Wednesday , February 28, 2007 Last Update: 6:26 AM ET

It’s Over: Janusch takes the

money and runs. Really fast.

Brilliant engineer closes book on 30-year career with lucrative buyout. 

By W.O. MARION

Dearborn, MI – “Turns out he’s a whore just like the rest of them,” said rueful fellow Ford engineer Jim Chenie of his erstwhile colleague Mark Janusch, who today ended a three-decade-long Chinese Fire Drill at the “House That Henry Built” by turning in his Ford cell phone, beeper, men’s room key, microwave and refrigerator code cards, parking pass, and security badge to Human Resources.

“Hey, up yours Jimmy,” retorted Mr. Janusch, taking a deep swig from a bottle of ice-cold Louis Roederer 1999 Cristal Champagne. “I was on the verge of retiring anyway – now they’re paying me to do it? Tell me you wouldn’t have grabbed it -- Hellooooooo!!!!”

Mr. Janusch

Belching loudly, Mr. Janusch then stuck his thumb in the bottle’s opening, shook it up like a paint can, and pulled the thumb quickly out, spraying most of the $250 contents all over his envious fellow Ford lighting engineers, only a very few of whom received the buyout offer. The rest, lacking seniority, are stuck at a company whose cash reserves are shrinking like Saran Wrap in a blazing inferno.

Ford Motor Co expects to spend nearly half of those reserves, or $17 billion, by 2009, with most of that disappearing in the next year as 40 percent of its hourly workers voluntarily leave their jobs along with an unspecified number of white collar workers. The projected cash outflow is now $10 billion from automotive operations and $7 billion related to its reorganization plan. The company's financing arm, Ford Motor Credit Co., will start covering Ford dividend payments this year, but the bulk of the outlay will be spent on buyout and retirement packages for 30,000 United Automobile Workers union members that Ford says opted to leave automaker. This will drop UAW membership to 500,000, compared with 1.5 million at its peak two decades ago.  Most departures will occur before September 2007 and will leave Ford with its smallest work force in decades.

Mr. Janusch is among the most fortunate: He is out immediately, but his departure is not without its critics.  Automotive analysts David Cole and David E. Davis both call it bordering on obscene. “Hey,” stated Mr. Cole, “I grant you that Mr. Janusch is a fine engineer, but he was about to leave on his own accord. He was fed up with the place and has been for years. That is common knowledge. In fact, it was reported in the Grandmont neighborhood newsletter many months ago.”

“Somebody’s off their bleeping rocker over at the Glass House,” added Mr. Davis. “They’re actually giving gobs of money to guys to leave jobs they detest.  When I was in college, I worked on the assembly line for three summers.  Maybe they’ve got a package for me, huh?”

Mr. Janusch began his vaunted career at General Motors, going through their comprehensive engineering training at great expense to the company only to jump over to Ford at the first opportunity. ‘A shorter commute meant more time in the water,” noted Mr. Janusch, an outstanding swimmer who hopes one day to compete in the Senior Olympics.

“Now I can swim all frigging day,” he gloated, “and the idiots are actually paying me while I’m doing my laps!.  And when I'm not at the pool, I can go hunting," he declaimed.  "They'll be paying me for that too!"

Taking a hearty puff on an illegal Cohiba, the newly-minted retiree grabbed his silver protractor and silver-lined pocket protector, special retirement gifts from the company, and began his final exit from Building PDC, Cube 2D27, high-fiving his less fortunate engineering mates as he made his way to the parking lot one last time.

“I think I may go home and call Comcast,” he said. “It's about time to upgrade from Dial-Up, and that high-speed internet service would make a mighty nice surprise for Julie.  Besides, my good friends here at FoMoCo are picking up the tab.”

Chortling loudly, he started up his gas guzzling Ford truck and headed off into the sunset, a stream of smoke from his blazing cigar drifting out the driver’s-side window.

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