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Jobs Bank....A Must Read

Anuzis, Jobs Bank...

Jobs Bank....A Must Read

Jobs Bank....A Must Read

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114118143005186163.html

Idle Hands

Detroit's Symbol of Dysfunction:

Paying Employees Not to Work

Cost Tops $1.4 Billion a Year As Layoffs Fill 'Jobs Bank';

A Dismal Facility in Flint

Mr. Mellon Takes a Long Nap

By JEFFREY MCCRACKEN

March 1, 2006; Page A1

FLINT, Mich. -- In his 34 years working for General Motors Corp., one of Jerry Mellon's toughest assignments came this January. He spent a week in what workers call the "rubber room."

The room is a windowless old storage shed for engine parts. 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 under 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 do volunteer jobs or go back to school. The rest must 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 Co. 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.

While GM often blames "legacy costs" such as retiree health care and pensions for its troubles, its Job Bank shows that the company has inflicted some wounds on itself. Documents show that GM itself helped originate the Jobs Bank idea in 1984 and agreed to expand it in 1990, seeing it as a stopgap until times got better and workers could go back to the factories...

...In Flint, Mr. Mellon also sees change on the horizon. "I understand the Jobs Bank needs to have an end to it," he says over a beer at lunch in Flint's Caboose Lounge. "I mean, they've paid me like $400,000 over six years to do nothing, to learn to deal blackjack. But buy me out. Retire me with something like $2,000 for every year I worked. I need that because you know they're going to keep cutting our health care and pensions. You are so vulnerable in retirement."

Mr. Mellon recently arranged to do community service work at Freedom Temple, a Baptist church in Flint. He is installing motion sensors at the homes of senior citizens in a bad part of town. There have been 14 murders in Flint already this year.

"Now I can go out and do good church work and still get paid. I couldn't twiddle my thumbs any more in the rubber room," Mr. Mellon says. "I want to do some work."

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[ed: Does anyone have any doubts about why a car can cost $35,000.00 (or MORE!) now? I was a teenager in the 1960s when a car might cost as much as $3,500.00 and that seemed to be a lot at the time.I certainly was not making anything like that working at the Big Boy restaurant at that time.]