Look For The Union Label

Only a union job.

John Stossel detailed a program in the NY Public Schools in which child molesters were paid to show up and watch TV and read magazines, because it is all but impossible to fire a union teacher and it is the only way to get dangerous people away from kids.

Now, The Everyday Economist points to a NY Times article about the UAW job bank. EE sys "The Jobs Bank essentially pays employees full wages and benefits to show up for work even when production is shut down or there is nothing for the workers to do. The program was supposed to last six years, it has lasted twenty-two."

For some reason (you think maybe incentives matter?) it appears to be a "tough sell" to offer a buyout package to a worker who gets full scale for nothing. Times:

Each day, workers report for duty at the plant and pass their time reading, watching television, playing dominoes or chatting. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry's best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do.

The Jobs Bank is one critical burden that G.M. has to carry as it embarks on one of the biggest challenges — and biggest balancing acts — of its corporate survival. To become a leaner, more profitable company, it needs to persuade the right number of workers to take the buyouts, without chasing away its best people. If not enough people leave, G.M. is stuck with excess workers, who will swell the ranks of the Jobs Bank.

But in factories like the one in Oklahoma City, where workers were first interviewed on a visit last month and over the next several weeks, the buyouts could be a hard sell.

I guess. To be fair, such a job is one of Dante's rings of hell to me (Purgatorio might be a better description) but then, I think I lack the Union spirit.

Posted by jk at March 29, 2006 4:59 PM