Squeaky Car Dealers

Although some car dealers are not complaining about the delay in getting the cash in the Cash for Clunkers ($4C) program, others are whining like little kids whose parents changed their minds about letting them stay up late. It is hard to find sympathy these pouters because the program moved hundreds of thousands of cars out of their inventory and the delay is not a big burden. Furthermore, the dealers had the choice to take the “clunkers” as trade-ins for $4,500 and resell them. In many cases, the clunkers could have been resold for that amount or more.

Close to $3 billion was pumped into the U.S. car market by $4C, facilitating the sale of between half and three quarters of a million cars. This has to be a mega-Red Bull for the retail car business. My wife and I bought a car under $4C. We went to several showrooms to look at cars and everywhere the sales agents were talking about how high the demand was. Considering that many of the most popular car models would not qualify based on the difference in gas mileage between the trade-in and the new car, there must have been many ancillary sales, in addition to $4C deals. Dealers complain about the paperwork, but there will be forms to fill out any time government money is involved.

The effective date of $4C was July 1, 2009, but many dealers did not process any $4C deals until more than three weeks later. Less than 60 days after the first deals were consummated, many dealers are complaining that they have not been paid yet. The Obama administration is promising that the payments will be made by the end of this quarter, but even if dealers have to wait until the end of the year, they have little to complain about. This is not the price of the new car they are waiting for, it is just the trade-in on some of the deals they wrote in July and August.

Car vendors generally see their money within a few days, so they are spoiled. They are not used to waiting for money. However, they have much better access to credit and much bigger cushions than many people who have to wait for government money. When I was representing assigned appellate cases and being paid by the county, I often had to wait more than a year to get paid. Furthermore, the amount private defense attorneys were paid for representing indigent defendants was, and is, pitiful. Nursing homes are required to wait for Medicaid approval for residents who are eligible for the program. In Wayne County, here in Michigan, it is common for a Medicaid application to take more than a year before the worker is satisfied and the case is opened. If car dealers see their money this year, they have no legitimate complaint.

Finally, it must be remembered that many of the clunkers traded-in were not worthless. The car buyer just decided that he or she could not get more than the program would pay or did not want the bother of selling the clunker. In order to qualify for $4C, the trade-in had to have been registered to the car buyer and insured for at least a year and it must have been driven to the dealership. I could have sold the 1999 Blazer I traded in for $3,000 to $4,000. If I could have realized that much, I am sure a dealer could have done that well or better. Therefore, the dealer had a choice: He could have taken the car as a clunker, knowing he would have to wait awhile to get $3,500 or $4,500, depending on type of car purchased, or he could have given me that much as a straight trade-in and peddled the car at the auction or put it on a used-car lot. The fact that he took my Blazer under $4C was a business decision. To whine now that he has to wait too long to get paid is immature.

Chainsaw Management

Too many employees in too many companies are quivering in their cubicles or at their workstations, waiting to face the HR hangman.  This is partly the result of slumping auto and home sales, but it is more the result of poor management.  Large corporations are no longer run by entrepreneurs.  They are run by bean-counting nebbishes who only have one answer to a reduction in business–layoffs.  The results of this human-resource belt-tightening are A) the employees who remain are stressed and overworked to the breaking point and B) the company’s skilled workforce is no longer available when business picks up again.  An entrepreneur should exploit the opportunity presented by excess employees, not shed them like dead batteries from an over-indulged child’s electronic toys.
Albert “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap is the mismanagement poster boy of Downsizers Syndrome.  He killed Sunbeam in 1996 by cutting payroll by 50%, closing 18 of 26 factories and simulating profits by “channel stuffing.”  Channel stuffing is over-producing merchandise and jamming the distribution network with the excess, then reporting the merchandise as sold.  Like a Ponzi scheme, this only works in the short term and it soon became apparent that Sunbeam was headed for the graveyard of failed companies.
Chainsaw Al is only an extreme example of the Little Johnny One Notes of corporate governance.  The current crop of CEOs seem hardwired to respond to any problem with pink slips.  The bigger the problem, the more pink slips get handed out.
Publicizing layoffs often results in an escalation of the stock price.  However, that is only a speedbump in the stock’s slide and seldom has a lasting effect.
In 1996, Robert Reich, then Secretary of Labor, said “I do think it’s unfortunate to view a company’s employees as costs of production rather than assets.”  A skilled workforce is the engine that powers the organization.  Chopping away parts of the engine in response to reduced demand for products or services is foolish.  A creative, entrepreneurial management team sees excess workers as an opportunity, not a problem.
I was the chair of the board of directors of a community mental health provider when its budget was cut by 25%.  This was a situation where layoffs would impair the organization’s ability to provide services, resulting in a vicious cycle of reduced budgets causing reduced delivery of services and reduced delivery of services causing further budget cuts.  Calling the employees together, I pledged that there would be no layoffs.  As it turned out, there were some unpaid leaves taken by managers and employees and there were a couple of “pay holidays,” but no one was laid off and we survived the cut-backs until our budget was restored.  What was crucial was that the organization made it clear, as soon as the budget restrictions became known, that it would stand by its employees.  This improved morale and gave the staff the determination to weather the crisis.
The budget dilemma faced by our non-profit was the opposite of that faced by home builders and car makers.  We were expected to maintain production despite budget cutbacks.  In the for-profit world, companies may find that they have too many workers for the production demand.
There are also those managers who want to lay off employees to show how tough and frugal they are; so they cut the number of staff without regard to productivity or merit.  These are managers who think that if 100 employees can get the job done, 90 should be able to handle it.  Then they decide that if 90 can do the work, 80 employees are enough.  They are like tax-cut maniacs for whom no tax cut is ever deep enough.
What would a canny manager do instead of cutbacks?  Put supernumerary employees to work in new areas and on new products.  A car company CEO should consider moving employees into green initiatives–working on hyper-efficient vehicles.  The latest gas crisis will not be the last and sooner or later, the U.S. public will decide that they don’t need 5,000-pound SUVs to commute to work or to drive to the bodega.  If the U.S. Big Three want to stay in the game, they should stop designing the cars that they think are the most profitable and start developing the cars that are adapted to the uses people put them to.
A company that produces products for the home-construction industry does not have to cut back, just because there is a slump in new housing starts.  The CEO should think outside the big box and use the excess production capacity to start new ventures.
Many of the laid-off employees walk off with a severance package equal to several months of salary and benefits.  Figuring that cost, added to the company’s investment in those workers, it becomes apparent that a huge amount of the company’s assets are walking out the door.  These employees could work on new products or services for up to a year, at no cost to the organization!
The stock market has lost half of its value in the past year.  So what?  The money is not gone, as I recently pointed out.  Depressed stock prices and tight credit make it difficult for corporations to raise capital.  This will lead 99 out of 100 CEOs to cut back operations and lay off employees.  However, one in 100, or maybe even one in 1,000, will see the opportunities in the current market.  Instead of cutting off the hands that produce the wealth of the nation, they will find ways to keep those hands busy.  Instead of bemoaning the trouble U.S. businesses are in, they will take over troubled businesses and turn them around.  This is still the Land of Opportunity and CEOs who see that will lead their companies to unguessable prosperity.

John B. Payne, Attorney

Dearborn, Michigan & Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

(800) 220 7200

FAX (313) 562 3340

©2008 John B. Payne, Attorney

www.law-business.com