Gregory J. Knox, President, Knox Machinery Inc.
Gregory J. Knox is the president of Knox Machinery, Inc. — a supplier to the Big 3 Autos in America.
Knox received a letter from the president of General Motors North America, requesting support for Obama’s bail-out program. Below is Knox’s seeringly truthful reply.
~Eowyn
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This is the letter Knox received from GM:
Dear Employees & Suppliers,
Congress and the current Administration will soon determine whether to provide immediate support to the domestic auto industry to help it through one of the most difficult economic times in our nation’s history. Your elected officials must hear from all of us now on why this support is critical to our continuing the progress we began prior to the global financial crisis. As an employee or supplier, you have a lot at stake and continue to be one of our most effective and passionate voices. I know GM can count on you to have your voice heard.
Thank you for your urgent action and ongoing support.
Troy Clarke President,
General Motors North America
Here’s Mr. Knox’s response:
Gentlemen:
In response to your request to call legislators and ask for a bailout for the United States automakers please consider the following, and please also pass this onto Troy Clark, the president of General Motors North America for me.
You are both infected with the same entitlement mentality that has bred like cancerous germs in UAW halls for the last countless decades, and whose plague is now sweeping the nation, awaiting our new “messiah” to wave his magical wand and make all our problems go away, while at the same time allowing our once great nation to keep “living the dream”.
The dream is over!
The dream that we can ignore the consumer for years while management myopically focuses on its personal rewards packages at the same time that our factories have been filled with the world’s most overpaid, arrogant, ignorant and laziest entitlement minded “laborers” without paying the price for these atrocities, and that still the masses will line up to buy our products
Don’t tell me I’m wrong. Don’t accuse me of not knowing of what I speak. I have called on Ford, GM, Chrysler, TRW, Delphi, Kelsey Hayes, American Axle and countless other automotive OEM’s and Tier ones for 3 decades now throughout the Midwest and what I’ve seen over the years in these union shops can only be described as disgusting.
Mr. Clark, the president of General Motors, states:
“There is widespread sentiment in this country, our government and especially in the media that the current crisis is completely the result of bad management. It is not.”
You’re right, it’s not JUST management, how about the electricians who walk around the plants like lords in feudal times, making people wait on them for countless hours while they drag ass so they can come in on the weekend and make double and triple time for a job they easily could have done within their normal 40 hour week.
How about the line workers who threaten newbies with all kinds of scare tactics for putting out too many parts on a shift and for being too productive (mustn’t expose the lazy bums who have been getting overpaid for decades for their horrific underproduction, must we?!?) Do you really not know about this stuff?!?
How about this great sentiment abridged from Mr. Clarke’s sad plea: ”over the last few years we have closed the quality and efficiency gaps with our competitors.”
What the hell has Detroit been doing for the last 40 years?!?
Did we really JUST wake up to the gaps in quality and efficiency between us and them?
The K car vs. the Accord?
The Pinto vs. the Civic?!?
Do I need to go on?
We are living through the inevitable outcome of the actions of the United States auto industry for decades.
Time to pay for your sins, Detroit.
I attended an economic summit last week where a brilliant economist, Alan Beaulieu surprised the crowd when he said he would not have given the banks a penny of “bailout money”. Yes, he said, this would cause short term problems, but despite what people like George Bush and Troy Clark would have us believe, the sun would in fact rise the next day and something else would happen where there had been greedy and sloppy banks, new efficient ones would pop up. That is how a free market system works. It does work if we would let it work.
But for some reason we are now deciding that the rest of the world is right and that capitalism doesn’t work that we need the government to step in and “save us”. Save us, hell! We’re nationalizing and unfortunately too many of this once fine nation’s citizens don’t even have a clue that this is what’s really happening but they sure can tell you the stats on their favorite sports teams. Yeah, THAT’S important!
Does it occur to ANYONE that the “competition” has been producing vehicles, EXTREMELY PROFITABLY, for decades now in this country?…
How can that be???
Let’s see:
Fuel efficient…
Listening to customers…
Investing in the proper tooling and automation for the long haul…
Not being too complacent or arrogant to listen to Dr W Edwards Deming 4 decades ago…
Ever increased productivity through quality, lean and six sigma plans…
Treating vendors like strategic partners, rather than like “the enemy”…
Efficient front and back offices….
Non union environment!
Again, I could go on and on, but I really wouldn’t be telling anyone anything they really don’t already know in their hearts.
