Mary Barra has been CEO of GM since 2014. She pledged to move to GM to EV. She has had just short of a decade.
Mary Barra, G.M.’s chief, warned that meeting all or most of the union’s demands could hobble the company’s prospects. “Make no mistake: If we don’t continue to invest, we will lose ground, and it will happen fast,” she said. “Nobody wins in a strike.”
The management problem is not clear to Barra. Profits are up at GM. Revenues are up as well but she has not cut costs enough relative to the increase in revenues. Starting with the workers is off the mark in engineering terms. We see Musk going to a single-piece chassis. We see very little out of GM. That is on Barra.
The company is investing for all the good that does. The profits are over $10 billion this year. A much better CEO would be the best investment GM could make. It would be the most cost-effective decision that could be made.
I just referenced her comments on another thread. She talks about GM “losing ground”, but GM has been losing market share for 40 years. And, as they continue to drop models in pursuit of higher ATP and GP, they will continue to lose share in the future. This is management hurting the company, but, of course, the big three’s traditional scapegoats are always the union, the government, and the Japanese.
Exactly. Bob Lutz said as much in his book “Car Guys vs. Bean Counters” long before Barra was ever there. “Germans have higher labor costs than we do, doesn’t seem to be hurting them any”. He also talked how when Benz bailed out and took over Chrysler how shocked MB management was at the compensation the Chrysler execs seemed to believe they were worth, especially given how poorly they we’re running the company.
LOL Of course, those Germans are all Commies. They don’t understand that Shiny ideology says the “JCs” are entitled to all the loot, that the proles are a cost to be minimized.
On that “how poorly they were running the company” part, let us not forget Jamie Dimon, who received a bump from a mere $30M/yr to $80M, even though shareholder return for JPM trailed the industry average. Truly a beacon of Shinyness.
So do the Japanese if you add up all of how labor in Japan is paid.
You have to love American executives. Maybe if GM gives Berra a pay raise things would be different? I am sure she can make a sweet promise to the BoD.
She is what my Irish grandmother would call, “the baggage”.
She is an electrical engineer in a business where the customer buys from viewing a mechanical automobile. The customer is not about how power windows work.
“We took full-size pickup leadership from the Ford F-Series in 2020 …”GM CEO Mary Barra
Which BTW the way isn’t true. The F-Series undoubtedly has the most sales of any single brand’s truck lineup, with 467,307 through September of this year compared to the Chevrolet Silverado’s 374,479. It’s only if you combine the GMC Sierra sales with the Chevrolet sales that you can come up with that figure.
The only technology that GM CEO Mary Barra is focused on is selling pick up trucks for $50k.