Temporary Layoffs Rattle Auto Workers : Unemployment: Although most qualify for 95% of their pay while off the job, some question whether the money is worth a life of uncertainty.

Bouncing on and off layoff rolls is causing auto worker Carl Fields to wonder whether he should pursue another career. Like being an undertaker, perhaps.

Although auto workers qualify for 95% of their regular pay while off their jobs, a temporary layoff is one step closer to an indefinite layoff.

“Even though it’s a short-term layoff, they see it as a blow--an ax blow that shakes the tree but doesn’t cut it down,” said Greg Hilliker, a psychoanalyst in Flint since the early 1970s.

Hilliker has counseled scores of auto workers whose economic foundations have been rattled as General Motors Corp., the world’s largest auto maker, has shrunk its presence in its corporate birthplace.

GM auto workers like Fields may be at their jobs one week, on layoff the next and returned to work the following week. The economic downturn and sales slump put nearly 39,000 auto workers on layoff for the week of March 4.

Even though the workers get most of their regular pay, some are questioning whether the money is worth a life of uncertainty.

“I’ve thought about other things,” said Fields, a 24-year veteran of GM’s Buick City assembly complex. “I’ve worked in a funeral home. I’m trying to get into mortuary science.”

Searching for a new job is one of the things Hilliker recommends for anybody facing short- or long-term layoff.

In Flint, a city of 140,761 people heavily reliant on GM, many auto workers simply don’t realize that there is life apart from the huge auto maker, said Hilliker, a counselor at the Family and Personal Stress Clinic.

Flint lost 11.8% of its population in the last decade, much of it due to job losses at GM. At its height in 1955, GM employed about 90,000 people in the Flint area. Last year, GM’s average Flint employment figure was about 47,200, still the largest GM work force in any U.S. city.

Flint’s 10.7% unemployment rate in January was the highest among Michigan’s 12 major labor markets.

The United Auto Workers’ union contracts with the Big Three may unintentionally add to a reliance on GM among workers to whom other options are foreign.

The UAW last year bragged about income guarantees it won in contract negotiations first with GM and later with Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp.

The contracts contain nearly identical language requiring the auto makers to pay employees laid off because of a sales slump 95% of their regular pay.

Workers laid off for more than 36 weeks in the three years ending Sept. 14, 1993, must be rehired or transferred to a pool of laid-off workers getting full regular pay in return for non-automotive work, such as on community projects.

For a laid-off auto worker willing to learn a new trade, help is also available through educational programs tailored for them.

“I suggest that they try to prepare themselves with skills that are transferable to another plant, should this one close, or to another job arrangement,” Hilliker said. “If they go into skilled trades as electricians or pipe fitters, they can take their skills to other industries, or even into smaller businesses.”