Could paying UAW grass cutters $65/hour have any connection to Detroit Bankruptcy???

[healthmyths]

Geez I wonder if this was ANY influence on why Detroit 12,000 auto workers are not working but were still paid..in Detroit!

"Take grass cutting. As defined by the current United Auto Worker contract negotiated with the "Big Five" (GM, Ford, Chrysler, and top parts makers Delphi and Visteon), an auto "production worker" is a job description that covers anything from mowing grass to cleaning the toilets.

In the real world, these jobs would be outsourced to $8 an hour, no-benefit wage earners, but on Planet Big Five, these jobs get the same wages as any auto line-worker: an average $26 an hour ($60,000 a year) plus benefits that bring the company's total cost per worker to a staggering $65 an hour.

But at least the grass cutters are working for their pay.
The UAW contract also guarantees that 12,000 autoworkers get full wage for doing nothing.
On the heels of Miller's straight-talk, the Detroit News reported that "12,000 American autoworkers, instead of bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank."

These aren't jobs. And they certainly aren't being "lost" to China.

GM Obama Kicks Non-Union Americans to the Ground?Again | Opinion - Conservative

Chinese hourly wages...
Set locally, ranges from ($138) per month in Jiangxi Province to 1,500 RMB ($238) per month in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province
List of minimum wages by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Works out to $1.50 per hour no benefits..
UAW grass cutter: $65/hour with benefits..

 

[healthmyths]

But it HAD TO BE BUSH's fault in spite of 60 years of Democrats running Detroit.
Or the unions blackmailing auto makers at $65/hour with benefits to pay grass cutters!

 

[Sallow]

Rick Wagoner Gets Over $10 Million In Exit Package From GM

DETROIT (AP) -- Former General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will retire Aug. 1 with a pension and benefit package the automaker valued at more than $10 million.

Wagoner, 56, who was ousted by the Obama administration on March 30, will get $1.64 million in benefits annually for each of the next five years, plus an annual pension of $74,030 for the rest of his life, according to company documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ran GM to the ground.

Paid millions.

THAT'S what is costing this country big.

Supporting the NEW ARISTOCRACY.

 

[healthmyths]

Rick Wagoner Gets Over $10 Million In Exit Package From GM

DETROIT (AP) -- Former General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will retire Aug. 1 with a pension and benefit package the automaker valued at more than $10 million.

Wagoner, 56, who was ousted by the Obama administration on March 30, will get $1.64 million in benefits annually for each of the next five years, plus an annual pension of $74,030 for the rest of his life, according to company documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ran GM to the ground.

Paid millions.

THAT'S what is costing this country big.

Supporting the NEW ARISTOCRACY.

Couldn't agree with you MORE!
Instead of having the GUTS to refuse to negotiate with UAW that declared even grass cutters should be paid $65/hour he caved!
You are right! This guy worked out his own pension didn't care about GM and went ahead and agreed with ALL the union demands!

I mean he was OK with the fact that 12,000 workers were paid full wages/benefits BUT Didn't have to report to work!

WAYNE -- 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."
Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers and Delphi Corp. as part of an extraordinary job security agreement with the United Auto Workers union.
The jobs bank programs were the price the industry paid in the 1980s to win UAW support for controversial efforts to boost productivity through increased automation and more flexible manufacturing.

As part of its restructuring under bankruptcy, Delphi is actively pressing the union to give up the program.

With Wall Street wondering how automakers can afford to pay thousands of workers to do nothing as their market share withers, the union is likely to hear a similar message from the Big Three when their contracts with the UAW expire in 2007 -- if not sooner.

"It's an albatross around their necks," said Steven Szakaly, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. "It's a huge number of workers doing nothing. That has a very large effect on their future earnings outlook."
12,000 paid not to work (UAW Union Alert)