I am shocked... SHOCKED...

Chrysler Auto Workers Caught Drinking During Lunch, Possibly Smoking Pot (with VIDEO)


Uh, yeah, they are acting like this is brand new thing - NEWS, even. Yes, it's very bad behavior but this kind of thing has been going on for a long, long time. It's not all autoworkers who are inebriated at work, but I think it's enough to matter.

I was an auto assembler from 1976 to 1979. It was damned hard physical work and in summer it got up to 125° at my station/part of the line (and it wasn't the hottest area there). It's not only hard work, it's really, really boring. You are stuck in the same place doing the same thing over and over and over again. In this place a car went by about once a minute, so there was time to do whatever it was but falling behind couldn't happen. We put in 53 hours a week for 3 weeks, then 45 hours the 4th week (when we would have Saturday off). Like I said, it was hot, and also really filthy - everything was covered in grime, there were mice and roaches, very poor ventilation and heavy machinery going everywhere, hydraulic tools, forklifts, sexual harassment, pranks (those were usually OK), loud noise and lots of crap. Mostly, the biggest problem was boredom.

I was in my early-mid-20s, and was having as much fun as I could, working hard and partying hard.

During our half-hour lunch, a lot of people hit the nearby bar or convenience store, and guzzle or smoke as much as possible within the time limit. Then, if that wasn't enough, during the shift many had flasks, liquored thermoses, cocaine, whatever could be sneaked.

We got a week off for Christmas, and on that last work day there would be approved parties in some of the work areas - and there would be a punch bowl. It would end up spiked at the source or in the cup. I remember a Christmas party where one guy was so drunk they had to practically carry him to the time clock at the end of the shift, and with his time card placed in his hand, someone else held his hand to clock him out. It was strictly against the rules to clock out another person. We all knew that if you were buying a Big-Three car, it would be wise to make sure it wasn't assembled on the last day for Xmas break.

The foremen were not in on this. They knew about a lot of it, but none of it was officially tolerated. They could look the other way - or not - depending on how they felt like dealing with it. See, if they sent you home, they had to get somebody to do your job NOW. It was a hell of a lot worse for a worker to not be there, because a job on the assembly line can't wait. The line has to keep moving to keep up the profit$.

The guy a couple of stations down from me was a hard-core drunk (and by that I mean he was a lot drunker than anybody else at any given time). He could easily drink a whole bottle of something (and now I can't remember whether he preferred whiskey, gin or vodka) in the course of a day - every day. One day he came in so drunk already that he leaned over to do a job and just kept going... passed out. The foreman was mad as hell, and he got him up and sent him home. The guy left and crashed his car. He wasn't killed, just banged up pretty good. His job was to install the passenger-side seat belt.

I was already a carouser when I started working there, but it was during that time that I started to snap out of it. I got religion for awhile (substituting one damned thing for another one) and eventually gave up the weed and cut the booze waaaay down. The only thing that kept me from ending up as a laid-off factory worker with no skills was the fact that I got myself back in school - taking classes in my spare time. At first I decided to become a draftsman (a "skilled trade" they called it), then set my sights higher on technical illustration - figuring I'd probably have to move to Detroit at some point, as that kind of work was only done at World HQs. (Thanks to the layoffs and plant closings, I never went to Detroit.)

My skilled trade studies and eventual 4-yr degree (even though acquired at age 40) and the smarts I was born with turned out to be the things that saved me better than baby jesus, because the auto industry did not end up providing a future for me. Ever since my first office job in the mid-1980s, I've gotten by without excessive back-breaking work and in fairly safe and pleasant working conditions.

So far, anyway.

And I'm never bored out of my head.

More blue-collar tales here.

Broke and broken

I have done some time as an auto assembler for GM, and have blogged it before: [rantage on working conditions, Union benefits, and the incredible value of a blue collar job.] I was completely unskilled when I went to work for GM, and living below the poverty level.

