12,000 paid not to work!

[mchastek]

Sourced from the Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/19/A01-351179.htm

"Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working -- on a crossword puzzle. Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits.

"We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper," he says. 'Otherwise, I've just sat.'" ...


Getting paid $31/hour to do nothing??? It's no wonder why these companies are having serious financial problems.

Thoughts?

[Mr. Pebble]

Sometimes things look so horrible on the surface that we fail to take the whole story into account. Opponents of one thing or another put a slant on the issue and act like there is no other truth. We see it in politics every day and the business world has its own bouts with incompetence as well. Sometimes the big mistake was failing to plan ahead.

Now, try to find someone other than the workers themselves who think that paying those workers to do nothing is a good move on the part of Ford or GM. You can make a hundred arguments against it but has anyone ever considered that there may be another twist to the situation? Any atyorney can tell you one of the mottos they go by is: "No matter how thin the pancake, it still has two sides."

Let's take the railroads, for instance. Throughout the 1960's and into the 1970's, the railroads had an agreement with their labor unions that they would keep a fireman on diesel locomotives even though there was no fire. A fireman was a tough job in the early days of railroading before there was automatic stokers. Picture 20 below zero, a lot of coal is needed to bring up the steam and as you are going down the line at 60 MPH, you are using up the coal and have to run to the back of the tender to get a heavy shovelfull that will keep the engine fed for only a few seconds. Not a sweet job.

Steam engines were horribly inefficient and when GM perfected the diesel locomotives, steam engines were retired as fast as they could be replaced, some only a few years old and the railroad had barely begun to make the payments on the bonds. Steam was down 50% of the time for maintenance compared to 18% for diesels. Better yet was the ability to MU the engines which means multiple units. Each steam engine required a full crew but you only needed one for an entire train with diesels and in the West, as many as fifteen engines were needed to get a trin around Tehachapi Loop. Yet every train had its fireman, sitting there doing crossword puzzles like his counterpart at Ford. The criticism was just as bad.

But, Wait!!! is there some way to justify keeping the fireman on the diesels? Well, as a matter of fact, yes. During the 1930's when the country was deep into depression and the railroads were up to their eyeballs in red ink, the unions agreed to forego wage increases and in return let the firemen keep their jobs on diesel locomotives. It was a great short-run deal for the railroads as only 2% of the locomotives were diesels and the railroads saved a bunch of money in wages. So, in fact, there was a tradeoff and the unions could see a lot further ahead than management. Today, there are no more firemen on the railroads, the unions combined into the UTU and firemen were allowed to disappear by attrition and other civil means. The problem is now over and the railroad industry has merged itself into prosperity and outsourced to Short Line railroads what it could not profitably run itself.

Now, let's take the auto industry. What would have happened if the auto workers had taken cash instead and sent excess workers off with more buyouts and extra SUB pay. No one would have noticed and the amount paid out by Ford and GM would have been the same. There would just not have been anything for the anti-unioners to scream about. And look at the foresight! This was agreed to when Ford and GM had not lost so much market share and they thought they really pulled one over on the union, getting them to agree to something they thought they would never have to pay on. Wrong!!!

Yup, the UAW is not that dumb and they realize they have to help the auto industry out of their problems if they want to survive, just as the railroad unions did decades ago. Before long, the program will be ended and there will be no more people collectin pay for doing nothing. The unioners will be complaining about losing jobs and pay and the anti-unioners will make up ever greater stories to blame the unions for the ineptitude of management. Nothing will change besides time and place.

And, while we are at it, lets look at government regulation. Arkansas once had a law that required every train to have a crew of seven and the employees were there regardless of any union rules. The railroads would send freight hundreds of miles out of the way to avoid travelling through Arkansas. Worked for a while but the State came to their senses and the rule was changed and the State, the railroads and the rail workers all prosper together.

Moral of the story - nothing good will happen until we put away our crying towels, stop taking a one-sided view of the issues and kick butt on our problems and come to an agreement that all can prosper with. It has to start with GM and Ford. Not likely with the present climate but as GM continues down the express track toward Chapter 11 and Ford flirts with it as well, it is just a matter of time before an agreement is reached to end the problem. Labor and management walk arm-in-arm in the same direction 98% of the time. Doing it the other 2% is all that is needed before the streets are paved with gold for everyone again.

Mr. Pebble

[Viper 10]

The UAW is the problem in the automotive industry and they can't see pass their own self serving noses. Unions have long out lived their usefulness... and all of the third world countries that we outsource to can thank them for exporting and outsourcing our car industry into financial ruin.Brad