Don't even TRY to tell me the unions are not a great part of the problem. Things like this...and corporate taxes...go a long way toward explaining businesses in exodus.
"Jobs bank programs -- 12,000 paid not to work
Big 3 and suppliers pay billions to keep downsized UAW members on payroll in decades-long deal.
By Bryce G. Hoffman / The Detroit News
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.
www.detnews.com
The ol' Docster is really active today, ain't he? Educating the great unwashed this morning, Doc? Problem is, most of us don't know that you spent your life in the halls of academia studying "Heather Has Two Mommies" and "It Takes A Village." They don't know that you probably attended many, many lectures by Ward Churchill and that you earned that Pee-Aitch-Dee.
Hey, all you Doc bashers out there...DOC IS SMART! He can't walk and chew gum, but he is smart. Just ask him. Show some respect, OK? He is a Doctor of Philosophy after all, and is just as qualified as Sean Penn to discuss U.S. foreign policy.