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Sometimes You Leap; Sometimes You Fall
- Wayne State University Press
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35 Five Workers Report on How the Deal Really Went Down I. smooth talking rich man all you got was my body peace now owns my soul Wowwee—forseveninthemorning,thelightswerebrightlikeanRKO studio filming It’s a Wonderful Life as people began milling around the entrance to the Building D auditorium. We came from all over the site, assembly and metal fabrication, grounds and housekeeping. Some of us looked older than Jimmy Stewart would look right now if he were still alive. We tripped over the closed-circuit TV cables yet to be taped down. We bumped into the public relations contractors who ran around like decapitated chickens trying to get the show ready for the eight o’clock formal rollout of the most historic exit plan the 36 Lolita Hernandez company had ever offered to its employees. The old wheezy benefit rep, stationed at the entrance to the auditorium, greeted each of us with a handshake and a pat on the back, inviting all to grab a donut or bagel. They’re diet, he proclaimed. Then he motioned for us to grab the printed handout of the Strategic Action Plan. Crumbs free falling from my jibs, I sidled up to the rep. You studied the Plan yet? Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of meetings on it. It don’t look too bad. What else we gonna do? It’s their world. You goin? I don’t know. I still gotta see how the details shake out. I gotta see where the devil is hidin between the lines. It’s one thing on paper, something else when things get rollin in the real world. After sixteen years on the floor as a committeeman and almost ten as a benefit rep, he knew the devil was always somewhere lurking in agreements with the company. He was right there a few months ago peeping from around a corner in that very same Building D when the devil visited the white-collar workers. He told us how it happened—scared the stew out of us. Security forces escorted a slew of salary folks out of company buildings all over the nation on what was called Black Thursday. Oh yes, there had been a variety of packages presented to hourly and salary workers over the past long years of decline and uncertainty in the auto industry, but nothing like that—security forces moving against the white collars and now a Hollywood invitation for all the blue collars to hit the road. The whole world was upside down, even for the asthmatic benefit rep and other union committee folks who crept anxiously around the edges of the auditorium, greeting the membership. They were all in the same [18.232.169.110] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:39 GMT) 37 Five Workers Report on How the Deal Really Went Down boat—union reps, sweepers, production workers, tradespeople, and groundscrews—tryingdesperatelytoparseoutthemanagementoffer, the Strategic Action Plan—or SAP as folks were already calling it—that would affect the rest of their lives. Theauditoriumwassotransformedthatmorningyoucouldeasily forget you were in a place for auto production, where steel parts and flesh interacted. The maze of black velvet curtains confused even longtime workers as they wended their way past glitzy company logos looming high in the darkened auditorium where all the seats faced the bright stage lights. Man I feel like a damn deer in a headlight, said one sweeper with a donut balanced precariously on his Styrofoam coffee cup and the SAP handout under his arm. He squeezed next to a coworker from his department. I ain’t even seen no security guards. I told him, They’re hiding here somewhere. Mark my words. If they could use them against salary, where do you think we stand? So the conversations went as we, unusually wide-eyed for that hour of the morning, found seats in the auditorium that in previous times had been the venue for many all-employee meetings. In those days, salary and hourly sat side by side listening to the muckety-mucks tout company progress in sales or quality or to announce managerial realignments that would certainly lead to improvements. It was also the site of the annual Christmas party. But this all-employee meeting was definitely different. It wasn’t about sales or quality or managerial moves; it wasn’t a party. This meeting was about the company asking each and every one of its hourly workers, all of us, whether we had...