Because of making a decent wage on the assembly line, I was able to purchase the old house where I was living, fix it up a little, sell it for a profit and buy one in a better area, and start taking classes that would provide skills that would later help me get a job that was not so back-breaking. It provided a leg up that I never would have gotten otherwise.

I was laid off, along with the rest of my shift (followed by wave after wave of layoffs until the whole plant closed). When the layoff hit, the only job skills I had were for factory work (as I still had plenty of classes ahead of me), and the only jobs I could find were close to minimum wage with no benefits.

It was very tough, but I was young, resilient and energetic. It would not be the same if the layoff were about to hit me now. The focus of any Federal money going to the Big Three has got to be on the workers, since I don't believe for a minute that these corporations are going change their ways and turn into silk purses, start making good products. Some workers do have special skills ("skilled trades" we called them) where they can move into another industry, but most are not equipped to face the job market.

There's plenty of work that needs to be done in this country, and not all of it requires high skills. My biggest hope is that if there are unwillingly idle hands that they can be given something worthwhile to do, and a paycheck to boot.

Yeah, I know. It's complicated.

It's All About Me(me)

I was tagged by ENIGMA4EVER on this one.

(1) Five Things That Were on My "To Do" List Today:
I actually have a list sitting here with at least 5 things on it! They are even numbered in order, 1-5. Not on the list is get up at 5AM, leave at 7AM and stay at the day job until 12:30. After that I go to the pharmacy to spend nearly $100 on cat medicine, go to Lowe’s and return some shelf brackets, go to the bank, the Post Office, and finally to the Library to pick up the second season of Deadwood on DVD which they are holding for me.

(2) Ten Years Ago:
My life radically changes every 5 years. I can pick out any two points that are five years apart and they are so different from each other that it’s unimaginable. So… 10 years ago --

I was living in an affluent and conservative Republican neighborhood in far west St. Louis County. We were reasonably affluent but NOT conservative Republican. Except for our Democrat signs in the window, we just tried to blend in and not get shot or something.

I was going through a recent job upheaval, transitioning from working full-time at a good paying job to being laid off after an ugly corporate merger that shut down our facility. I was working freelance from home until another job offer came my way.

I was going through a middle-aged crazy time, which was like being an old teenager. I had rediscovered an old favorite band, the Moody Blues, and was making several trips a year to see them around the country, and my friends were all other crazy Moody Blues fans from all over the world doing the same thing, and we would meet in places like Merrillville Indiana, Kalamazoo, Las Vegas, Louisville, Nashville, Chicago, etc. Texas music was calling me though, and it finally broke through and changed my focus during the following year.

(3) Five Places I Have Lived (besides Austin):
Good grief, there have been so many it’s ridiculous. I was born in the Air Force, remember, plus my folks moved a lot for no good reason.
1. Phoenix, Arizona
2. Honolulu, Hawaii
3. Athens (area), Greece
4. Sarasota, Florida
5. Carbondale, Illinois

(4) Three Bad Habits:
1. Worrying. I worry myself sick, literally.
2. I have a love/hate relationship with exercise… but without the love.
3. Not getting enough sleep.

Numbers 2 and 3 are more like saying these are good habits I don't have.

(5) Five Jobs I've Had:
1. photo lab worker in the 70s
2. barmaid
3. auto assembler
4. graphic designer and technical artist
5. web designer/webmaster

(6) If I Were a Billionaire:
Wow. First, I would change my name so that the relatives couldn’t find me. Like most people, I would get us a very “green” dwelling. Not a mansion, just big enough with ample closets and room for kitties. I’d design it in a way that would make Ed Begley Jr. proud. Probably in Austin. Then we'd have to have some green transportation. Then give what I didn’t need to charities. My favorite ones have to with animals in need, homeless people, and environment, but none that are run by churches, I don’t trust those. My first project would be the local shelters, they would be made no-kill… then there needs to be funding for spaying and neutering to help keep them that way. I mention critters first, because I don’t think of humans as superior to other animals, but since most people do, animals have hardly any rights and are the victims of our cruelty, neglect and complete irresponsibility. Before I know it, that billion would be gone.

