Posted on 11/13/2008 7:25:40 AM PST by Monsieur Poirot
In his 34 years working for General Motors, one of Jerry Mellon's toughest assignments came this January.
He spent a week in the "rubber room."
The room is a windowless old storage shed in Flint, Mich. It is filled with long tables, Mr. Mellon says, and has space for about 400 employees. They must arrive at 6 a.m. each day and stay until 2:30 p.m., with 45 minutes off for lunch. A supervisor roams the aisles, signing people out when they want to use the bathroom.
Their job: to do nothing.
This is the Jobs Bank, a two-decade-old program in which nearly 15,000 auto workers continue to get paid after their companies stop needing them. To earn wages and benefits that often top $100,000 a year, the workers must perform some company-approved activity. Many volunteer or go back to school. The rest clock time in the rubber room or something like it.
It is called the rubber room, Mr. Mellon says, because "a few days in there makes you go crazy."
The Jobs Bank at GM and other U.S. auto companies including Ford Motor is likely to cost around $1.4 billion to $2 billion this year. The programs, which are up for renewal next year when union contracts expire, have become a symbol of why Detroit struggles even as Japanese auto makers with big U.S. operations prosper.
amazing. Depressing.
The Japanese auto makers have a similar building where you go in by yourself and find a knife laying on the floor.
“How demeaning to the human spirit.”
BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Working a job like that comes with a certain dehumanizing aspect to it already (trying not to overstate it), but take the job and add a union that does all your negotiating for you, tells you that you are oppressed and would be chewed up w/out them, tells you that you’d have nothing but for them, and you’ve got a real recipe for disaster.
In the USAF they have a thing called “Casual”. It is when you are between assignments. You paint things, clean things, answer phones and just do grunt work.
Why aren’t these people doing something like washing windows, cutting grass, answering phones, etc...
This is one of the reasons the GM bailout is another nail in our coffin.
As Rush has said, GM is really nothing more than a health care provider that makes cars on the side. We all heard the numbers yesterday: it cost GM over $70/man-hour to produce a car, while it costs Toyota less the $50/man-hour, and most others companies much less. Guess why.
A bailout of GM is nothing more than a bailout of the UAW.
You're already paying for AIG's luxury resort getaways, so why not for this crap too?
Get ready for the $100,000 bill...
When we lived in DC, we constantly heard rumors re similiar situations with fed so called employees being hid and paid in similiar situations.
When my dad began work he operated a vertical lathe and machined the cylinder sleeves for the new generation Wright engine, which replace the one that had taken Lindbergh to Paris. the strict rules regarding workload were maintained by the Union, (UAW) and by the early 50s the engine that powered the B-17 and then B-29 were their main products. Dad's productivity and his fellow workers had improved over those years to the point where their quota for the week was completed by end of shift on Wednesday.
What did they do? They brought their water pistols to work and staged these magnificent battles, (this is where I learned of and became very proficient in water pistol battles). Curtis Wright went from a full feature Aerospace Industry that built aircraft and engines and all the other stuff to today where they are an aerospace "parts" company!
Another triumph fro the UAW. Maybe they should provide water pistols for the occupants of the rubber room!
The sad part of this is the extent to which it entices the next generation to try to join the gravy train. Why behave in school, try to get academic scholarships, or even graduate when you can make more money than many, if not most, college graduates? Why pay for your kid’s higher education when you could get him hired on by your union? The problem is, this is an unsustainable balloon that is deflating right now, if not popping. Any job which does not require education will always be vulnerable to competition from other uneducated people or nations. (And, frankly, I believe the best thing we can do for some third world countries is to ship such jobs over to them, let them get an economy in place where its citizens will demand education and opportunities. I am not talking about wholesale exporting of jobs, don’t misunderstand me. There will always be people here who can’t get higher education and there are many jobs that undergird our own economy and defense, but I think it would be better to do this than send billions of dollars to governments in those countries.) That competition requires the unions to distort the free market to protect itself and thus distorts the entire capitalist system, just to sustain the union members and their union fees. Those fees are then used to ensure the government continues to prop up the unions. It is past time to wean the industry from its unrealistic expectations but the sooner it is done, the less pain for everyone.
I have a good friend that works in the GM plant in Moraine, OH that has been announced to close. He got laid off in April 2008, and when I spoke with him about a month ago he told me was still getting paid 95% of his salary - even though he was laid off and the plant was closing! He has no incentive to go find another job because 95% of what he is getting for doing nothing is more than what he could get at any other job. So he sits around all day doing nothing.
Union rules. Other people are paid to do those tasks.
That’s how a union shop works. it’s not the young ambitious go getter that gets the advance to a better position, it’s the laziest slack @ss that has the most seniority.
Young new employee soon learn “the ropes” however, about a day after their probation is over.
This is why cars are increasingly more and more expensive, while the actual material content cost keeps going down.
Imports from Japan, Korea and China, (not so much Europe becaue they have the same union problems) have to be heavily duty taxed. Otherwize you could by them for $1200 or so for a brand new crap box equal or better than anything GM, Ford, Chrysler makes thats comparable.
Think how much money the Joe public could save and spend on other stuff if they didn’t have to take out a mortgage for a car every 5 years.
The Auto worker unions have been a leach on the American economy for decades now. Sucking more and more blood while getting fatter and fatter.
It’s time to salt them off.
NO BAIL OUT
Union work rules, of course.
Let them file for bankruptcy and then renegotiate all these ludicrous union contracts!
Like I could not have answered my own question!!
There was a time when unions had their place. I think that time has passed!
I’m not paying for AIG luxury resort getaways. AIG was given a LOAN, not a bail out. A very short term one at that.
Plus i don’t deal with that company anyway, so not even my insurance premiums pay for them
The navy had something similiar.
The ship I was assigned too went on a long cruise about 20 days before I would finished my active duty assignment.
So I was assigned to a temp duty in Little Creek. After a couple of days there, the XO, made some calls to the DC area where we were moving after I got out. I opted out of a similiar do nothing situation for my final active duty days.
He got me a temp assignment in the Navy Yard in DC, so we moved early. My wife started her nursing job early, and the hospital and she were happy. We got into a great apartment ahead of time.
After about a week there, the CO and XO of the Reserve unit, I would be attached to after my active duty was over came in for a couple days, and we were introduced. I worked with them for that time. The next thing I knew, I was transferred to the Reserve station to finish my active duty. It worked out well for them and me.
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