I have six children, so I am not unfamiliar with the concept of wanting someone to bail you out of a mess that you have gotten yourself into. My children do this on a weekly, if not daily basis, as I did at their age. I do for them what my parents did for me (one of their greatest gifts, by the way), I make them stand on their own two feet and accept the consequences of their actions and work them through.
Radical concept, huh?
Am I there for them in the wings? Of course, but only until such time as they need to be fully on their own as adults.
I don’t want to oversimplify a complex situation, but there certainly are unmistakable parallels here between the proper role of parenting and government.
Detroit and the United States need to pay for their sins.
Bad news people, it’s coming whether we like it or not.
Stop trying to put off the inevitable.
That house in Florida really isn’t worth $750,000.
People who jump across a border really don’t deserve free health care benefits.
That job driving that forklift for the big 3 really isn’t worth $85,000 a year.
We really shouldn’t allow Wal-Mart to stock their shelves with products acquired from a country that unfairly manipulates their currency and has the most atrocious human rights infractions on the face of the globe.
That couple whose combined income is less than $50,000 really shouldn’t be living in that $485,000 home!
Let the market correct itself people. It will. Yes it will be painful, but it’s gonna be painful either way, and the bright side of my proposal is that on the other side of it is a nation that appreciates what is has and doesn’t live beyond its means. Gets back to basics, and redevelops the work ethic that made it the greatest nation in the history of the world and probably turns back to God.
Sorry don’t cut my head off, I’m just the messenger sharing with you the “bad news”.
Gregory J. Knox
President Knox Machinery, Inc..
Franklin, Ohio 45005
I can add to that story:
for 7 years I worked as a full time, regular employee of a small “mom and Pop” tool and die maker. I did everything from shipping, flat die stamping and inspection. I would take a work order, gather material, inspect material, cut to sheet size, run through die stamp, inspect parts, pack, ship. Everything from A to Z in the process. I was paid $6.75 cents an hour. I got heal insurance where I paid $10:00 a week. A company sponsored IRA that matched my meager $10 dollars a week.
I left the job when my daughter was born and she needed full time care. 8 years later I went to work for XEROX in manufacturing. I was paid $8:00 and hour as a temp. I worked for 3 months.
The regulars on this line made an average of $18:00 and hour. Full benefits and only did one single job. All day…doing the same sticking job. The mental games between “management” and “union” was horrific. They would carrot and stick the new temps. Bait them with promises of full time, $18:00 and hour employment but scare the temps with “miss even one day of work and it’s out the door. I got 10 more people waiting in line for your job.”
All while the “union” em0ployees bragged about how the “union” protected their jobs.
On top of that the line was managed horribly. They “re-balanced” the line and made it so one worker had no time to stop even for breaks and other workers were out of work mid-day.
The whole system is horribly mismanaged. The “engineers” come and go as they please. The Union employees will only make “quota” for the day and temps get screwed.
I was called back to work for Xerox after the 3 months were up. i declined. No amount of money is worth the crap they put me through. i would take the $6:00 and hour job any day.
Since my background is in manufacturing, I will give my two cents worth.
As business picked up we had no choice but to go to 3 shifts. First and second shift ran all available lines. Third shift only ran 3 lines. Almost every day third shift would easily beat out both first and second shift on production on all 3 lines that they ran. I wanted to know why.
We were NOT a Union shop and were always looking for ways to increase production to keep slightly ahead of schedule. We sent out our engineers to the factory floor to do time studies on all 3 shifts, on all three lines in question. The engineers kept coming back with more questions than answers and ultimately they had to admit that third shift was more efficient, but they couldn’t quite put their finger on why. I was not happy. Basically my engineers just got done with a month long study, while putting other projects on the back burner, to tell me what I already knew.
Two weeks later the Supervisor on first shift took a weeks vacation. Because third shift only ran 3 lines we took the Supervisor from third shift and had him run first shift for the week, leaving third shift with nothing more than a Section Leader in charge.
That one week was a breakthrough moment for the company. It was the first time in a very long time that first shift either broke even, or beat, production on third shift. Right away everyone said “oh, it’s got to be the Supervisor that makes the difference”, but I wasn’t buying that so fast.
It took us another week to figure out what it was that made the difference. It ended up being because of the Supervisor but in a way that shocked even me.
It turns out that both the Supervisor for first and second shift had come to us from Union shops, whereas the Supervisor on third had come up through the ranks of our company.
Now you know why I was fond of calling Unions a ‘disease’. Oh, in case you were wondering, we replaced the 2 Supervisors with non-union trained people and production did indeed go up.
Gio-