Tagging:
Well, I think a lot of my readers and commentors have already done this one. So tag yourself if you haven't been tagged.

Blue collar buyout

[News references] I was really sad to hear about the Automaker buyouts that are set to take place soon. The car companies have long been suffering under the weight of providing benefits, especially with rising health care costs, to current workers and retirees. They want to "buy out" as many workers as they can, offer early retirement or other incentives to voluntary termination/severence -- then replace the workers with a new generation who receive much lower pay and weaker benefits. This has been coming for many years.

I was hired on the GM assembly line back in 1976. It was a huge factory complex that was composed of Corvette, the truck line, and the passenger line which produced Impala and Caprice coupes, sedans and station wagons. That's the one I worked on (although I worked on the truck line for a couple weeks as a fill-in). Prior to being hired there, I had 2 years of studying Fine Art at the Community College under my belt, and discovered that I did not really have any job skills. Part of the Fine Art training was to avoid demeaning yourself by acquiring Commercial Art skills, and to never create Art that is not for Art's Sake... we were above that, thought we were on a higher plane... so after asking a couple of prospective employers "what's paste-up?" (and they were really uninterested in seeing my nude figure drawings in charcoal), I got a job bartending in a real low-class dive paying $15 cash for 9 hours of work daily. The place was not far from the GM plant, so I got acquainted with a couple of foremen, and one of them gave my job application the short-cut.

They were adding a night shift, so there were a couple thousand of us that started at the same time. We were getting our orientation, and after observing how slowly the workers moved and that it looked like they did their jobs with ease, I remarked to the Foreman "that doesn't look too hard." "HHGMFF", He snorted, "Oh yeah?" Well before I knew it, I was assigned to attaching windshield post mouldings... that piece of plastic that runs from the dash up to the roof. Once a minute I had to see look at the upcoming car and pull the right color stock, open the door, sit on the seat with my legs braced against the bottom edge of it for balance, snap the part in place (which by itself took all my strength, and required a couple of good hard whacks with my palm), then drive the screws in place with a heavy drill positioned over my head and at an angle.

I had to spend some time in the company clinic each day after my shift, sitting there with my swollen hands in ice. Other new workers were in there going through the same sort of thing. It wasn't just the hands... it was every inch of my body. Where it wasn't bruised or swelled up it was just plain sore. After about a week or so, the Foreman moved me to something that was slightly easier for me. I did quite a lot of different jobs in there, and they were mostly all really hard, although there is "light duty". Driving screws, throwing heavy things, swinging a mallet, shoving, crimping, squeezing, whacking, high noise levels, fumes from machines and forklifts, HOT (my work area got up to 125 deg. in summer) plus lots and lots and walking on the job and on your breaks. We worked our first 90 days without UAW protection, and during that time we got to see what it would be like to work in a place like that with no Union. Management used the time to weed out people they didn't like. They'd assign a 100 lb. woman the job of lifting something that weighed as much as she did, short people assigned to reach high, tall people made to work in cramped spaces, a minute late clocking in? you're gone. Too sick to work? same thing.

Most of us were unskilled workers who were finally fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to make a decent wage and have good benefits, so we were willing to work ourselves nearly to death if necessary to get through the 90 days, and then we were IN. We had certain rights then, such as requesting to be reassigned to a task within our capabilities. Under the Union umbrella it was all negotiation. They had the right to work us 9 hours a day and 3 out of 4 Saturdays. It was mandatory. In return we were paid for the overtime and they weren't allowed to work us more than that. We got used to the hard work, and before long we were pacing ourselves. We had rhythm. We could do the jobs in our sleep.

