If You Can Find A Better Car Company...

...then Windsor ought to buy it!

Wait a minute. Who does this Tom LaSorda guy think that he is trying to push us around. He may know about baseball. He did a good job managing the Dodgers. However, it is pretty clear that he may not know as much about car companies and Governments these days. He may just have struck out in Ottawa.

Just a joke, dear reader. I was fooling with you. I know they are different people. You don't have to email me.

Seriously, so what if he was born in Windsor and got his education here. Big deal. I guess that was supposed to impress the MPs and MPPs in Ottawa and Toronto. You know, he’s one of us.

When push comes to shove, he’ll do what he is told by his Wall Street bosses. It does not look that they were so smart after all buying into Chrysler and GMAC:

• “Chrysler LLC, the third-largest U.S. automaker, asked the Canadian government for a $2.3 billion (C$2.96 billion) loan as it also seeks larger wage concessions from union workers.
  
  The company wants Ontario-based employees represented by the Canadian Auto Workers to provide greater givebacks than those in a recent union agreement with General Motors Corp., Chrysler Vice Chairman Tom LaSorda told Canada’s House of Commons automotive subcommittee in Ottawa yesterday.
  
  “The current agreement with GM is unacceptable to us, and we have to break the pattern,” LaSorda said. “Chrysler LLC cannot afford to manufacture products in a jurisdiction that is uncompetitive...”
  
  Chrysler may move operations from Canada to a recently closed minivan plant near St. Louis if needed to be competitive, LaSorda told the House of Commons panel.”

Psshaaaww…we know he does not mean that. If he thought St. Louis was the better plant, Windsor would be closed by now. He’s showing how tough he is to the United Auto Workers so that they will not demand a “pattern agreement.” Better to fight the battle in Canada rather than to take on the Union in the United States where the President might be more sympathetic to the Union. He can use the deal in Canada to try and soften up the UAW.

But I was thinking about this. I don’t think we ought to give Cerberus any money at all. What for? Tomorrow, they are just going to come back again and ask for more. There are no job guarantees either and wages will be cut so workers cannot afford buy a new vehicle anyway.

I have a better idea. I am surprised that our Mayor has not thought of this. After all, he is quite happy in using taxpayer money for all of his other entrepreneurial THINK BIG visions.

THE CITY OF WINDSOR SHOULD DEMAND THAT THE SENIOR LEVEL GOVERNMENTS PASS LEGISLATION TO NATIONALIZE CHRYSLER AND ALLOW IT TO BE OWNED BY THIS CITY!

The concept is breathtaking. We are entitled to it. I cannot think of another city anywhere in the world that is the owner of a major automobile company. Perhaps this is why Gord Henderson has not been writing very much in the Star so far. I wonder if he has the scoop on all of this already and has been researching the matter so he will be writing a big column about this on Saturday praising the Mayor's farsightedness. No wonder Eddie has not been doing anything for years here for economic diversification. He has been planning this from day one. It will be the newest urban legend created about him.

The first thing that the Governments must do is to ensure that the tooling for the vehicles never leaves the country. That should not be too difficult because with all of their scare stories about border thickening there probably are not any truck drivers who would want to take the parts across the River anyway. It would take forever they would think.

The costs for the Governments to do the nationalization would be miniscule. I assume that the Canadian Governments would pay something because I would not want the Americans to think that we are a "Cuba" on their northern boundary. We already have drones flying over the border.

Perhaps the price might be $1.00, maybe even less. If we have good negotiators, Cerberus might pay us to take the Company off their hands.

Look, if the loans are not given, then Chrysler Canada goes bankrupt anyway. It has no value except for the loans. Even then, there is no guarantee that the company will survive. $1.00 is being generous.

However, if it is owned by the City, then the Company will survive. Our Mayor and Council will ensure that because they will make sure that every municipality and every level of Government across Canada will BUY CANADIAN VEHICLES. They may even force us in Windsor to buy the minivans too as part of our tax payments. We pay for a sewer levy now and a capital levy. Why not a minivan levy!

Moreover, we don’t have to worry about jobs disappearing. When have you ever seen a City employee being terminated or the number of City employees downsized. Their numbers are always increased. There would be a rule though that the minivan workers would have to live in Windsor so that they are taxpayers and we can nail them. Fair is fair after all. We pay them a wage; then they have to pay City taxes.

We get along well right now with the auto unions. I thought Buzz and Ken Senior used to help our Mayor in teaching him how to negotiate. Junior is a member of Council and generally follows what Eddie says so he won't be a problem.

All of the jobs will be unionized although there may be a fight between the CAW and CUPE as to who should be their representative. I would expect, given the number of people who are supposed to get jobs in the CAO’s Office even in this time of economic restraint, that we would soon be adding back the third shift to the Plant if the City took over. Maybe even weekends too.

