Money For Nothing (Labor union sickness on an unimaginable scale)

Wall Street Journal ^ | May 2006 | Jeffrey McCracken

[Nathan Zachary]

Why aren’t these people doing something like washing windows, cutting grass, answering phones, etc...

Not their job class/description. Every job in a unionized place has a job class and job description. An employee would have to apply for a transfer and then wait on a seniority list to get the job. Plus there are pay grade issues. Rarely do you see union employees move down the ladder, only up.

[alloysteel]

"A bailout of GM is nothing more than a bailout of the UAW."

Exactly true. What kind of union contract gets negotiated with Toyota? Honda? Mitsubitshi? The Saturn plant, set up in a non-union state, was a GM spin-off, intentionally developed OUTSIDE the usual union contract talks, and it has been a singularly successful introduction. Today, the line of Saturn models has successfully supplanted the now defunct Oldsmobile division, a line that was allowed to die as a kind of warning to UAW that it could ALL go south.

Granted, there was not all tha much differentiation between Olds and Buick on the one side, and the Olds and Pontiac on the lower side, which may have had more than something to do with the demise of Oldsmobile.

Shortly, most of the automobile manufacturing companies will be foreign-based, with only a few scattered assembly plants in this country. Not that we shall need so many, what with the Great Depression II staring us in the face.

Pierce-Arrow, Huppmobile, Graham-Paige, Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg, Moon, Dort, Franklin, Maxwell, and Wills-St. Clair are all marques that turned out to be undercapitalized and overpriced for the times.

The big 3 have all been caught in a similar trap.

America is SO screwed.

[bert]

.....A bailout of GM is nothing more than a bailout of the UAW.......

And of Michigan and several MI Freepers who even today are in dire circumstances.

There is one possible good outcome of the bailout. The big three will be allowed to sever or at least make major changes in the relations with the UAW.

[count-your-change]

Wasn’t that the way Japanese companies got rid of unwanted managers? Just give the guy a windowless office and absolutely nothing to do, no phone, no paperclips to count, nothing. Very shortly the guy quits and the company is saved the problem of firing him.

[randog]

They’re making <$100K/year + gold-plated benefits. It would takes years of schooling and years of climbing the ladder before they reached that level of compensation in the real world. Again, why bother?

[Red in Blue PA]

This is from 2006?

[Glacier Honey]

I have heard of this as well.

Can anyone please answer a few questions for me?

1) Why is it that liberals are always complaining about the evil corporations, like the oil companies who employ hundreds of thousands of Americans of being greedy even though they pay their corporate taxes and still turn a profit while Big 3 auto makers are portrayed as victims of a down turn in the economy and need a bail out.

2) Why do liberals feel it is okay to allow tax payers to pay for GM/Ford and Chrysler when it is so obviously the worse managed business in the history of America?

3) Why are unions seen as greedy evil corporations who destroy companies?

4) Why do the majority of people in Michigan continue to support democrats who have destroyed their state?

I'm just an evil dumb intolerant conservative and I'm sure Bush will ultimately get the blame for it but I don't understand this philosophy of the liberal voters.

[Oatka]

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.

Back in the mid-50s I was a linotype operator on the way up. My goal was to make $2 and hour (good money then) and set two galleys of straight matter in one hour with three or less typos. (One galley of straight matter type, like that in newspaper columns) was 21 inches long and about two inches wide. Working on a big daily newspaper seemed like job security.

I was working upstate New York with a guy who soon joined the union at the Newark Daily News. To get in the union, you had to meet that same two galley criteria. The first day on the job the guy starts pounding out two galleys an hour. The shop steward comes over to him raising Hell. "Whaddya tryin' to do? Put a fellow worker out of a job?" The guy found out REAL FAST that the new norm was ONE galley an hour.

I gave up any thought of a union job then and there and managed to stay away from them for 13 years. Finally had to buy my way in if I wanted a job in San Diego. In the year I was a member I worked at two places and was treated far worse than at any of the open shops. In 1967 I went into something called "computer programming" and built a lucrative life in a great environment - nice white collar threads, good-looking chicks, and NO unions.

