Work hard and do your best though we dislike you
Work hard. Contribute your all. Sorry we don’t care about you.
That’s the message coming from DaimlerChrysler for its American employees.
Tom LaSorda urges employees to remember that Chrysler Group is investing in the future, to work hard and try to pull the fat from the fire after all those people from Stuttgart put it there.
Unfortunately, the DaimlerChrysler Boards keep undermining that message by making it clear that anyone who gives them enough cash will get the Chrysler Group. There is no apparent concern for the thousands and thousands of Chrysler Group employees in their actions and statements; indeed, they’ve (probably not Dieter) made enough sleazy off-the-record statements to the press about the Americans to show that at least some of the Board apparently would like everyone at Chrysler Group to lose their jobs as part punishment for trying to taint Mercedes with what we can only describe as higher quality.
Some of the buyers for Chrysler are clearly not good in the long term for Chrysler employees’ jobs. General Motors poses a serious risk, depending on what they would do with Chrysler after acquiring it. Would they simply take over the flexible manufacturing, minivan platform, Jeep name (and perhaps engineers), the upcoming automated-manual transmission, Phoenix V6, and a few other technologies, and can the rest of the company? How about the various private equity firms? Some of them seem fairly sleazy while others seem very above-board, but that doesn’t seem to be a factor; everyone gets the same financial packet, as far as we can tell.
Those waiting for a sign from above only hear “all options are open.” There’s no BMW-style “we’ll give away Rover complete with a billion or so of our cash to help you keep it running for a while.” No symbolic gestures are being made for the Chrysler employees. Instead, it’s a constant stream of insult and innuendo from the cowardly masked board members countered only by Dieter Zetsche’s references to the skills and expertise of Chrysler’s engineers.
Whatever happens, it should happen quickly. This chapter should close as soon as it can. Among other things, I can’t believe this attitude towards employees motivates people to root out and fix quality problems, to stand up to managers and demand that problems be fixed, to put in that extra time to get it right - or even to give Chrylser another chance instead of sending off that newly polished resume to Toyota. I hear they’re hiring.
