Flint Postcards: Buick Workers

The Inferno

Some comments deserve their own posts. Anonymous reflects on education and the assembly line:

Working my way through college (MSU), I would return to my Flint hometown after Spring Quarter. I'd immediately place job applications with all the GM productions in the hope of getting something paying union scale to fund the next year's tuition.

In the Summer of 62,I got a call from Fisher Body and was escorted to the fabled assembly line. The noise was incredible, sparks flew everywhere from welders attaching various metal parts into an auto frame. My reaction was "Dante's Inferno," and how could people possibly work here every day. I soon found out.

In a life chapter where I was devoted to education, working an automobile assembly line was one of the most profound educational experiences of my life. Co-workers were surprising cordial to the "college kid." They were very safety-conscious and had to be. It was quite dangerous. The monotony was indescribable. Coping techniques were seen with empty whiskey bottles in wheel wells and trunks of the auto bodies passing by.

After 3 months of that lifestyle, there was never any question in my mind that I'd finish my education and avoid ever having to return to Dante's Inferno.

Flint Artifacts: UAW Ring

Flint Expatriate Joe Steve tells the story of a UAW ring:

"I had a great upbringing in our old neighborhood and looking back on it I really had it good. My father was a sports writer for the Flint Journal, John Steve, who died in 1962. My mother married John Misko in 1969 when I was 10 years old. We moved to John Misko's house on the south end because his house was smaller. It was also a really cool neighborhood as we lived 5 houses away from Lincoln Park. Mom couldn't get what she wanted for the house on Welch Blvd so after only 6 months we moved back to Welch and my stepfather had an offer on his house within four hours of listing it. I stayed there until I graduated from Powers in 1977 and my folks moved to Florida after I graduated from Aquinas College in 1981.

"My mother will be 95 years old this year. She gave me my stepfather's ring when she moved into a nursing home here in Grand Rapids 9 years ago. I have grown to understand what a great stepfather I had. He had no children of his own, as his first wife got sick and was not able to have children before she died. He worked 2nd shift at Fisher Body as a Tool and Die man for more than 30 years.

"And one more cool fact. My stepfather live next door to Angelo Braniff , one of the three Angelos who founded Angelo's Coney Island."

Buick North: The Last Holdouts

One of the many memorable vehicles produced at Buick City. (Photo courtesy of papajim).

Last month, readers reviewed what's left of Flint's auto factories. Today's New York Times has a portrait of the "Last Holdouts" at Buick North.

Bill Vlasic and Nick Bunkley report:

All that is left is Flint North, which built more than 20 million of G.M.’s 3800-model V-6 engines until production ceased last August. Some workers are removing equipment and preparing to start building four-cylinder engines for the Chevrolet Volt and Cruze at a newer plant across town next year, while others still build torque converters, gears, pistons, shafts and other powertrain components.

The plant is surrounded by crumbling and empty buildings, and dead-end streets that once led into Buick City. It is a neighborhood of boarded-up stores and near-desolate streets, with the exception of the overflowing parking lots on Sundays at the Baptist churches along Industrial Avenue across from the plant.

The last 450 workers feel fortunate to have another factory to go to, having seen too many friends and relatives laid off over the years.

“General Motors has taken good care of me,” said Mike Stoica, 60, who started at G.M. fresh out of high school in 1967. “I’ve had a good life for not having a college education and doing something I love to do.”

That way of life is vanishing at G.M. plants across the United States, but no city has been affected like Flint. When Buick City was at its peak production in the mid-1980s, G.M. had 80,000 workers spread across the city. Now it is down to about 5,000, a number that could fall more in a bankruptcy.

“People talk about closing a plant,” said Bill Jordan, president of U.A.W. Local 599 and a 32-year G.M employee. “We closed a city here. Everything that any city had, we had here.”

Heavy Metal Drama

Do you sometimes find yourself longing for the days when America made something besides exotic financial derivatives? Well just sit back and enjoy this "capitalist realist" drama that shows what goes into making a Chevy. It was filmed in Flint just months before the U.A.W. won union recognition via the sit-down strike.

P.S. I should warn you that this is only the first part of this classic. It builds up to a tantalizing crescendo, then cuts you off. You can catch the rest on YouTube.

Disorganized

Jonathan Cutler says the U.A.W. is partly to blame for the Big Three's problems, but not for the reason you might think. The union's mistake? The failure to organize workers at the non-union foreign auto factories in the U.S.

"And yet there is nothing inherently unsustainable about employing a high-priced, unionized workforce. The crisis of Detroit's wage bill is entirely relative. Specifically, their labor costs far exceed the low-cost, nonunion American workforce at the U.S.-based, foreign-owned plants of competitors Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru.

"If the UAW really is to blame at all, then, it is because of the union's utter failure to unionize any of the transplants. What has the UAW been doing all these years? Isn't it the responsibility of any good union to protect union employers from competitive labor disadvantages by organizing wall to wall, throughout the industry? How could it have left these transplants unorganized?

"As is now clear, when the UAW exposed the Big Three to insurmountable competitive disadvantages, it cut its own throat."

Thanks to Jim Holbel for passing this along.

Invasion of the Factory Snatchers

In Brazil, Ford factory workers wear matching uniforms, much like Catholic school kids. They're also young, lean, efficient, and eerily happy. You have to see this Detroit News video to believe it.

What the hell is going on down there? Well, according to Ford, there's no U.A.W. in Brazil. Apparently the News didn't seek out other opinions.

Thanks to Grumkin for passing this along.

Autoworker Mythology

Have you heard the myth about autoworkers making $70/hour?

Flint Postcards: 1910 Buick Workers

Behind the curve

In yet another example of keen strategic thinking, G.M. finally reaches the shocking conclusion that gas prices affect sales and announces plans to close plants in Janesville, Wisc.; Moraine, Ohio; Oshawa, Ontario; and Toluca, Mexico by or before 2010. I guess it's hard to remember all the way back to what happened in the seventies. The New York Times reports:

Responding to a consumer shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles, General Motors said Tuesday that it would stop making pickup trucks and big S.U.V.s at four North American assembly plants and would consider selling its Hummer brand.

The moves, announced Tuesday by the company chairman G. Richard Wagoner Jr., will slash 500,000 units from the automaker’s overall production, and pave the way for increased investment in smaller cars and passenger vehicles.

Mr. Wagoner said that rising gasoline prices had forced a “structural shift” by American consumers away from truck-based vehicles built by G.M.

“These prices are changing consumer behavior and changing it rapidly,” Mr. Wagoner said at a briefing before G.M.’s annual meeting in Wilmington, Del. “We don’t believe it’s a spike or a temporary shift. We believe it is, by and large, permanent.”

Calling all autoworker activists

A reader passed along information about an autoworker activists gathering scheduled for January 26 in Flint. The event will focus on "the recent concessionary Big Three auto contracts. The session will be an opportunity to analyze the economic & structural impact of the negotiations, to share experiences from the effort to mobilize opposition, and explore strategies and tactics for reclaiming unionism’s direction and rebuilding rank & file solidarity."

For more information go to the Soldiers of Solidarity website.