This job was life-changing. It enabled me to be able to purchase the tumbledown building I lived in, buy a new economy car, pay my bills, start taking classes again... classes that would help me start a career. I had been on my own for several years, but the job enabled me to become independant and able to take care of myself, and my mother as well. She needed all kinds of help which I could now help provide. It provided a bootstrap where I had none.

Lots of issues hit the auto industry and/or its workers: plants would be moved to right-to-work states (Union not required), then came the trend for moving plants out of the USA, automation increasingly replaced human jobs, the quality of the products was poor, health care and benefit costs kept rising.

We were laid-off during a company slump and eventually our plant closed. I was thrown back into the pit of minimum wage jobs with no benefits until I managed to get enough schooling to be hired for my skills, which took several more years.

I am sad because the prospect of being able to make a good honest living with steady wages and good benefits -- without having a college education, being an entrepreneur or entering the military -- seems to be gone. The Middle Class is shrinking and these workers were a big part of it. We've come to the end of an era in this country. I'm not a fan of trying to go backwards, I just want "progress" to mean good things for human beings who are trying to get by.

In 1976 our plant, which was not really state-of-the-art, had some robots but they had only a few functions, mainly in welding. They had just changed the policies regarding women as well, to respond to demands for equal rights. Previously, women were given easier jobs, got longer breaks, and there may have been pay discrepancies (not 100% sure about that one), but when they brought us in, all those things were done away with -- which was a good thing.

5 little known things tag, and I made 2 haikus too!

Dredging up that Blueberry header again. How can I resist?

Are these the right rules?
Nava composed a haiku
and so here is mine.

I am not an artist anymore. All my artsy stuff is done to promote other people's ideas, so it doesn't even count as art, but it does count as design, graphic design, web design, or illustration. Let's see... 5 little known things. When I was barely even two, I was drawing and painting at a pretty advanced level, and kept it up passionately until I was in my 20s when reality and mortgages kicked in, so I sold out to the J-O-B. As a person with art schooling, I will bring up some of the jobs I've had.

1. Retouching Sears portraits. Some of these portraits were just butt-ugly crap, and on top of that the negatives were dusty and scratched, so we all sat in a big open warehouse room and if you looked up from the roll, the supervisor goon yelled out "you outta work?". The photos were on a motorized roll which we operated with one hand while holding a tiny brush in the other. We made minimum wage (which was $1.75), and after paying my rent I didn't have enough money left for food, or even enough to park my car at work and had to park several blocks away in an even scarier part of downtown St. Louis. The place also had stupid rules about fraternization, in that males and females were not permitted to sit together during lunch or be seen speaking to each other socially.

2. Bartending in a redneck dive. I was paid $15 cash for ~9 hours of work with no actual breaks, plus all the booze I could drink and a frozen pizza. This job has a few colorful stories that go with it, so I will leave them for a later post. I quit it to take job #3.

3. Automobile assembler. Hard work. Noxious fumes. Hands exposed to naphtha all shift, booze, drugs, 125 degF at my spot on the line in summer. This was the job that convinced me that I need more schoolin', and this time with a desk job in mind. Decent pay and benefits for the unskilled, but we were laid off. Then the plant closed.

4. Housekeeping in Nursing Homes. This job was a promotion I sought after doing job #5.

5. Laundry worker in a Nursing Home. Practically the definition of the bottom of the barrel. We worked in the basement and it flowed down the big chute at us.

Five little known things.
I've been tagged as an artist
and must tag five more.

(I think the haiku is highly optional, ya'll. Just 5 little known things and tag 5)
tagging: konagod, a creative from my neck of the woods.
Dr. Monkey, Lord of the Crunky, who manages to keep the fez on.
mando mama, you are tagged as a string enthusiast.
undeniable liberal, who shows artistry with the turn of the phrase, and in coming up with NEW words where they are needed!
Michael, you are an artist, so consider yourself tagged if you happen to read this. No pressure!!

Cartoon from Toothpaste for Dinner.