After bailouts, new autoworkers make half as much as veterans in same plant
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 25, 2010
DETROIT — Among workers building the Jeep Grand Cherokee here, there are few obvious distinctions. Clutching lunch sacks and mini-coolers, they trudge together through the turnstiles at the plant’s main gate each day to tinker with the same vehicles, along the same assembly line, performing the same tasks.
Yet they fall into distinctly unequal classes: About half make $28 an hour or more, while the rest, the recently hired, make $14.
This oddity, which could become the norm in much of the domestic U.S. auto industry, arises from the jury-rigged labor agreement that the United Auto Workers, U.S. automakers and the federal government reached during the industry’s near-death experience last year.
Now the revival of the U.S. industry depends on a compromise that some on all sides quietly acknowledge is divisive, among other things, and probably cannot last.
“How would you feel if you were on the line humpin’ and bumpin’ all day and the guy next to you gets twice the pay? How would you feel toward that person?” asked Dale Hunt, a veteran tradesman at the plant and former president of the union local. “Of course there is going to be animosity.” ……..read more
http://washingtonpost.com
ADMIN NOTE: Although I am sympathetic with the new workers getting less money, lets be logical. Women for decades did not received equal pay for equal jobs. Also, entry level workers in any industry or career do not, and should not, receive the same pay scale as a veteran.
Also what do you want…….a higher paying job that no longer exists because your company went bankrupt or a lower paying job that you can keep (because tax payers bailed you out) and you can keep food on your table and as you grow in expertise your salary will increase……..you can’t have it both ways.
Be grateful you have a job that you can grow into and eventually make more money at and not be one of the thousands that have no work, no home and no food on the table.
Possibly related articles:
Feds Gave ‘Energy Assistance’ Money to Dead People
The Government Accounting Office has uncovered massive fraud in a federal program designed to help low-income Americans pay for heating and air conditioning — including payments to 725 imprisoned convicts.
The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program serves 8.3 million U.S. households. But the GAO found that the program paid $116 million to applicants who used 11,000 dead people’s Social Security numbers, as well as to the convicts and to 1,100 well-paid government workers who were not eligible for benefits.
In addition, $3.9 million in subsidies were paid on applications submitted after the applicant had died, and about 260,000 persons receiving benefits had submitted invalid identity information, such as blank Social Security numbers or dates of birth, “making it impossible to determine whether these cases involve fraud,” the GAO report stated.
But the overall level of fraud is likely to be far higher than what the GAO uncovered, since the agency’s audit covered only seven states — and found fraud in each.
“The total dollar amount for all 50 states would be monumental,” the Orange County, California Register noted in an editorial.
Among the government workers receiving benefits was a Chicago-area employee who earned $80,000 a year, yet pocketed $840 in assistance.
“The GAO said that to cut down on fraud, the government needs to be more certain of applicants’ eligibility,” the Register observed.
“We say that to eliminate fraud, the government needs to get out of the business of redistributing taxpayers’ money.”
read more ………
newsmax.com
Possibly related articles:
- Categories: Educational, Financial, History, International Media, Legislation, National Media, Nature & Wildlife, Pets, Science, World News
- Tags: Cruel culling of pilot whales, Faroe Island slaughter of entire whale pod including babies
On July 19, 2010, a pod of 236 pilot whales was “ruthlessly” slaughtered in the town of Klaksvik in the Danish Faeroe Islands, the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd claimed today.
Sea Shepherd says it has documented the slaughter through the efforts of an undercover operative living among the locals in order to capture footage of “the grind.” Sea Shepherd says the grind (or grindadrap in the Faroe dialect) is a cruel method of whaling that involves stranding pods of cetaceans in coves before severing their spinal chords with knives.
Faroe islanders have been whaling since the islands were first settled by the norse. It is regulated by local authorities but not by the International Whaling Commission. The Faroese claim to kill about 950 Long-finned Pilot Whales a year.
Animal-rights groups have criticized the hunt as cruel, while locals say that critics lack sufficient knowledge of the catch methods.
Sea Shepherd says its member Peter Hammarstedt, also First Mate of Sea Shepherd’s vessel, the Bob Barker, had been living undercover with the islanders for one week when he heard news of a grind happening in Klaksvik over the radio. Hammarstedt documented the bloodshed upon arrival.
“Pilot whales are known to travel in pods of 200-300 members. Two hundred and thirty-six pilot whales were slaughtered last night in Klaksvik: bulls, pregnant and lactating females, juveniles, and unborn babies still attached to their mothers by the umbilical chord. An entire pod that once swam freely through the North Atlantic has been exterminated in a single blood bath,” said Hammarstedt. The Faroese government claims that the deaths of these whales are quick and painless, but the newly released grisly footage shows otherwise, he said.
“One whale had five to six brutal chops to her head,” reported Hammarstedt. “The islanders basically used her as a chopping board. Her death would have been slow and extremely painful. Some whales are hacked repeatedly for up to four minutes before they finally die.” It was equally apparent that the grind is indiscriminate and ruthless, he claimed.
Pilot whales are classified as “strictly protected” under the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. By allowing the slaughter to continue in the Faeroes, Denmark fails to abide by its obligations as a signatory of the Convention, Sea Shepherd says.
Sea Shepherd has been actively opposing and confronting the Faroese grind since 1985 and remains one of the foremost advocates for the whales.
voxy.co.nz
and Paul Watson on Facebook
Possibly related articles:
Loading ...
