Diary of an American Worker

1976: 12 years old and I am off to work in the fields detassling. I got to work for a week before the heat got to me. The group leader allowed us to sit on the bus for 1 “round” through the fields without pay. A couple of older kids on the bus messed around and dumped Kool-aid into the water jug. We all got fired for it. $2.00 an hour seemed like SO much back then! The following years I got into better crews and detassled until the year after I graduated. This also allowed me to make connections with farmers. Days spent detassling, nights spend baling hay and shoveling corn. This was the way we were taught to chase the American dream. Work hard, Play harder, and move your way up the pay scale by being a good worker.
1981: My decision to go to a junior college after graduation made me decide to something that I regret now, but seemed to be the correct thing at the time. I was on the football team for 3 years, but decided to work my senior year to save up for school and to buy a better car. Looking back, I realize how much I missed during my senior year. I worked at a grocery store stocking shelves and bagging groceries. Since the other workers were on sports teams at their school, I had to work all the game and dance nights. But I DID pay my way through college and got away from the $250 beater I was driving.
1982: I graduated high school! Finally I can start my life! I joined the ranks of young adults going to college. After 3 years of part-time jobs and study, I received an Associate in Business, a Data Processing certificate, and am well on my way to an Associate in Drafting Technology.
1984: While finishing my schooling, I worked at Nibco. They made gate valves for large oil and water companies. $6.25 is a good wage for a single guy. The problem is that after 9 months of working there, the doors closed.
I started work at a plastic factory named Ronningen Research. Working on trimming parts, I worked up to operating simple machines. I even got a chance at working in the Computer Aided Design station. Life was good. $5.00 an hour and a tiny bit of insurance, although I never used it. The Steel Workers Union tried to organize, and after the failed attempt, I got let go. Seems that if you didn’t shout against the Union, they assumed you were for it! At the time, I didn’t know enough about it to choose either way so I remained silent.
I moved on to a small plastic factory in my hometown. $5.00 an hour and hot, dry, hard work. But I did have time to play softball, where I met my future wife. Money was short, times were rough, but I was young enough that I didn’t notice it! Health insurance? I was young and didn’t feel that I NEEDED to worry about that! Talk about naive.
1987: I worked in a small factory named Shadow Interior that provided padded items for Coachmen R.V. I ran the woodshop and was treated fairly by those that ran the plant. The money was decent, the people friendly, the work challenging. I had just gotten married and was trying to move up the ladder financially so I could provide my wife and I a home for our future children. Times were trying, but we got by. Health care was there if we TRULY need it for life and death situations, as long as we were willing to drain our small savings account to cover it.
1988: I got an opportunity to move into a position doing drafting work for Coachmen R.V. It seems they paid the factory’s bills and payroll. While we were trying to find ways to make better product and increase efficiency, some of the people in Management had gotten my name from the supervisor at Shadow Interior. I had gone to college for the drafting degree and was just THRILLED to be working in the field I had studied. The money was about the same as before, but I planned on going back to college to complete my training. The job was good, the money decent, the people even friendlier, and once again Health care was there as long as my savings could cover the large deductible. The hours were sort of long, and my drive to work was close to an hour each way. I spent 12-14 hours a day either on my way to work or at work.
1989: My wife and I discussed buying a house, but our incomes wouldn’t support it. We barely afforded the 2-room apartment we lived in. I wanted to return to college to earn an engineering degree, but didn’t have the money or time. 12-14 hour days don’t allow you time to return to college while you work. As we tossed options back and forth, we decided that I would join the Army to make use of the college fund. After talking to Human Resources at Coachmen, I decided to take a military leave of absence and join. My wife and I had been married all of a year and a half, so leaving was rough on both of us. But as training went on we both coped the best we could. Training was rough, but it provided the satisfaction you get from testing your limits and finding you are capable of more that you thought. As an added benefit, I had gone into Basic at 245 lbs and 7 weeks later I was a slim trim 185. My wife picked me up from the airport before I went to Advanced Training and she walked by me twice before she read my nametag and recognized me! Three years in the army went by fast. I got stuck in Fort Polk, LA. We went to the field 9-10 months out of a year. My confidence grew in leaps and bounds as my friends and I met challenge after challenge. My wife’s confidence grew as she was forced to live alone most of each year. The money was decent, the job was demanding, the people were almost like family, and Health care for ME was great. Any time I got sick or injured the doctors worked hard to get me back to work! For my wife, Health care was so-so. She had some problems that the doctors weren’t interested in. We had decided to try to have children after 2 years of marriage and it hadn’t happened yet. She went to a few doctors but they did minimal testing and seemed puzzled.
1991 After leaving the Army, I returned to Coachmen R.V. They had computerized all the drafting and engineering areas. I had to return to the assembly floor while I waited for an opening in engineering. This turned out to be good for me as I learned more about how a unit went together. A few months later, I got the chance to move into my old job, but boy had it changed. Before I had been a draftsman. Now my responsibilities were closer to a junior engineer. I no longer drew up plans to things designed by engineers; I was actually responsible for light design work. I was thrilled to work. I spent time in their Viking pop-up camper plant doing design work and working closely with service and purchasing departments. We set up computer systems and did the I.T. work ourselves. When the finance department got a new computer, we all read the manuals and set things up. I was having the time of my life. The work was demanding and varied, the money was good, and the Health care good, and the people were great. Things changed and I returned to Coachmen R.V. to do engineering work. The design work was demanding and I worked long hours again, but was moving up the corporate ladder (or so I thought) but the hours didn’t allow me to return to college as I hoped. The money was there but not the time. We had our first child in 1994 and were desperate to move up in our lives.
1996: I was offered a job at American Axle and Manufacturing. After 6 months of testing I finally got the job. I was back on the shop floor, working 2nd shift. The job was physically demanding, mentally empty, and rough. I had somehow found my way back up in weight to around 230 lbs. But the thing I enjoyed about this job was the way management spoke of working together. When challenges arose they talked things over with the teams that did the work. We came up with ways to improve our work area, our efficiency, our quality, etc. Every time you talked to them, WE had ownership of our work area. This filled in the missing mental challenge from my last job. I had taken the job because it offered more money with the opportunity to move up the financial ladder. I finally felt I could afford to purchase a house. We bought a small modular home, put it on a basement on land given to us by my parents and were FINALLY living the American dream. We even bought a new car after 2 years. Nothing fancy, but new! We budgeted our money and actually started saving. The Health care was great! We were on an HMO and paid only small co-pays. The only downside was the hours. I was stuck on 2nd shift for 7 years. In the mean time, we had our second child in 1998.
As time passed, things at American Axle started to become strained. The bosses weren’t asking our advice any more. We were forced to do things that didn’t make much sense. We knew from our experience what wouldn’t work, but they had a high turnover of middle management and they insisted on retrying projects that were tried and failed before. Then we went through a “lean-operations” period. Nothing was sacred as they slashed jobs to spread us thin. We had gone from producing 18000 parts a day on 2 shifts to producing less than 12000 parts a day on 3 shifts all in the name of efficiency. 1 person was expected to run 2 or 3 jobs and our production went down. Management insisted it was because we refused to RUN between jobs, but the jobs could only be run 1 after another. Where before we did one job, checked all our quality on our job and spot checked the jobs before us, now we didn’t have the time to check our quality if we were to get the numbers out that management wanted. Those of us that insisted on making all our quality checks were labeled as troublemakers. We were accused of slowing down production. Management started making bad calls on quality, and for the first time since AAM started our quality dropped. In 2006 we actually got put on business hold for the quality problems we were having. People became frustrated as the mantra of the day became “NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS”. Some bosses insisted that they didn’t worry about quality as long as they got their number for the day. We tried to explain that making 100 parts and having 20 bad parts was worse than making 80 parts and making sure they were good, but they weren’t listening. Management stopped calling our quality department out, making the calls themselves to save time. Many people stopped caring, stating that it didn’t matter. The believed management would cover for the lost quality since they were the ones deciding on numbers. But whenever quality got bad enough, they would write up or walk out a worker. Trust between management and workers was broken. We worked our tails off for over a year and finally got off business hold. Improvements were made to processes to help keep our quality up, but once again they slowed the process down. Facing lower numbers again, management started making decisions to bypass the improvements to speed us up. Today we are fighting with management to use the improvements that brought us out of business hold. The numbers are STILL more important to them than running quality parts.
2008 UPDATE: We are on strike. It seems that the company we have worked so hard for and made profits for over 14 years (12 years for me) has invested most of that money overseas and in Mexico. Now we are faced with a 60% cut in pay, reduction of benefits, and elimination of most of our rights and rules. We were threatened that they could move everything out of the country if we didn’t comply. I have worked long and hard to get to where I am. We have taken pay freezes for the past 8 years, watched as our benefits were slowly cut year by year, and now are being dealt the final blow. Our pay is almost non-existent; our benefits are barely covering anything unless it is an emergency. I compare my strike pay and benefits to my 1st year of work and they are about the same. The sad thing is, the offer he made us is no better than the strike pay I am receiving! The reward for our loyalty and diligence in improving AAM’s efficiency, quality, and profitability seems to be a swift kick in the pants. 6 weeks into this mess and they STILL insists it is their way or the highway.
The one bright spot in this is the support shown to our Union by thousands of caring people in the community around us. We are receiving help from hundreds of miles away, getting messages daily from around the country, and our membership is becoming closer every day. We have become a family and are watching our spirits soar while watching a movement in America that shows the caring of people when they recognize oppression. We are standing strong and resolve to continue this fight as long as necessary. Win or lose, at least we can say at the end of the day that our heads were held high. We may be beaten, but will never give up.

