactions to that statement from computer-savvy Ford employees are probably ranging from "I'm glad they stopped the giveway program" to "what are they smoking ?".
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This argument has been made over and over, and it doesn't make any more sense now than it did 150 years ago. Yes, new technologies can take jobs from people. This is a problem, but it's a short-term problem. Long-term, people find new jobs, and increased manufacturing efficiency raises standards of living for everyone.
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Henry Ford is rolling over in his grave...
My parents and in-laws were recipients of the Ford giveaway. It amounted to about $500 towards the cost of the system, plus the dial-up account. IMO, the giveaway was useful. I couldn't convice my father-in-law that his 16MB P-60 just didn't have the horsepower to run his apps. The Ford giveaway saved me some forced tech hours.
DaimlerChrysler decided not to give away PC's, but instead they said, "we'll give you AOL." (great, more AOL users) For $2/month, DCX employees get AOL access and a special DaimlerChrysler portal site with access to benefit information and company news. (Hmmm, $2/month for international dial-up, we contractors lose out again)
Well, the UAW didn't like it enough. So, they came up with a "free" PC "giveaway" program too. The National Training Center (UAW-NTC)provided a program to give out computers from a company called Union Friendly. (a well known and respected vendor?) No, I'm not making this up, really!
For weeks, I had hourly UAW employees asking me which system they should get. (such is the life as the resident geek) The low end being a Celeron 500 (64MB RAM, 10GB, Win-ME), with a contribution of less than $200. Warranty was something like 90 days. The upgrade options were (*ahem*) "very impressive." (ok, that's got me laughing- $600 for 64MB of ram and 10GB of disk)
I've seen some of their systems in the UAW/NTC training rooms (not on our corp network), and they're pretty much basement built systems. With reliabilty and tech support to match.
I told people to compare the options, item for item, against Best Buy, CompUSA, Dell, and Gateway (can't make it hard on these people, many can't handle changing their password every month). Several who followed through, bought a decent PC from Dell.
I don't know how long UAW/NTC will keep their deal going, but somebody's probably making a few extra bucks for this Christmas season.
I wonder if the UAW did anything like this for GM employees?
Except for this recession, until last year employement was at an all time high. More and more automation every year. More and more jobs being created every year. It's like magic.
The true evil is in inefficiency.
A plain, un-informed anti-union rant gets +1 Informative? I see this as a troll. Though I may be feeding said troll, I couldn't let this slip by.
Sure, the reason Ford et. al. have all the automation they do is because of the high cost of labour. You think they'd buy a $3M robot to do a job if they could pay a person $5/Hr to do it? It wouldn't make sense, since the robot would likely cost $5M (price+maintenance) over it's useful lifetime of 5 years, and even paying the average person $5/Hr would cost Ford $350K for 35 years. So they would get 10 people for 7 times as long and still pay less money in the end. Oh, why $3M? Because there isn't a computer anywhere that can make decisions better than a human brain of any stature. Computers can crunch data easily, as long as the data is fairly constatnt - humand excell at dealing with dynamic data. It would take a major beowulf cluster to deal with all of the dynamics on an assembly line the way a single human being could deal with them.
Now, since people cost more than machines to use for a lot of the repeditive/boring/dangerous jobs, Ford uses machines for those jobs instead. It's a business - they use it if it contributes to the bottom line. Even the reason for most businesses keeping employees happy is not because of altruism, it's because happy workers are productive workers. Productive workers are cost-effective workers, and cost-effective = more profits.
As far as the price of vehicles go, it's not just Joe Sixpack turning bolts that's getting paid big $, you know - Ford does have a huge salaried contingent as well. All of thier employees contribute to overhead, not just the Unionised staff. I'd make a wild guess that if Union jobs were worth $5/hr, you'd only see the price of a car drop maybe $700.
IOW, it's not as simple as you make it sound, bub. Any economist (as long as they're not a big C conservative) will tell you the same thing - higher wages in one area lead to more jobs in other areas since the people getting more tend to spend more.
Unions have thier place even today (though I do wish they'd try to modernise some of thier attitude just a bit).
