25 responses to
“Solidarity whenever.”

1. ie said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:16 am

   Hi there. I don’t have a com­ment on your post (although you are on my list of “must reads”).

   How­ever, since yes­ter­day, the left hand por­tion of your post is in the dark blue on the left and I’m hav­ing a hel­lu­va­time try­ing to deci­pher the black let­ter­ing on the dark blue.

   Is there some­thing up with your site? Is it me?

   Thanks!

2. alex said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:20 am

   I know a fair num­ber of GM employ­ees here in the Fort who make much more money than I do even though I’m a degreed pro­fes­sional. They’re always blow­ing me crap for buy­ing for­eign. They think I should sup­port their osten­ta­tious lifestyles while get­ting less value for my own hard-earned dol­lar. If it costs $3,200 more to pro­duce a GM vehi­cle than a com­pa­ra­ble Toy­ota vehi­cle, this strike will prob­a­bly drive that dis­par­ity up even fur­ther. Next time they razz me, I’m gonna go Phyl­lis on ‘em.

3. colleen said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:26 am

   Thank you Alex.

   If I were mak­ing that much money (it’s more than I make now) and had those ben­nies, I would be quiet and thank my lucky stars.

   Just my opin­ion, from here in the land of “sorry no raises this year, but your health insur­ance is going up”.

4. nancy said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:43 am

   ie,

   Good ques­tion. It prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with the pho­tos yes­ter­day. I’ll reduce them to thumb­nails and see if it doesn’t fix your prob­lem. If it con­tin­ues, let me know.

   N.

5. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:47 am

   To work for a mas­sive, world­wide cor­po­ra­tion, and report to some par­tic­u­lar fac­tory, along with 5,000 other souls every day — I would sup­pose that one would feel some­what pow­er­less. When a strike comes, you sim­ply can­not cross the line against your friends; at some point the strike will end, and you will never be able to erase the ‘scab’ label.

   So you go along; hell, you not only ‘go along’, but you play the part and adopt a defi­ant tone and make the most of it.

   When I was grow­ing up in south­east Fort Wayne, there were lots of Tokheim work­ers and Frue­hauf work­ers and Fal­staff work­ers and Inter­na­tional Har­vester work­ers and ITT and Rea Wire and Mag­navox  — with fair num­bers of white col­lars of each. Peo­ple who bought new cars every year or two, and who had trail­ered speed boats on their driveways.

   I remem­ber that part — but as I became a teenager, and began think­ing about what sort of job I wanted, the term “fac­tory job” came to equal images of lay­offs and strikes and hard times.

   Could be wrong, but I bet peo­ple just 10 years older than me really believed the promise of ‘fac­tory jobs’, and faced real disappointment

6. Joe K said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am

   My ques­tion to you all that think an auto worker makes to much money, is why did YOU not apply for the job. Was it not high brow enough for you? or did you not want to put up with the hard work, and believe me it is hard. I did it for 30.5 yrs, no air con­di­tion­ing 120 + in the sum­mer, so hot you sweat when you put on your work boots. What ever you Alex or Colleen make per year I wish you made more, I would never tell any­one that they make to much or do not deserve the wage they make. Remem­ber The big three signed those con­tracts, they knew what is was going to cost them, and they did not plan for the future. Why make the guy or gal on the line pay for there lack of plan­ning. As for the imports cost­ing less to pro­duce, that is true,but remem­ber, the imports went into area’s that never had high pay­ing jobs and found peo­ple who had never made more than min-wage or less,just wait a few more years and the story’s of these peo­ple hav­ing repeta­tive work injury’s start to surf­fice and the imports will claim no respon­s­abil­ity for those peo­ple. Then who will pay for there health care???
   Joe K.
   Us Steel Worker
   Retired.

7. nancy said on September 25th, 2007 at 11:00 am

   I only hope the UAW isn’t as tin-eared as it’s been in the past. Exam­ple: The last big strike (1998? Around there) lasted about 40 days or so. Every­one knew that’s exactly how long it would last, hav­ing cal­cu­lated the max­i­mum allow­able losses on both sides in this silly dick-measuring con­test. My neigh­bor Dwight, who worked for GM, put money aside and made a long to-do list. The last day of the strike, he crossed the last item off the list. (Bathe the dog, if you’re interested.)

