• From Chairman Mike Bullock: Management has agreed to start granting "excused" or "E-days" (excused days off in advance without pay). To get an E-day, you must have all your vacation time – both VP and VR – scheduled. Then management will look a week ahead and consider granting E-days based on availability and business needs.
•From Automotive News: Honda Motor Co. will raise workers' monthly wages after a parts factory strike shut down almost all Chinese production. The workers will receive a 24 percent pay increase to 1,910 yuan ($280 dollars) per month, Honda said in a faxed statement today. Most workers have accepted the offer, while talks continue with those who are unsatisfied, the automaker said.
•From the Wall Street Journal: Ford Motor Co. is preparing to phase out its 71-year old Mercury brand, adding to the list of storied Detroit nameplates that reached the end of the road in recent years as the industry has become more competitive. Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally and his top lieutenants have won the backing of key members of the Ford family and are expected to seek approval from the car maker's board to kill Mercury after years of dwindling sales, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.(Update: Ford CEO Alan Mulally told WJR's Paul W. Smith that he had "nothing to add" to the discussion swirling about the automaker's Mercury brand. "We continue to review all of our brands and all of our nameplates," Mulally told Smith this morning before changing the subject.)
•From the Detroit News: Detroit's Big Three have slashed warranty claims more than 40 percent in recent years -- further evidence that the automakers, long plagued by repair problems and consumer perceptions that their products are inferior, are narrowing the quality gap with foreign competitors. Warranty claims have fallen 45 percent at GM from 2007 levels, while Ford reduced warranty repair rates an average of more than 40 percent in each global business region from 2007 through last year, according to initial quality reports.
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