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Your right, znu, amd that's all well and good unless you're one of the people who loose their job, or live in an economy built around the outmoded industry, like Detroit.
It could be argued that civilization has never had to deal with the kind of rapid change that is possible now. Just because we can do a thing doesn't mean we should.
"So we are left overpaying for our cars to keep an out of date organization alive"
Do you honestly believe that if unions were eliminated that cars would suddenly drop in price? I imagine any savings gained by full automation would not be passed along to the consumer, but would instead just be claimed as extra profit.
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers of how much of a car's cost is due to wages, materials, company profit, etc.
Besides, if the car is overpriced, don't buy one. Free market, no?
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Ford's been having some serious economic trouble lately, but I think they're justified.
What would have been more sensible would have been to provide computer training (like say RedHat certification or something like that), which would actually help the employee progress in their career.
Simply giving them a PC was not a structured approach. My guess is that a lot of these PCs ended up being used for the kids to do their homework on, or more likely to play games.
Ford is right to think of innovative ways to increase computer literacy, but it looks like they didn't put enough thought into the 'Model E' project.
One the one hand thousands of people have to look for work.
On the other, millions pay more for cars or buy cars elsewhere.
I'm not saying I don't mind being unemployed (I'm unemployed now, and I mind). I'm saying I mind paying someone to do what amounts to busywork because TheEvilCorp won't line up a job for their employees before obsoleting them.
Unions should be more than anti-corporate strong-arming. They should support their members in a changing world. They should educate their members and prepare them for layoffs instead of converting their union dues into dead-end jobs defended by lawyers.
Fix Or Repair Daily
"Do you honestly believe that if unions were eliminated that cars would suddenly drop in price? I imagine any savings gained by full automation would not be passed along to the consumer, but would instead just be claimed as extra profit."
Yup. Our profits for SUV's are obscene, and so are everyone else's. And the last time I checked, we use the same folks on the high profit cars (SUV's, Caddies, Vettes) as we do for the low (or no) profit ones.
This is a problem, but it's a short-term problem. Long-term, people find new jobs
So short term, a guy can't feed his family; that's fine with you? He loses his house because he can't make a mortgage payment, what is that, collateral damage to you? How many jobs can a guy who worked on an assembly line really get? And how does "increased efficiency" raise the standard of living for anybody? The price of the car will plummet for two reasons: (1) improved efficiency and (b) the economy will tank because of the massive layoffs so nobody will possibly be able to afford a car, driving the price of said car down underground.
SOUNDS LIKE A REAL WIN-WIN SITUATION!
I think the proof is the simple fact that cars made in places such as Mexico, where the labour force is paid an iota of the price of the United States/Canadian auto labour force, cost just as much. VW, Chrysler, Ford : They've all opened plants there (many companies have opened plants based upon "low wages" and quickly pulled out after discovering that wages are only one small part of running a factory) and strangely I still see the price of cars rising and rising, yet at the same time the natural unemployment rate increases as an entire sector of workers is displaced. The idea that unions increase the cost of cars substantially is not based in any reality whatsoever.
"As far as the price of vehicles go, it's not just Joe Sixpack turning bolts that's getting paid big $, you know - Ford does have a huge salaried contingent as well. All of thier employees contribute to overhead, not just the Unionised staff. I'd make a wild guess that if Union jobs were worth $5/hr, you'd only see the price of a car drop maybe $700."
Actually Ford at one time got rid of as many salaried folks as they could. What they found out was that loyalty isn't earned, it's paid for.
All of their rent-a-pencils jumped ship at the first opportunity (good for them).
No, we should just kill them all.
Roofle owned unions.
Gee, what happened to that "digital divide" catchphrase? Forked tongued environmentalists out there are complaining about computers that are all piled up in junkyards because they're "obsolete" (read: won't run Quake 3 or Windows XP). Microsoft hasn't come up with a genuine new feature for MS Word since 2.0! Regardless, the most expensive computers are the ones with the latest graphics card, the zippiest hard drive, the most power-consuming processor. Imagine that!
The problem is, the initiative was only started a short time ago. This will most likely prompt other corporations to not even try something of this magnitude, this scale, and this... importance. Tell me the last time that a multi-billion dollar corporation gave you a computer (excepting your five finger discounts) and all of your co-workers a computer, and I'll tell you how pigs fly.