   Oth­ers, specif­i­cally in Defi­ance, Ohio (where I read the story in the local paper), were lin­ing up at FOOD BANKS and free school-supply give­aways two weeks into the strike, with their hands out. Many of these were two-career cou­ples, which would put their no-overtime income well into the six fig­ures. You’d think they could go six weeks on their sav­ings, but maybe not. If noth­ing else, if I’d been in local union man­age­ment, I’d have been going after those dip­shits with a whip. But that’s me.

   I don’t begrudge union work­ers their wages — it’s dif­fi­cult work. Fac­to­ries suck. I wouldn’t want to work there, and the phrase “you couldn’t pay me enough” applies. Their ben­e­fits, now, that’s another thing. The union has long been divorced from the idea that health care costs are out of con­trol in this coun­try, and a work­force that large has to do its part to keep costs in line. But they com­plain bit­terly about things the rest of us accepted long ago — ris­ing co-pays, mainly. You should hear some of Alan’s mom’s friends bitch about hav­ing to pay $5 for each pre­scrip­tion; why, it used to be noth­ing! The nerve!

8. LA mary said on September 25th, 2007 at 11:35 am

   I just got a new quote on what it’s going to cost me to insure myself and my two kids for med­ical, den­tal and vision, and it works out to about 3800. per year. I could go HMO and it would be about a third as much, but my assis­tant, who is sick today, called to get an HMO appoint­ment, and the first one avail­able is 10/30. I don’t want to be in that sit­u­a­tion with my kids.

9. Jason said on September 25th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

   I gotta go with Joe on this one, even though I’m a “degreed pro­fes­sional” who doesn’t make GM-level wages.

   Why are the peo­ple who build our cars, drive our trains, can our food, and make our paper less valu­able to soci­ety than peo­ple in sit in an office (like me) and punch com­puter keys all day?

   I could go for some time with­out the Inter­net. I’d have a hard time liv­ing with­out trans­porta­tion, food and toi­let paper.

   On the other hand, like Nancy, I’m not sure a strike against GM at this point accom­plishes much of any­thing … and I’m a UAW mem­ber. It’s a lit­tle like throw­ing a drown­ing man both ends of a rope.

   But Ron Get­telfin­ger isn’t a bomb-throwing left­ist rad­i­cal, and when he says this strike was a last resort, I’m inclined to believe him. (I was sur­prised and impressed that the union didn’t walk out at Del­phi a few years ago. The Del­phi sit­u­a­tion — includ­ing the fat exec­u­tive bonuses Nancy men­tioned — was odorous.)

   Hav­ing been through a few steel strikes as a kid, no one wins. The UAW strike fund pays $200 a week. You want to live on $200 a week for a while? I sure as hell don’t. I’d be at the food bank, too.

   Your mileage may vary. (And will prob­a­bly be higher in a Prius, unfortunately.)

10. john c said on September 25th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    Alex, your post hit it on the head. Although I do think there are ben­e­fits for all of us in buy­ing Amer­i­can, I don’t quib­ble with your rea­son­ing when it comes to the “poor” UAW work­ers. I’m guess­ing you, like me, are a per­son who gen­er­ally leans toward the work­ers when it comes to dis­putes between lit­tle guys and giant cor­po­ra­tions. But it’s pretty freakin’ hard to muster sup­port for guys who cry poor when they are haul­ing down huge bucks with gold-plated ben­e­fits — and any­one who lives in the D knows the ben­nies are GOLD-plated. Back when the Big Three were try­ing to impose their will on under­paid, unpro­tected work­ers, the UAW made a lot of sense. Now it is the cement boots on the legs of com­pa­nies that, if they fail, will send our econ­omy into a tail­spin. Basi­cally the union guys need to fig­ure out a way to back down with­out look­ing like wimps in front of their bud­dies. Oth­er­wise the jobs will go away. GM is sell­ing more cars over­seas as it is. The only rea­son Honda and Toy­ota are build­ing plants here is because they don’t have to deal with the union.
    To some of the other posters stick­ing up for the union guys, I’m not try­ing to put down the work. But have you toured Ford’s Rouge plant lately? I didn’t see much heavy lift­ing. and I would urge one and all to read “Riv­et­head.” It’s writ­ten by the auto worker made famous by Michael Moore in Roger and Me. It’s a very funny and strange look inside the auto plants of the 80s.

