Current Events

General Motors had a Great Fall - Bankruptcy to put it together again?

by Eric Tilden

Published: 2009-06-02, Tue 11:57:24

Well, General Motors has entered bankruptcy, in an attempt to pare down the bloated behemoth of a company it became into a lean, profitable business. On three occasions, I had a chance to work in three different General Motors plants in the Flint, Michigan area. I worked in the aftermarket parts credit and collections department, I worked in a department that sent emergency parts to dealers all across the country, and I worked in a shipping/receiving office. On these three occasions, I found several common threads that I found nowhere else in my working career:

1. High Salaries for all workers regardless of the local wage scale
2. High amounts of socializing during working hours
3. Uninvolved supervisors, or lack of overall supervision
4. A sense of entitlement and/or invincibility
5. Inability to take care of common sense responsibilities due to grievances

The great thing about working for General Motors is that you received, whether you were a salaried or hourly worker, a great paycheck and a great benefits package that you could not only live comfortably on, but you could have the American Dream. Many General Motors factories and offices are spread around the United States, several in Flint, and the workers at these plants and offices made far and above what the local economy can afford to pay. As a result, the General Motors worker could afford to move away from the plant, into a suburban neighborhood with other high paid workers, and commute to work every day. Those not employed through General Motors were forced to take the jobs that supported the General Motors worker, such as convenience stores, restaurants, gas stations, and retail stores. As a result, it created a powerful middle class, and a saturated lower class of people. Slowly, our economy began to revolve around those companies that did business with General Motors, and the smaller businesses began drying up, opening the door for retail giants to move in to offer lower cost items to the working poor.

In Michigan, because so much of our economy is centered around General Motors, and the General Motors wage, housing prices in certain neighborhoods climb, and housing prices in other neighborhoods fall. Those who support the General Motors worker, need to stay close to their job, because they can’t afford to commute, giving rise to lower class neighborhoods, which seem to cluster around General Motors Plants. The people living in these neighborhoods make just enough money to pay their bills, and not much more. A prime example is Saginaw’s Steering Gear, located in Buena Vista Township. These neighborhoods are some of the poorest in Saginaw. Another example of this is near Flint Truck and Bus, located on Bristol Road in Flint, which is surrounded by homes that range well below $100,000.00. Yet what is also common in these neighborhoods are restaurants, fast-food chains, gas stations, etc., all which employ minimum wage workers to provide a relatively inexpensive service to these General Motors Workers. Now that we have had this economic missile hit GM, many of these businesses are drying up, or have been slowly drying up over the past 30 years, as the Japanese auto makers have secured higher and higher market share percentages over General Motors.

Another great benefit to working at GM is that General Motors is a company that has a high amount of job security. While working in the Credit and Collections Department, I was a witness to a large amount of socializing while on the job. I was a young worker at them time, and had just come from a job where I was monitored every minute of every hour that I was at work. When I saw, over 18 months, mid-level employees engaged in conversations that would last for 30-40 minutes at a time, it awed me! I could not understand how an employee could keep their job and spend most of their day socializing away from their workstation. I saw this practiced in the other two positions where I worked, where certain individuals were permitted to stand around and talk for long periods of time, and were not disciplined for the practice.

Over a period of time, I realized another correlating factor: an intense sense of entitlement. Most, if not all the workers that I had the pleasure of interacting with, due to the nature of my job, believed that they actually had the right and were owed these privileges that GM afforded them. Many believed that, since they worked overtime, or did things in their job that were over and above the norm, that it gave them the right to waste company time when they felt like it. Much of this was accomplished in an indirect way, such as bringing in food to share with the other employees and strongly encouraging others to partake in the donuts or bagels that were brought in. Many were so used to their social routines, that one couldn’t ask them a question about work without going through a proper social exercise. One such example that I ran into was that I was working on a slow pay account and needed to go to invoicing periodically to get information on whether or not a bill was issued and for what amount. I could not get them to help me unless first I greeted them with ‘Good Morning’ and asked how they were doing. Others stand behind Unions and are protected from getting fired, and will let non-union employees know this, especially when they misbehave. I had one such experience where a Union employee was drawing Peanuts cartoons all over the check out windows with a dry erase marker, right in front of a floor supervisor, who thought it was funny. I reported the issue to the floor supervisor’s manager, and the union employee was suspended for a day without pay. The floor manager was yelled at, and she eventually found a reason to fire me for making a minor mistake. This lack of overall discipline allows the entitlement to continue, which affects the overall service and products offered by General Motors. It also instills a belief that certain people are invincible, and can do and say anything and get away with it. Firing those who try and oppose such actions, only reinforces the fear to correct such bad behavior.

General Motors, which like some of my other experiences with organized labor, has a specific division of labor that is set in stone. There are only certain people who can empty a trash basket, or clean a window, or push a broom around to clean dust and dirt off the floor. These people are paid quite well to do these jobs. In an attempt to cut down on the amount of socializing that occurs, someone within the organization made it illegal to take care of a common sense problem, such as an overflowing, stinking trash. I had one such experience where the second-shift employee had thrown pizza crusts away in the trashcan, which sat right under my desk, rather than take the waste to the cafeteria and dispose of it. Because of the strong rules of not being able to empty your own trash basket, lest you be hit with a grievance for doing someone else’s job, I was forced, on several occasions, to spend an entire shift smelling second-shift’s rotting lunch. The fear was so pervasive that messes wouldn’t get cleaned. For example, if a copy machine was getting clogged and was malfunctioning, the manager could not ask someone to go out and buy a new one, the manager had to wait for the engineering department to get time and recommend someone in maintenance to fix the problem. As a result, many damaged machines lay unfixed and many employees had to go to alternate machines, sometimes for months before an agreement could be reached on how best to fix the problem. This behavior slowed productivity, because alternate machines had to be sought out and traveled to, which reduces the amount of time available to the employee to work because they are walking back and forth to get their job done.

I have touched on several points indirectly that could have contributed to GM’s situation. The lack of productivity in certain areas could lead to a slow payment of bills, which reduces a business’s ability to borrow money. Lack of productivity can also put out an inferior product that needs to be fixed on a regular basis, or cause that product to be recalled. Recalled products cause consumers to lose faith in the company, driving down market share.

Now that GM is in bankruptcy, I hope that these issues of the past die there. I hope that because the Unions will be forced to take lower wages and less benefits, and the salaried people will be forced to do the same as well, that they will appreciate the benefits that they are given. I hope that the fact that GM won’t be able to employ so many people, will allow a cooperative atmosphere to develop, where any employee can empty an overflowing trash receptacle and will not get in trouble for it. I hope that, because GM is going through bankruptcy, and cannot hire as many workers, that it will force the workers who do work for GM to work versus socialize during the period of time that they are under GM’s care. Do I grieve for General Motor’s position? The answer is no. I am hopeful that the sins of the past are purged from GM so that they can be, not only a giant once again, but a good example of what corporations should be.