As to all this other talk about the jobs, in the most part these people have worked there all their lives, and their fathers and grandfathers. It would probably be assumed that they know the innards of a ford engine from top to bottom, but not a thing about computers. Some may, who knows? Nothing against the guys, but it probably didn't interest them. Now take those guys out of the setting (and women too) and tell them bye, good luck, don't let the door hit your bum on the way out, and maybe, just maybe, they might get interested in other things, fast. Could be good, could be bad... Time will only tell.
millions of people know how to hack linux. How many jobs are there for that?
Check out the United Auto Workers website . Average salary is $14 an hour.
The rotos don't strike, don't have opinions, don't get lazy, don't go to court, don't need traning. But all that's unimportant. You just need people and robots to what they are best fitted to do.
Imagine a labour intensive Computer Industry...that can't happen. People do the engineering, marketing and brainy stuff. Robots make the repetitive stupid stuff.
Sooner or later you'll have to fire and exile all ignorants to africa or some poor country just like brilliant minds leave their underdeveloped countries to join the USA to make it a wonder nation.
If you want to ditch that then ditch capitalism at all or at least globalizations.
Gee whiz, you'd think these guys don't have an envelope with a back on it. 166,000 people each got a computer. In early 2000, 500MHz Celeron, 4G disk, printer, modem, cdrom, speakers, monitor, rudimentary software. A thousand bucks a pop in quantity? They were charging $5 a month for net service, probably broke even on that. So $166 million for the 166k folks that they equipped. By now, such a machine can be had for less than $500, so to cover everyone it might have come to $250M in all. Sssh, it's a secret.
"Unionized GM assemblers make $21.02 per hour, Ford assemblers $21.03 and DaimlerChrysler assemblers $21.01."
This from: http://www.auto.com/industry/qgm17.htm
I don't see the point in giving away PCs to people with these salaries. Especially considering the percentage of these people in two income households. (Check the census)
Now if Ford really wanted to do some good for the world, they'd give computers to their foreign workers and leave the Americans to buy their own.
I think it's wrong to assume nobody is interested.
Sure.. they may not be intersted in computers the way some of us geeks are interested in them..
But nowadays.. the Internet has much to offer, whether or not you understand the underlying technology.
I have been a 'C' programer for 35 years and ain't seen a VB programmger yet who knew his ass from a hole in the ground...
Key thing left out here, in much of the anti-union flavor of many posts is that the Ford workers were getting some hefty profit sharing bonuses in prior years, which they will probably not see again for a while, these were in the $2,500-5,000 range.
FWIW, if you actually have a fulltime job, go see your HR people and get a disclosure statement on the cost of actually having you there. It's often 1.5 times your salary, workplace expenses not withstanding.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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What about Lexus? Their factories are all fully automated.
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WRONG! No economist would say anything so simple and definite.
What I might say is that artificially inflated wages in one area (inflated, say, by a union) will impoverish everyone, though the nonunion workers would certainly be hurt far wose than the union workers with the artificially high wages . Higher wages due to higher productivity (raised, say, by the employer's capital expenditure) will have the effect you describe.
I took a union shop leader's training course once, and was shocked by the ``screw your employer'' attitude. It soured me on unions in a big way. This was the American Federation of Teachers, by the way, hardly a notorious bunch of militants.
See what I've been reading.
Because they would never want to make it look like they don't make as much as they do.
"What about Lexus? Their factories are all fully automated."
Are they? I find it hard to believe, but I haven't been to one.
C hasn't been around for 35 years. It was created around 1970 or so, making it roughly 30, 31.
Sorry, sparky.
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I'm aware of the problems. They don't justify holding back progress. If everyone used your logic, the entire Industrial Revolution never would have happened. Surely you won't deny that average standards of living have improved quite a lot as a result of that.
And it's certainly not good for the economy (again, long-term) to have huge numbers of people doing what is, essentially, busy-work. Humans are the single most valuable resource a society has, and are far more versatile than any machine yet developed. Human effort shouldn't be waisted on menial tasks. If there are people with no other skills, teach them other skills. Don't make them waste their lives doing things machines could to better, faster and cheaper!