11. MarkH said on September 25th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    John, you took the post right out of my key­board on “Riv­et­head”. I had just pulled it off my shelf last night to start re-reading it in light of press cov­ereage of the strike, and rec­om­mend it to every­one. For a fac­tory schlep, espe­cially, Ben Ham­per is a ter­rific writer, with some amaz­ingly funny (and some heart­break­ing) sto­ries. And yes, hav­ing Moore around didn’t hurt the cause.

    http://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​R​i​v​e​t​h​e​a​d​-​T​a​l​e​s​-​A​s​s​e​m​b​l​y​-​B​e​n​-​H​a​m​p​e​r​/​d​p​/​0​4​4​6​3​9​4​0​0​9​/​r​e​f​=​p​d​_​b​b​s​_​s​r​_1/002 – 1257559-0319244?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190743175&sr=1 – 1

    From one (for­mer) steel­worker union mem­ber to another, I’m with Joe K., too, but only because at a young age, I learned fac­tory work was not for me. It was my sum­mer job in high school and col­lege. Even when they called me 3 years after I was out of col­lege to be a shift super­vi­sor at the plant, I said no. It was just an auto­mo­tive fas­tener ship­ping plant, but the work was dull and hard, and look­ing at the lif­ers there all the time just made me sad. And these peo­ple didn’t make near what tra­di­tional steel work­ers and auto work­ers made. The work can be mis­er­able, so I guess I’m ok with them earnign what­ever the mar­ket allows, even if it is rigged by deals with the devil by com­pa­nies and the union.

12. colleen said on September 25th, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    But it’s pretty freakin’ hard to muster sup­port for guys who cry poor when they are haul­ing down huge bucks with gold-plated benefits -

    I guess that’s my stick­ing point. Cuz they don’t look like “Pow­er­less lit­tle guys” any more, at least to me. And yes, I know the major rea­son for that IS the union.

    I grew up in Fort Wayne in the 80s. When IH left, and the good life that fac­tory work pro­vided went away. THAT’S part of the rea­son I don’t work in a factory.

    My grand­fa­ther was a steel­worker. Didn’t get to retire. He died first.

13. del said on September 25th, 2007 at 1:18 pm

    I think Joe K is on to some­thing; as is Stouder when he won­ders about feel­ings of worker “pow­er­less­ness.” Cf. Emile Durkheim’s “anomie.“
    I’ve noticed that peo­ple who suf­fer a trau­matic life-changing work­place indig­nity (like being down-sized mid-career) tend to react coun­ter­in­tu­itively. Instead of gain­ing sym­pa­thy for other work­ers up against the same sys­tem, they tend to react against them when they seek job secu­rity, or more vaca­tion time, what­ever. So lately I’ve made it a point to not com­plain about jobs whose work­ers get gen­er­ous vaca­tion time or health care ben­e­fits. We should all have it so good.

14. john c said on September 25th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    del … what exactly do you mean by “work­ers up against the same sys­tem”? I think you are miss­ing the point entirely. Very few work­ers exist in the same sys­tem as the UAW, where if you get laid off you don’t have to work … but you still get paid! Very few peo­ple know that they will never, ever have to pay a cent for health care, includ­ing pre­scrip­tions, no mat­ter how much the price of those things goes up, and no mat­ter how long it’s been since they worked at the job that gave them those ben­e­fits. The UAW work­ers are not “pow­er­less,” as you sug­gest. Strike that, the work­ers are pow­er­less in the churn­ing waters of glob­al­iza­tion. The union is drunk with power.

15. del said on September 25th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    john c, you’re right. I did miss the point. I was talk­ing of non-union employ­ers. Totally dif­fer­ent. (You’re right about the job bank.) I think that 9 out of 10 work­ers are not in a union and thus have no job secu­rity as at-will employ­ees. In the 80’s and 90’s sev­eral non-union employ­ees I know were forced to retire pre­ma­turely in their 50’s when their careers should have been peak­ing. As my 96 year old grand­mother would always say, “50’s? That’s young!” I hope the union isn’t drunk with power. Hard to say from my van­tage point. My late grand­fa­ther worked in some­thing called “pol­ish­ing and buff­ing” at GM plant in South­west Detroit for decades and by the time he retired in about 1970 he was fed up with union excesses.

16. ashley said on September 25th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

    You know, I was kinda wor­ried about my job, until one of my employer’s lawyers missed a sen­tence in this press release.

    “Grant­ing tenure is a guar­an­tee of life­time employment.”

    Now, I’m golden. Although my health care is as much as every­body elses…

17. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    Well, as I steam toward 50 and beyond, I was heart­ened to see that over-the-road truck­ing firms snap up guys my age, and pay starts at approx­i­mately $50k. (it seems that older guys lis­ten to instruc­tion and fol­low the rules, and take care of the equip­ment, and don’t drive like they’re in a race against the world)

    The job I have is a good one — but who knows what tomor­row holds?