[Glacier Honey]

Weren’t the unions mostly responsible for the steal market failing here in America and moving overseas? They out priced themselves right out of the market because it cost too much to produce here and they could no longer be competitive?

Well, let the unions be held accountable for the failure of GM

[Alberta's Child]

There's actually a rational explanation for how these "Job Banks" started. Believe it or not, in some industries they were originally proposed by management, not the unions.

One of the problems faced by some industries in the past was the transient seasonal nature of a lot of the work. The auto industry is a good example of this . . . production varies by time of year as new models are introduced, plants are re-tooled and upgraded, etc.

The "Job Bank" was seen by management as a way to keep their best assembly-line employees on the payroll for extended periods of time rather than risk losing them forever if they were temporarily laid off during slow periods. Local governments saw this as a way to promote stability and reduce large-scale migration between geographic regions during lulls in the production cycle. Without this sort of thing in place, an assembly-line worker in Detroit who was laid off for several months might take a job in another industry in Cleveland . . . never to return even when he was badly needed back in Detroit by his original employer.

What you are seeing now is the idiotic -- but logical -- extension of this practice once it has become ingrained in union contracts.

[Glacier Honey]

Why aren’t these people doing something like washing windows, cutting grass, answering phones, etc...

I think it is above their pay grade!

[bfree]

Thanks UAW.

Can’t wait for the left to unionize everything. Boy will that ever help the economy!!

[Pyro7480]

We went 51 replies without someone thinking of Dire Straits after reading the title? What is the world coming to? ;-)

Dire Straits - Money For Nothing

[piytar]

I will NEVER buy another UAW manufactured car again. Not going to have a dime of my money go to these scum. PERIOD.

[az_gila]

There is one possible good outcome of the bailout. The big three will be allowed to sever or at least make major changes in the relations with the UAW.

---

Nah, the “O” and his (D) union backers would never allow it...

[Blue Shark 1]

Let them file for bankruptcy. If there is a bail out we should boycott GM - Ford Chrysler. I hate to do it,but how else to get rid of Union bloodsuckers.

[bert]

......the “O” and his (D) union backers would never allow it........

I think you are wrong. The UAW is done for any way. If the company fails, they loose everything. If they agree to a separate bailout, the health care and pension benefits can be salvaged.

Chrysler is the big loser. The private owners will trade the company away in exchange for financial assets. GM and Ford will continue albiet different and the young UAW types will not have the free stuff like their elders.

[CharacterCounts]

Way back in the 70's I worked for Chrysler. At lunch, after hearing numerous employees complain constantly and bitterly about the numerous grievances they had about the company, I commented: "You guys won't be happy until the company lets you give them 52 self addressed stamped envelopes and they can just mail you a check for doing nothing." The response was: "Why should I have to pay for the stamps."

The speaker was not kidding!

[hedgetrimmer]

Pelosi is going to give the autoworkers union money as part of the bailout.

I expect its really a reward for their votes manufacturing, and nothing else.

[KeyLargo]

The Money Pit
By chadwick.matlin
Created 11/10/2008 - 2:55pm

In the 1980s, Tom Hanks got conned into buying a cheap lemon of a house in the movie The Money Pit. The problem, of course, was that the more money Hanks and his girlfriend put into the house, the more calamitous its self-destruction. During one scene, Hanks flicks on the light in the kitchen only to watch flames spread along the circuit and across the kitchen wall. Suddenly, wall outlets start exploding, blenders start melting, and Hanks’ futile splashes of water can’t put the fire out. Realizing it’s best to try and disconnect as many appliances from the crisis as possible, Hanks unplugs the coffee maker but doesn’t get to the TV before it explodes. Eventually, he staggers to his bedroom wearing a T-shirt charred by the kitchen’s meltdown.

Figuring the crisis has ended, Hanks tries to take a bath. After pouring water into the tub, it falls through the floor and shatters. Hanks, staring down at the wreckage, starts wheezing a violent laugh; he points at the floor and convulses with sobbing, exhausted guffaws.....

http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/bail-me-out/2008/11/10/money-pit?page=0,0