Tom, I will wager that these foreign manufacturers will have less of a problem with this, even into the future, simply due to the difference in culture I have mentioned before. Foreign companies tend to invest more into themselves and look toward longterm issues and growth, than is typical (I say typical, because there are very good American companies out there that don't follow the norm) with older American companies. I won't say all of the problems of the Big 3 could have been avoided with regard to their current retirees, but suspect that many good opportunities for long-term investment (to offset these costs) were squandered away by the short-sightedness of managers trying to make their quarterly returns look better. Also, the assumption that it's more expensive to care for American employees is not entirely true. Granted, countries like Japan have better-developed social welfare systems to help with the costs of caring for the elderly, which helps offset the burden on a company, BUT, the requirements put on companies to plan for the long-term (and short-term) welfare of their employees is VERY high in the more modernized countries like Japan or in Europe. I've had discussions about labor issues with coworkers in Germany, and the hurdles required to dump a bad employee over there sound just as bad as over here in any unionized shop. The main Japanese players have been producing cars since almost the very end of World War 2, and so have to deal just as we do with aging employees and retirees, just seems they have planned for it better.