18. Julie Robinson said on September 25th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    I’m sorry to tell you this, Brian, but those jobs are crap, too. One of our good friends loves to drive and travel and took the bait after his divorce. He was mis­er­able. Always tired, never able to eat health­ily, never know­ing when they would call him in. The com­pany he worked for was sup­pos­edly one of the hon­est ones, but bent all the rules about time on the road. If his shift ended in Indi­anapo­lis, that’s the time they used towards when he could drive again. Never mind that he had to get back here before he could sleep. And he had to pay for his own train­ing, too.

    There is no job secu­rity any­where and there are almost no jobs with the kind of ben­e­fits the auto work­ers get. Most of the mid­dle class is going back­wards and will never get to fully retire. And we are bank­rupt­ing our coun­try in Iraq.

    Yes­ter­day a vol­un­teer where I work told me about her son-in-law, who has been on four tours of duty in Iraq/Afghanistan. Nice guy, devoted to his wife and son. But this last time he came home, they could imme­di­ately tell some­thing was wrong. Sure enough, he exploded, picked her up and threw her out of the house. Her arm was hurt but for­tu­nately not broken.

    Now the wife and son (who is 10 and wit­nessed the whole thing) are liv­ing in a FEMA trailer and every­one is going to coun­sel­ing. How do they fix him? He is bro­ken just the same as if a limb had been blown off. I just want to scream when I hear these tales. Mr. Smug Idiot in the White House is ruin­ing everything.

19. MarkH said on September 25th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    And, Julie, those trucks (at least the major com­pa­nies’) have GPS satel­lite track­ing now, so they always know where the rigs are, and if the dri­vers are on THEIR sched­ule. They tout it in their tv com­mer­cials as an effi­ciency thing for trans­port­ing your goods, but, of course, it comes at a price for the dri­vers. (“What are you doing in Tulsa?! You’re sup­posed to be pulling into Waco right now!!”)

20. Julie Robinson said on September 25th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

    Yes, he had a GPS but it didn’t work prop­erly to help guide him, so he had to buy his own. Because he was totally on his own as far as find­ing his way. In more ways than one.

21. LA mary said on September 25th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

    Very cool, Ash­ley. I’m envi­ous. We are hav­ing a reor­ga­ni­za­tion here at the hos­pi­tal which has every­one in a crap mood. I don’t know if I’m safe or for how long. I know at least six in my depart­ment who aren’t, who will lose their jobs within a year. All of them are very long term employ­ees, all in their fifties.

22. Colleen said on September 25th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

    Mary, my mom sur­vived a lot of down­siz­ing at Lin­coln National, and she said after awhile it was like sur­viv­ing a plane crash. It was just a ter­ri­ble envi­ron­ment for a period of time, and while you’d be glad you made the cut, you’d feel ter­ri­ble for those who didn’t.

    Actu­ally, both of my par­ents were retired, rather than retir­ing when they were ready. Dad’s com­pany (a com­mer­i­cal printer) closed…see ya, say­onara, later, don’t let the door hit ya. Mom got elim­i­nated when LNC moved their HQ. She got a decent, very fair, good­bye pack­age. But that’s not to be expected any­more, I don’t think.

23. nancy said on September 25th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

    Or as we some­times said at the News-Sentinel (where we got no good­bye pack­ages): The liv­ing will envy the dead.

24. alex said on September 25th, 2007 at 10:17 pm

    I remem­ber my first down­siz­ing. What was even harder to take than the news was the job search con­sul­tant they had us meet with on the way out the door. We were told to go to this woman’s office the next day for tips on résumés and inter­view­ing, a free part­ing gift.

    The consultant’s advice? Don’t admit to any prospec­tive employer, no mat­ter what, that you’ve been laid off. Lie.

    So not only did we get the bum’s rush but the most bum advice I’ve ever heard.

25. brian stouder said on September 26th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    And hey! — let’s not let those boda­cious tan-lines pass by with­out a remark…

    This odd woman’s name kept giv­ing me a flash-back, and then (thanks to the Google) I found this -

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​0​64840/

    a fine old movie, which really has noth­ing at all to do with a moth-like woman drawn to the flames of a piece of human wreck­age like OJ…except that ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ sort of echoes with Miss Christie Prody (to me)

    Maybe her even­tual tell-all book will be called The Slime of Miss Christie Prody (sub­ti­tle — Not a Slut, and Not Yet Slit­ted by OJ)