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As a former Chrysler assembly worker I can assure you that any savings from total automation would not be passed along to the consumer or to the remaining workers. I don't have very favorable impression of the unions either, but they're not the people responsible for the high auto prices. Why don't you check out some of the CEO's salaries . If you think the economy is in a recession now, just wait until a couple of hundred thousand people hit the unemployment lines. Maybe you'll have a different veiw on things when the layoffs hit you, but then again you're probably still living in Mommy and Daddys' basement.
Okay, I did some checking:
t ml
1 .h tml
v e2 000/Toyota040500.htm
:)
Georgetown (which is not a Lexus plant, but is a Toyota plant) employs 6,500
They are going to expand their engine plant by 200 (which is reasonable, our powertrain building is highly automated so it doesn't take near the same amount of workers as General Assembly would)
http://www.citynet.net/putnam/gazette/gz10127.h
300 jobs at their paint facility (water-based paint like ours)
http://www.datadetroit.com/news/Cambridge_05280
Ontario will employ 300
http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/english/news/archi
I'm sure that I could find more, but it's pretty obvious that they are not completely machine assembled.
I wouldn't mind touring one of their plants (we have exchange tours with Georgetown as it is)
Definitely a great car, it's our "target" as far as quality is concerned.
And allow me a plug...
As for us, we're #2 as of the previous J.D. Power survey (second to Lexus)
If you looked at the roots of home computer production the direction was one of greater and greater integration and lower and lower costs for the consumer. However, with the introduction of the PC the production costs have actually gone up compared to where they would have been with less complicated highly integrated units. In this day and age I believe that you should be able to buy a new computer for less than one hundred dollars that you simply plug into your TV/monitor, a sort of universal computing terminal.
Look, transistions suck. There is no question. Different industries get axed in different ways. We certainly need to be on the ball better to protect people during transitions. If someone loses a job because of incompetant, etc., then there is no problem with them being in trouble. However, those that lose their jobs because of structural changes in the economy probably should have a better safety net.
However, you understate the problem with busy work.
The United States has the world's largest economy. There are fewer than 300m of us, even with undocumented aliens, etc. We have a young (relative to our history considering life expectancy) retirement age, and a long childhood (mandatory schooling until 16, free schooling until 18, with over half the country going on to further education, 20 or 22), which leaves us with a small work force to push the economy.
During economic crisis, or feared crisis, we shrink the work force (great depression => social security, fear of post-war recession => GI Bill, other pushes for higher education).
During this last boom, wages were spiraling out of control for certain worker groups, which prevented companies from hiring, which likely cut off the boom earlier. Realize that we were PAST full employment... unemployment was lower than economists THOUGHT was possible with normal job switching.
If we can't rotate people into other sectors, our economy is going to peter out.
We need a system to HELP transition people. People replaced by technology need a system for:
A) training
B) maintaining their lifestyle during the transition
I normally don't like government programs, but I can see good reasons for federalizing this. If the company has to pay for the transitioning, the equation gets pushed AWAY from automation because of the added costs of paying former employees. If the employees pay for it, you screw people over. Spreading the costs across all Americans (taxes) prevents structual economic changes from falling upon the individuals hit or the regions that they are locating.
The other problem is what to do with older employees. Someone who is 45 or 50, that has held a job since they were 15-20, is in a difficult position to change functions. Perhaps we need a more useful early retirement system.
Ideally, we don't WANT companies or people to fear changes or avoid changes. We want to embrace changes.
It would be nice to live in a world where people (workers, entreprenuers always take risks) focus on doing their job and living their life. If there are changes, they figure out a way to adapt afterwards, instead of worrying or fearing change.
Just a thought, it might ADD efficiency to our economy...
Alex
I hear they don't have any unions in afghanistan. Go live there, you piece-of-shit scab.
(if you want it)
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I am a Ford employee in the U.S., and I can confirm that all U.S. employees were able to get the computers through Model E that wanted them. There were problems in other countries, however, such as arcane tax laws that would have required employees to pay about as much in taxes as they would have to buy the computers outright.
