I surprised this story didn't get more coverage.
Last Friday at the Tonawanda plant, the last GM Big-Block V8 was built, marking the end of an era that spanned half a century.

http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/899075.html

Unfortunately, 150 workers also lost their jobs.
Crap like that always seems to happen right before Christmas *sigh*

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Hold my beer and watch this...

It's a shame, because we use that 8.1 liter big block a lot in the marine industry. Now things are getting hairy for us as well.

*Sigh.

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Wheelhouse

I have 2001 Silverado extended cab with the 8.1 in it - it is a six speed manual, which is awesome for pulling the loaded four horse trailer up and down the mountains outside of town. The elevation changes from 4000ft to 9000 ft over about twenty miles of winding roads - I will keep this truck until it absolutely dies. The diesels aren't that great for me, as I also icefish - camping out for several days with temperatures dropping down below zero every night makes me nervous with a diesel

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"I don't feel like Satan, but I am to them"
Neil Young

Any word on a potential new line of engines eventually coming to the plant or is the plant slowly phasing out its assembly lines?

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Lord Stanley's Cup is what its all about.
Mr. Pegula, your destiny awaits you sir.

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Wheelhouse

They're re-tooling that line to make a new engine but several other engines are still produced in that plant.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

Very good. If they are retooling thats a great sign. I hope the workers aren't out of work to long xcheck.

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Lord Stanley's Cup is what its all about.
Mr. Pegula, your destiny awaits you sir.

Is this another example of believing manipulated statistics or do you have first hand experience and/or research for the bashing? I have worked on both sides and believe me, unions do a service to blue collar workers. If not for them, by in large, working conditions would be atrocious. Case in point: a local contractor was awarded the contract to demolish a football stadium in a Penn. city. The contractor was fined over 1 million for violations regarding worker safety. OSHA investigated after a local union informed them of workers being forced to burn lead paint from I-beams. Another fined for Asbestos removal violations. Another fined and the owner jailed for forcing (forcing with the threat of being fired) migrant workers to work in hazardous confined areas without protections. The list goes on, all were reported by unions. The unionized cost of a vehicle amounts to a mere 3 percent of the vehicle. The majority of the cost is research, development, re-tooling, white collar salaries, and government rhetoric. The unfavorable statistical bullshit is published and supported by businesses that would greatly benefit financially from the removal of unionized labor in that those workers pay may not be reduced, but the financial gain would be realized by reduced working conditions. I would recommend not bashing anything, group, or entity, unless first hand experience or unbiased research is realized.

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I try to think, but nuttin happens.......Curley Howard
There is no past as it exists merely as a slippery bond tying the memories of the past to the dreams of the future.............Me
If we started life as an old person and lived until we were young, we would eventually finish off fucked as an orgasm.......George Carlin

I fail to see why a union is required to report laws being broken. Anyone can do that.

On a new Cadillac, that's $2000...plus tax on that additional $2000.
That is a significant amount of money....maybe enough to go look at a Lexus instead.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

If that amount is reduced by 10 dollars per hour, it reduces the cost by 500 dollars and kept at least a few Americans working. OR perhaps all vehicles should be imported, all products imported, all IT outsourced, all corporate infrastructure housed overseas, to countries that encourage workers to slave at 50 cents per hour with no benefits, long hours without breaks, and in working conditions that any of us would not walk around in. As more of the parts and assemblies have been moved to Mexico, have we realized a reduction in the costs of those vehicles? I have only seem a rise. A reduction in production cost, a reduction in American labor, and an increase in consumer cost....HMMM

Perhaps another idea would be for the fat slobs in the offices to relinquish a portion of their ridiculous bonus checks or some of their multimillion dollar salaries, more in line with the monies received by foreign counterparts.

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I try to think, but nuttin happens.......Curley Howard
There is no past as it exists merely as a slippery bond tying the memories of the past to the dreams of the future.............Me
If we started life as an old person and lived until we were young, we would eventually finish off fucked as an orgasm.......George Carlin

I'm sort of disgusted at the fact that many UAW employees make greater than $20/hr to do menial tasks, like balance fan blades. Set the blade on a scale, add weights as designated by a computer monitor, and send the blade down the line...

Seriously? $20/hr?

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I'm split on unions.

Not long after I left the ambulance business, the staff there unionized. For that industry, it was a great move. Management there regularly fucked people over on wages, hours, all kinds of shit. Random drug tests weren't random; they were used as a tool by management to smack down people who complained.

Now they have protection from that kind of thing. Wages still aren't the greatest, but they're fair. People are no longer being forced to work 18 hour shifts with only 6 hours off in the middle so that the field sup's girlfriend could go shopping. People are now ALLOWED to use their sick time.

On the other side, you have the UAW. People are paid $30+ an hour to sweep up , or even sit in the cafeteria all day. I know one guy who was paid to stay home for almost 6 months because they didn't have work for him to do, but his seniority was high enough that he couldn't be laid off. People run for union positions so that they can spend 6 hours out of they day 'handling union business' , which means doing nothing.

At a previous job, I was doing data/phone cabling work at a new bank. We got the cabling job over the local IBEW because we bundled it in with a phone system and data work too. I had 2 25 pair trunk cables between floors intentionally cut by IBEW employed workers because I was 'taking a job away from a union member'. I almost had my ass kicked by a Laborers Local 93 member because I was picking up trash on the floor FROM MY OWN WORK. He said I was doing his job, and that I was going to pay for that.

I have had Verizon CWA techs sit in their trucks and refuse to spend 5 minutes terminating a phone cable in a wiring closet not because they COULDN'T do it, but because 'it was someone else's job'. I've had Verizon techs rip out work that I did because they felt I was touching something I wasn't supposed to, even though it wasn't their stuff. I had CWA workers in NYC unbox and damage a phone system that was clearly marked not to open, making me wait 3 days for replacement parts from France.

So yeah, unions can be good, but they can be extremely terrible too.

Class warfare?
Really?

Unions are so 20th century. We have laws now that protect everything unions were set up to accomplish.
It's a done deal.
Now they're just extortion machines.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

I love that phrase.... it's perfect.

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I tend to agree with this. I am truly grateful to unions for the role the filled at a time when workers were being taken advantage of, but that time is over and now they just seem like a bunch of buffoons...

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Its NNYFAN, but you can just call me Kris.

I work in an industry quite the opposite. Workers are still being shit on regularly and our unions bust their asses to attempt to keep at least a bit of humanity involved. We are treated with no more thought or respect than a migrant worker of the 1950's. We are paid decent, and sweat our asses off with hard work, until it becomes a non-union environment, then the wages drop dramatically and benefits are non-existent. That is my experience.
The UAW situation may be different, I haven't worked in that environment, but still as it may, drop ALL of the American labor union out of the quotient and it would drop the price only fractionally. Then that labor as well would be done in Mexican sweat shops where human life is degraded to not much higher than a rodent which is a good indicator in itself of the working conditions here if the business community had its way. JMO

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I try to think, but nuttin happens.......Curley Howard
There is no past as it exists merely as a slippery bond tying the memories of the past to the dreams of the future.............Me
If we started life as an old person and lived until we were young, we would eventually finish off fucked as an orgasm.......George Carlin

What exactly do you do?

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Construction industy

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I try to think, but nuttin happens.......Curley Howard
There is no past as it exists merely as a slippery bond tying the memories of the past to the dreams of the future.............Me
If we started life as an old person and lived until we were young, we would eventually finish off fucked as an orgasm.......George Carlin