State of the Union April 26, 2011

April 26, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com


There will be gate drives this Thursday, April 28 to raise funds for the March of Dimes/March for Babies. Your donations will be put to use helping to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. This year’s co-captains are Tina Hays (stamping) and Mike Danielson (paint).

From the Detroit Free Press: Ford earned $2.6 billion in the first three months of 2011, a 22.4% improvement over a year earlier, as U.S. sales increased on the strength of small and midsize carsand cost-cutting in Europe resulted in a modest operating profit. The Dearborn automaker’s net income of 61 cents per share beat the 50 cents per share consensus forecast of about 20 Wall Street analysts and marked Ford'smost profitable first-quarter in 13 years. In 2010's first quarter Ford made $2.1 billion, or 46 cents per share. But the bulk of the improvement came in North America, where Ford's operating profit, before taxes, rose 49% to $1.8 billion. TrueCar.com, a market research firm, reported that the average Ford vehicle sold for $31,862 in March, or $541 higher than the year-earlier average of $31,321. Ford's share of the U.S. new vehicle market slipped to 16% from 16.5% in the first quarter of 2010. The phase-out of the Mercury brand was a major contributing factor to the decline.

There are dire predictions about power shortages this summer in Japan, and officials are entertaining many different suggestions from competing groups. One such idea, as reported by the Automotive News, is quite simple – unplug all of the Coke vending machines. Apparently they are more ubiquitous in Japan than they are here. James Treece writes, “Some studies show that each 24-hour vending machine requires very nearly as much electricity as the average Japanese household (which also says something about the size of the average Japanese home)…. The conventional wisdom is that Japan’s vending machines as a whole require the equivalent of five Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants’ full output.”

From CNBC: AutoNation, the largest U.S. auto dealership group, expects slower growth in U.S. auto sales this year, with Detroit automakers taking a larger share of the market at the expense of their Japanese rivals. The Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based dealership group cut its full-year industry wide U.S. sales forecast from 12.8 million vehicles to the mid-12 million range. Chief Executive Mike Jackson said he expects parts shortages and production delays to cut output from Japanese automakers by 600,000 to 700,000 vehicles this year. Jackson said it was not clear whether Detroit automakers would be able to make up for that shortfall because of their own difficulty in sourcing crucial parts from Japan, but he forecast that General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler would gain market share.