Gibson needs to become an employee owned company.

[Blackie]

........In the days of yore...........olden days........people in shops took pride in their work.....

......those craftsmen had an understood level of quality............and the company stood behind

....their quality,,,,,,,,,,,

[Blackie]

...........What say you now ?..............What is the bottom line ?..............why should I even consider gambling on a new Gibson ?

[Blackie]

Am I all TROLLED up yet ?.................punch yo ina eye !

[Blackie]

OK I will just buy up the company and weild my Iron Chicken Wing !

[pippy]

...Its when you add in the Office Politics and Bean Counters...

 

+1.

 

It almost destroyed Gibson under the Norlin management.

 

Some amount of accountability and efficiency is essential. When Ted McCarty joined Gibson he found a company making substantial losses every month (I seem to remember reading the figure was of the order of $100' date='000).

 

After spending time on the shop floor, talking to the workers (all of whom took great pride to be working for Gibson) and overseeing all the steps of instrument production he turned the financial situation around by instigating some changes of practice.

 

I quote; "I went there on the 15th of March 1948. We lost money in March. We lost money in April. We made money in May and we made it for the next 18 years that I was there."

 

This was not achieved by cutting corners with regards QC or component quality. Just getting things done in essentially the same way but [i']better[/i].

 

He said he would visit the shop floor daily to talk to the workers and ask them if there was any way in which they thought the instrument manufacture could be improved. Even if they only made one small improvement each day then by the end of the month they would have made things much better.

[freak show]

Self ownership? Pah!

 

The whip is excellent for improving motivation!

 

 

On a more serious note:

 

"Blackie", is that your cat -- it is a cat, isn't it? -- in your avatar?

 

I don't think I've ever seen a more sinister looking beast...

[brundaddy]

Employee-owned... hold your breath, it will happen real soon.

[zigzag]

... on the flip side many of those companies have had to hire American's again just at a lower rate which also directly reflect the poorer attitude of the employee...lol

 

There it is. I'm afraid that, where there is competition from a foreign work force, American workers are going to have to expect lower pay just to have a job.

 

I work for an employee owned company, but it is still run by a CEO who doesn't accept much input from his workforce and still has a "beancounter mentality." Attitudes around here are as bad as they are anywhere. In US industry today, we are in a 21st century business model controlled by MBAs and accountants where experience, individuality, service, flexibility, and innovation take a back seat.

 

-Sisyphus

[deepblue]

Everyone who works there needs to make a living wage. Im sorry, but from the footage I have seen alot of the employees

look like high school drop outs. I may be wrong, but who cares its MY opinion.

If the employees do band together to try and buy the plant, they had better choose the "alpha-dropout" to take control.

Am I making a broad statement?....no, im being a smart ***.

 

In a nutshell, as I said, everyone who works there needs to make a wage they can live on. Times that by X amount of workers

and include benefits and you have a massive payroll....Thats when corners get cut. They downsize. They try and get a single worker

to do more then one job and take on more responsibility...which means job loss, and hostility, not only to the guy/gal who gets fired, but

by the lad/lass who now has more work to do...

Its a house of cards that WILL tumble. Pissed off workers retaliate with sub-par work ethic and product suffers.

 

Remember...50-60 years ago, labour was cheap and technology was expensive....NOW its reversed. Technology

is cheap and labour costs are in the Stratosphere. The same thing happened to the car industry, but thats another story.

How do I know?...I watched the same thing happen for 25 years, and there wasnt a thing I could do about it.

 

If Gibson is to survive they will be swallowed up by another guitar company.......im done.

[edawg]

I also watched the "How a Gibson is Made" episode on the Discovery Channel, you could see the craftsmanship that goes into creating one of these guitars by the individuals that had a hand in producing them. One guy had been their for over twenty years! He should run the company!