Also, even though HP was supplying the computers, PeoplePC was managing the Model E program (distribution and internet access), and apparently couldn't deliver on their agreement overseas. It seems PeoplePC was overly optimistic in their promises.
Try $22.00 an hour at the Ford Brookpark engine plant in Ohio. And that's for bottom of the food chain fresh hires. I did some contract work in there, and at $18.00 an hour I was being paid less than the Ford guys and gals who swept the floor. The vast majority of the jobs in the plant were technical, maintenance, engineering, or management. Almost all of the actual production and assembly in the plant was highly automated.
If it weren't for the union, that place would be just another shit-hole factory for the entry level employees and probably not a whole lot different than it is now for the engineers and management. As far as productivity goes, it seems like the only way management types seem to know how to 'increase' it, is to fire workers, lower wages, and make the remaining staff work harder and longer. I could do without those kinds of 'productivity' gains, and that's as good a purpose for unions as any.
You can buy a nice Staublii or Motoman robot for around $80,000.
Of course by the time you generate controls drawings, mechanical drawings (for end effectors and fixturing) and develope the application you are problably talking closer to $120-$150k for one robot.
We very seldom use what most here would concider a computer for machine control. Besides that, I have working on a project where we had to handle 33 variations of the same part on one piece of assembly and test equipment. The entire project was less than $2 million. The cycle time for a completed part was 10 seconds.
An Allen-Bradley SLC 5/04 processor with 16k (yes, that is k) is typical of what we use for machine control. I know this seems a small amount of RAM, but when you are primarily dealing with bits not much is required.
I have to disagree with you here. In some cases, the computer can make the dicisions much more quickly and reliably than any human on earth. One example I have personal experience with is machine vision systems. I did a project that involved inspecting disk pack assemblies that were assembled by hand and then orbital formed them in place. The operator would swear that he assembled them correctly when our machine rejected an assembly. Upon inspection, it was proven every time that the operator had in fact assembled them incorrectly. During final exceptance we even rejected an assembly because an eyelash was in the disk assembly. Our customers were very impressed and it also made a strong case for doing this assembly in a clean room.
Actually that is $364k in 35 years, but you left out things like benefits, social security taxes, and unemployment insurance that the company has to pay on top of the emplyee's wages.
OK, I could go on for quite a while but I am done for now...
I know what the Internet is, what the hell is this Interweb business?!
I was shocked at how LITTLE automation there was. Basically, the only thing that was automated was painting, and putting the tire onto the rim and inflating it. Other than that, it is all hand made. Other than that, it is conveyor technology and tools to make installing parts faster and easier.
For example, there is this thing that a guy pushed over that slides into an instrument panel on a cart. It is on hydraulics so he can pick it up with almost no effor, slide it over into the body of the vehicle, and by pressing a button all the screws are automatically put in, and it takes about 15 seconds.
Now, you could have four guys pick up this heavy thing, clamber over the raw chassis and use hand screwdrive to attach it, but I doubt they'd like it. You could also have people manually pushing the cars along, but I doubt they'd like that much. It would also suck to have to paint 1200 cars in a day by hand (thats how many Focuses can come out of the plant in a day). Really, the robotic tools are limited to jobs that a human COULDN'T do, and manual tools assist them in making their job much much easier.
These plants are not what you would expect.
Invalid form key: D7rQadpfEA !
OK Slashdot crew, once and for all, SOMEONE, ANYONE tell us what the friggin formkeys error is! There are posts I just can't reply to, logged in or anonymous, no matter what I do. What the fuck is a formkey error?!?!
Come on, all of us are waiting for a slashback explaining this.
Oh, and requireing a sourceforge login just to submit a bug is a really poor choice, but I guess otherwise you'd be flooded with error reports. I know when I saw a formkey error for like the hundredth time since the new slashcode went live, I swore I'd submit a bug report for every one of them, so maybe someone eventually would get the idea, but evidently I need an account that I have to log in to every time. Well done guys.
He's from the future.
