Bill Glembocki looked around as he worked at the Chrysler Kenosha Engine Plant and couldn’t make sense of the economics.

Here’s a company, he realized, that came out of bankruptcy last year and then brought in dozens of Chrysler retirees the past several months, ostensibly to bring their advanced skills to teach others to produce quality products, only to have them do non-skilled, repetitive labor.

“What company in its right mind would do this when this is work you could teach a first-grader to do?” Glembocki wondered.

He’s not the only one wondering about the answer.

Employees are upset

Other Chrysler employees at the plant are mad because the automaker is using the retirees at their previous rate of $28 per hour plus overtime when temporary employees could do the work at half that, about $14 an hour.

They’re mad because there are about 8,700 Kenosha County unemployed people, some of whom are their friends or relatives, who could use the work.

Chrysler officials in Detroit declined to comment. Glenn Stark, president of United Auto Workers Local 72, representing the plant’s workers, and UAW International officials did not return calls for comment.

Stark told the Kenosha News in December there was a safety issue in hiring experienced retirees versus bringing in people unfamiliar with the plant’s complex equipment. He also said retirees would be rehired to teach temporary employees to do intricate, skilled work in January.

Some just ‘cleaning’

Brian Wade, a company inspector/functional auditor with 31 years of seniority, said he was surprised to see retirees doing routine cleaning. He recalled officials from Fiat, Chrysler’s new parent company, touring the building and not liking how dirty it was. Chrysler then had the retirees wiping down the equipment for about a month, he said.

“It was a squirt bottle in one hand and a rag in another,” said Wade, who said he was on the Local 72 Election Commmittee.

Some of the retirees have filled in when workers use the bathroom or call in sick, Wade said.

Anger aimed at company

The upset employees all said they had nothing against the retirees. Their problem was with the company hiring former workers, many of whom last year took buyouts that included a $50,000 payment and a $25,000 car voucher and already were paid $36,000 annual pensions, rather than bring on people scrambling to feed their families and avoid foreclosure on their homes.

Joe DeSoto, a forklift truck operator and Chrysler employee for 30 years, said workers reopened their contract, took concessions and agreed that the company could hire cheaper temporary workers to receive government stimulus money last year when the automaker was floundering.

“The president wants to create jobs, but Chrysler isn’t creating jobs,” DeSoto said. “They’re just bringing back former workers.”

120 at one time

Wade said workers were told in June that retirees would be brought in for 90 days to train temporary workers for advanced jobs. About half of the 120 retirees were let go after teaching employees to do work not considered skilled, he said. The other 60 continued to do unskilled work, he said.

Sixty retirees working 29 weeks starting July 1 would have been paid about $1.95 million, based on the workers’ estimates. Temporary employees would have been paid half that, said Glembocki, Wheatland town chairman and owner of Glembocki Cement.

Glembocki said spending the extra money for retirees conflicted with plant management’s comments in a recent company newsletter. That letter said Chrysler wants to cut the Kenosha factory budget by 8 percent, or $7.1 million, and still has to find $2.2 million of that.

He said officials of Local 72 indicated at January’s monthly meeting there were 89 retirees working at the plant at that time.

Some temps were hired

About 30 temporary workers were brought in during January, DeSoto said. He said that happened after he and Glembocki complained to the company and the union.

One disgruntled worker, who requested anonymity, suggested that part of the reason Chrysler hired retirees was that it provided a better chance at producing a quality product than risking use of unknown employees for the relatively short period the plant would be open. Chrysler’s April 30 bankruptcy petition noted the Kenosha plant would close in fall 2010.

The theory was that the quality products might entice Fiat to consider keeping the plant open.

Wade said some temporary hires in fact quit after working a few days.

But Wade also said those reasons don’t justify paying retirees twice the temp rate.