Oct 19, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from HOT AIR: Ten days ago, LG Chem subsidiary Compact Power began furloughing workers without ever having produced a single battery for Ford or GM electric vehicles. So far, taxpayers have put $150 million into the Holland, Michigan operation via Barack Obama’s green-tech subsidy program without seeing any return at all on the investment; the only batteries that have been produced were built in South Korea. So what has CP and LG Chem been doing for the last couple of years in the facility that taxpayer dollars built? Mostly playing cards and reading magazines, as the NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids reports (via the Weekly Standard):
Workers at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium-ion battery plant heavily funded by taxpayers, tell Target 8 that they have so little work to do that they spend hours playing cards and board games, reading magazines or watching movies.
They say it’s been going on for months.
“There would be up to 40 of us that would just sit in there during the day,” said former LG Chem employee Nicole Merryman, who said she quit in May.
“We were given assignments to go outside and clean; if we weren’t cleaning outside, we were cleaning inside. If there was nothing for us to do, we would study in the cafeteria, or we would sit and play cards, sit and read magazines,” said Merryman. “It’s really sad that all these people are sitting there and doing nothing, and it’s basically on taxpayer money.”
Two current employees told Target 8 that the game-playing continues because, as much as they want to work, they still have nothing to do.
I’ve often written that government doesn’t pick winners and losers — they pick losers, because winners don’t need government intervention. Investors will find winners and share in their success. The reason LG Chem and Compact Power needed government subsidies is because private investors aren’t interested in sinking money into card-playing and magazine-reading facilities.