Perhaps it is the decrease in time spent in random internet surfing that is reducing the expected payoff from this proposition. Perhaps it is the continuing expense of keeping the computers up-to-date. Everytime Microsoft puts out a new version of Windows and IE, or Intel releases a new chip, the computers become one more generation out-of-date, and less of a benefit that the employees will appreciate. Perhaps it is the expected cmmercialization of the net, with big nedia companies and corporations controlling an increasing percentage of time online, that makes the process of grass-roots promotion online less viable.
It's small consolation, but I metamoderated that happysock loving moderator as 'unfair' out of principle. At least that whore (karma) will take one in the sac.
Gee, your smart...
Basic is something used by kids before they learn
how to write programs.
C is still king when not overrun by C++. Most
small embedded processors use C. Only the people
who have no clue about programming use basic.
If you are too scared of C but someday you want to
learn how to program in a real programming
language and at the same time have the benefits
of the visual design use Kylix or Delphi or both.
Yes!!! Yours is about the only sensible post in this topic today.
I work for Ford Motor.
0 9.html
Please see here: http://www.thestreet.com/tech/siliconvalley/10249
This isnt the 'best' description of the situation, but BASICALLY the Ford PeoplePC deal has been a scam from day one.
Ford announced this program internally as an effort to jumpstart the rank-and-file computer knowledge in order to enable the company in the new 'ecommerce' universe (robost-corporate-speak-bullshit). They invested MANY MANY millions into PeoplePC PRIOR to their IPO. PeoplePC, as some of you may rememeber, was basing its business on "we give you PC now for a 36mos. ISP contract" ala Iopener and some others... when the big Dot Bust occured, all these companies started to fail. Ford, having its NUTS in the vice for about $25 Million dollars, Ford volunteered to ENROLL every Ford employee in the PeoplePC program... the cost to Ford directly? Im not sure, maybe something, maybe nothing - frankly I have no reason to believe that it cost Ford ANYTHING to do this, I believe it was an effort to further finance PeoplePC, give them customers (keeping them working/solvent) and give the impression that PeoplePC is a viable business.. remember Ford was in bed w/ PeoplePC pre-IPO... and they had a contract deal to be able to buy another $25M at IPO stock price.
So, basically, when PeoplePC the market ran away from all the DotComs and other fantasy-technology companies, PeoplePC became a worthless company.. they trade at like $0.18 per share.
Ford knows the company is doomed. They are not going to 'throw good money after bad'... they are going to let PeoplePC die.
THIS IS WHY THEY CANCELLED THE PROGRAM
Let me tell you very frankly - there are alot of people at Ford Motor Canada that are VERY VERY ANGRY about this. It could be a very heavy point in the next CAW contract (sept'02)... and the Salary Staff (which I am one of) are VERY aware of what is really taking place... the worst thing in the world is to be this close, this aware to something like this announcment and realize that the company you are working for is a decietfull(sp?) pack of liars.
Um, does anyone read news besides slashdot? The car companies are getting killed right now. They're offering 0% financing just to get people into the dealerships and GM and Ford both announced several-hundred-million dollar losses for the quarter.
This isn't about a program that doesn't make them money, it's about a new benefit that they just can't afford any more! They've cut out overtime, idled plants and are getting ready to lay off 5000 to 10,000 white collar employees. I'd say this was expendable.
"Can I say you're my lovepuppy?" Founding member of SODAMNHOTT
Maybe if they would spend less money in court costs against hackers they would have the money to give their employees the benifits that they had promised!!
... cooked and delivered to my door. I could save a lot of time that way.
and "you" are?
Those workers could also be running cells, which wouldn't necessarily mean that they need to touch the parts ever, just set the machines and make sure they stay running properly. I don't know. I read it in a book, the title of which I forget the name. I'll post it once I can find it.
A hundred years ago, Ford gives the incredible wage of $5/day (or was it $10) to reduce voluntary churning of employees, whose training was expensive.
Years later, socialists argue the government should mandate minimum wages and use Ford as an example.
Years later still, Ford starts giving out free computers and virtually free net access.
Prediction: soon, socialists will promote the government give away computers and net access for free, mandated to corporations.
Oh, wait. That happened in a Gore speech about 6 years ago. Nevermind.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.