Home > Uncategorized > Generosity is good, but…

Generosity is good, but…

February 12, 2006

It’s difficult to put this in a positive light:

Chicago Tribune: Paid for not working  FLINT, Mich.—

All day, Judy Rowe sits in a room at a large, old Delphi Corp. auto parts plant here, reading, sewing or staring into space. For this she earns $31.80 an hour.

There are 70 people in this room, all employed by Michigan-based Delphi and protected by the United Auto Workers union. They clock in at 6 a.m. and clock out at 2:30 p.m. But there is nothing for them to do.

“I think I’m slipping into a depression,” said Rowe, who has been languishing for six years in this strange and very unique form of unionized employment limbo known as the jobs bank.

If there was work to do, they would be on the manufacturing lines. But there isn’t. And they can’t be laid off because their union contracts include this unique provision…

There are 4,000 workers in the jobs bank at Delphi, which has filed for bankruptcy, and an additional 6,300 in the jobs banks at struggling Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. There are 2,500 more at Chrysler.

At the Delphi East plant in Flint, they get their full salaries for sitting in a large room. They get a lunch break. At other jobs banks, employees are allowed to do community service.

This system has never been seriously challenged, despite the extraordinary cost of carrying idle workforces that earn not just their pay but accrue benefits, vacation time and seniority credits…

Delphi, which is reorganizing in bankruptcy court, has made it clear it wants to kill the jobs bank. Ford and GM, which will begin to negotiate their next contracts with the UAW, are believed to be watching this process closely, with the hope that they can unload their job-bank employees as well…

Chicago Tribune special report: Paid For Not Working (free registration required but the ChiTrib news service is definitely worth subscribing to)

Jobs banks are costing the auto companies an average of $130,000 each year per- well, I was going to say, “per worker” but…

Given that Chinese investors are beginning to look very closely at Delphi (which would make them an instant big player in the US auto-parts market) it seems unconscionable that ten percent of Delphi’s work force is being paid full compensation to sit in rooms and do nothing at a cost of $400m/yr. It’s no use whining about ‘non-union competitors’ when the unions push for stuff like this.

I thought only government could be that inefficient.  Competitiveness, anyone?  Or should we start teaching Chinese in grade school?

Categories: Uncategorized
  1. February 13, 2006 at 11:43 | #1

    I blame senior management at the big three auto producers as much as I blame the unions. Management rolled over for the UAW as long as they could pass the cost on to the consummers and the consummers didn’t complaint. But then along came the rice burners which were a better product at the same price or less and it put the big three in a bind that they had tied themselves by playing footsies with the UAW. Now it may take filing for bankruptcy protection to bust the unions and get a reasonable labor contract.

    The Professional hockey league owners had the right idea-lock ‘em out if they don’t want to work. The American auto producers may have to do the same thing-and what the hell, most of the rice burners we drive are made in the USA anyway.

  2. February 13, 2006 at 14:46 | #2

    Unions want it all, high pay, high benefits, low productivity and no responsablity for the product. They have killed the golden goose and now they want to fry the eggs. Unions blackmailed managment with threats of strikes, slowdown, etc, etc. Now is the time for the Unions to step up and help bail out the boat they helped to sink, They won’t of course, they will hope for a government bail out of the company so they can keep us the same old practises. Unions have long outlived any kind of usefullness. Unions are just blood seeking leachs but the workers and management are afraid to get rid of them

  3. February 14, 2006 at 08:18 | #3

    I don’t want to bust the unions; I want ‘em to look up the word ‘enough’ in the dictionary.  You know, as a patriotic gesture.  As companies become ever larger and more powerful someone needs to protect the interests of the workers but they need to use some intelligence about it.  Protecting every worker from every imaginable misfortune at company expense actually hurts workers in the long run.  It means fewer jobs, weaker companies, and it hurts the country.  Oh, and it gives people very good reason to question if the unions are doing as much good as harm.

  4. February 14, 2006 at 09:02 | #4

    If the government levels the playing field and there is a right to work law instituted in every state then I will have no problems with the unions. But as it is now the game is stacked against business. The way I look at it if employees don’t want to work and go on strike against my business then I have the right to hire some that do want to work for what I am willing to pay. The closed shop laws forbid this—and the people in the closed shop states wonder why industry is moving south?

  5. February 14, 2006 at 15:12 | #5

    As a one-time union member (shocking, I know), I try to bear in mind that there’s a reason unions were formed, and that the union and labor law movement in this country were critically needed, invaluable forces against an otherwise Darwinian field.

    That said, unions have become more about union managers operating rival fiefdoms to corporate managers, less about the long-term benefit to the union members (which, of course, relies both on the economic health of the company and averting the threat to same by labor action).

    Labor reps are adversarial sometimes for good reasons—but that kneejerk adversarial stance also prevents cooperative measure that will benefit the greater number.

  6. WeeDram
    February 14, 2006 at 20:24 | #6

    GUYK:  The NHL created the problem they had to then solve; they created their own trainwreck with the previous CBA.  The difference is that the CBA expired, whereas the agreement governing these job bank workers is still in force.  (OT:  Gary Bettman is a disaster as the NHL commissioner.  He’s a little weasel who knows shit about the GAME.)

    If unions are essentially outlawed, watch out middle class … even more than we’re suffering today.  Yes, there are problems with unions.  I voted against a union drive in my company because I thought the particular union had no chance of representing the workers in a constructive way.  But under different circumstances I might have voted differently.  My company’s management is somewhat enlightened, though by no means perfect.

    Essentially I agree with DOF; it’s all about balance.

  7. Old Guy Don
    February 17, 2006 at 09:08 | #7

    For a whole lot of years, I’ve been telling anyone who listens to me (which aren’t many) that unions outlived their usefulness many years ago, and this article is one more proof of that fact. The costs of just about everything in our daily lives are increased as a direct result of unions and their corrupt officials.

  8. WeeDram
    February 17, 2006 at 19:57 | #8

    For a whole lot of years, I’ve been telling anyone who listens to me (which aren’t many) that super-compensated upper-level executives outlived their usefulness many years ago, and this article is one more proof of that fact.  The costs of just about everything in our daily lives are increased as a direct result of foolish, greedy executives.

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