Pay Reduced for Former Employees at GM Plant

Hundreds of laid-off workers at the closed General Motors plant in Van Nuys on Monday saw their pay cut because of a drainage in the company’s so-called jobs bank program fund.

Since the Van Nuys plant closed last August, many of the 2,100 workers laid off had been receiving 85% or 100% of their gross pay because of the union-negotiated jobs bank program. The program enabled laid-off workers to receive 100% pay--which averaged $700 a week for the former Van Nuys workers--if they go to school full-time or do community service work. Laid-off workers who stayed home received 85% of their pay.

But at the end of February, the jobs bank fund ran out of money. So as of Monday laid-off workers were shifted to another program that, through a combination of company-paid benefits and state unemployment compensation, enables those workers to receive about 70% of their gross pay.

The program does not affect about 300 former workers at the Van Nuys plant who were transferred to other GM plants, or the estimated several hundred others who took early retirement or buyouts.