As far as wages go, we would follow the pattern of the other automobile companies so that we would never have a strike here. Gee, why would taxpayers want to strike their own company anyway. We could accuse them of trying to hurt their neighbours if they did that. That would embarrass them into not taking aggressive labour action.

From a business case perspective, note that I did not say "financial case" just as the Mayor did not say financial in the Tunnel deal, the minivan market will effectively be ours. Oh sure, some imports or new domestics produce a few brands but ours will be the only true North American one in the marketplace. If someone is smart and works out an alliance with the UAW, our vehicles can be added to their list of North American Union–made products so that we can sell into the United States as well.

Think of it also from a manufacturing perspective if we do it properly. We won’t have to change the design every year for competitive reasons. The likelihood is that minivans are not going to be gigantic sellers in the future anyway so our competitors will drop out of the business. There will however be enough minivans sold to generate jobs at one plant in Windsor. Seriously, families with kids still like minivans.

We can have this market all to ourselves as time goes on. Our vehicle can be like the Model T: any colour that you want provided that it is black. I read this note as well:

• “From 1908-1927, the Model T would endure with little change in its design.”

Around 15 million of those vehicles were built:

• “the longest run of any single model apart from the Volkswagen Beetle.”

My recollection as well is that the VW car did not change all that much in its early years either. Isn’t that a coincidence that the plant is also building a minivan for Volkswagen! We can third-party build minivans for other car companies or sell them around the world too.

They would just get better and better because we would make minor modifications rather than have to spend millions of dollars for major retoolings every few years.

Remember, that we have to protect dealerships because they employ lots of people as well. They can sell the Minivan for the time being and the City can arrange to be the distribution agent for other car companies that want to sell into the North American market but cannot afford to set up a dealer network here. One of the big advantages of Chrysler Canada is its dealer distribution network that is probably more valuable than the car company itself.

Those dealers will be quite loyal to the City because after all the dealers have sunk a whole bunch of money into their dealerships that will have no value if Chrysler disappears. They need us.

Do not forget, we have some pretty smart people in Industry Canada. I am sure that they can figure a way to keep non-North American competition out of the marketplace. After all, they owe it to us especially if they got us into the automotive business in the first place.

Moreover, we would have on our side the MITI Minister, our own Sandra, who is the world's greatest salesperson. And if we needed a few bucks to tide us over, who better than Spanky, the Minister of Finance! It should not be hard to convince him and the Federal Government to give us all those billions they were going to pay out to the Wall Street Bankers. They were going to spend it anyway. If the business is going to fail, they may as well have it fail in Windsor and keep the money in Canada. Why, if we do it right, we might even have a few dollars left over to build a canal or two.

I have to tell you, in my opinion, Windsor taxpayers will jump on the bandwagon and support this 110%. After all, with all the profits made, dividend distributions would be made to taxpayers that would probably reduce our City taxes to almost nothing. What could be better than this?

Perish the thought that I would start working again full-time but the Blogmeister does have experience in the automobile industry in Canada given my former career. I also know a number of people who would be very interested in working for a Canadian automobile company as well given that a number of them are Windsorites who used to work for Chrysler.

Yes. This is a much better idea than just throwing good money after bad to give to the Wall Street bankers. Let them suffer. Who cares. No one is supportive of them anyway given all the public opinion polls. Our Governments will be praised by everyone across North America.

Heck, the US government won’t care either. They aren’t all that happy with the auto companies. Perhaps the Senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker, can suggest that his State take over Saturn once we have given him the model for doing so. They won’t call this Socialism either because they were prepared to nationalize the Big Banks. Eddie can give a big speech saying that Chrysler is too important for this City and too big such that we cannot allow it to fail. He can sound like the Head of the US Federal Reserve Bank in doing so.

This is the decisive moment in the career of Eddie Francis. He has been doing all of these pipsqueak entrepreneurial deals as practice. It is time for him to enter the Big Leagues. I am sure that he is up to it. He can find lawyers and consultants to pay millions to help him out. But unlike almost everything else that he has done before, he must be decisive this time around and actually execute a transaction.

He has been learning how to run a Board a Directors and not let the citizens know anything at all about what is going on. Being the Chairman of the Board and CEO of an automobile company would be nothing compared with that. Imagine the salary and perks that he would get for being the Head that he would not have to share with his Council Colleagues unless he chose to make them Members of the Board as well. They could again claim that they have not taken a salary increase.

Can you imagine. I would expect that even Councillor Halberstadt would keep quiet too on this deal and the other Councilors would fall in line very quickly. After all, they would probably be given courtesy minivans to test out just as Chrysler executives were given vehicles during their careers. It is the industry norm after all.

I can just imagine Eddie being on television offering us minivans. Why he could sell anything to anyone given what he’s been able to sell so far in this City, Greenlink being the best example I can think of offhand.

Come on Eddie, do what Lee urged:

• “Lead, follow or get out of the way!”