THAT folks is the American Spirit.

Willie Roop - Striking AAM-TR Autoworker

And DAMN PROUD!

Processes are not clarified. Like re-run steel; steel is scrapped after it is run through the induction heater twice. No documentation supports this action. The Quality Supervisor states steel can be run through more than twice. Usually this steel is scrapped. Many racks of this steel are scrapped annually. How much money is lost on a whole rack of good steel being tossed out.

We had a period of time where no Preventative Maintenance had been performed on the Upsetters for many years. Employee’s are blamed for these machines not running or when we can’t obtain a quality part.

Supervisors just want to be a boss. It’s all about clicking with the Upper Management and covering their own rears not the hourly employees. Supervisors just want to look good for Dauch and Upper Management. We have been told, on Numerous occasions, when Dauch walks through the plants, to just keep the machines running even if we are only making scrap. They think they are showing Dauch that we are “running strong”. Dauch needs to walk in Unannounced. He will see the real way his plant is being run. It is like a dog and pony show if they know he is coming through.

Shotblast and Bender Operators become supervisors. An Agricultural Engineer running the Upset Department? Finance people become Area Supervisors and then Plant Managers? How can a 3 month Supervisor tell a 14 year vet what to do and how he should do it? Who would you want to teach you on the workings of an Upsetter; Management with a degree that has nothing to do with Manufacturing or an employee that has been running and repairing that machine for 14 years? These people have no idea the skillfulness and intricate modifications that are done to produce a quality part. Some of these modifications are needed due to the lack of preventive maintenance mentioned above.

There has been “big money” wasted on past processes that we don’t use anymore. Example: We implemented a new tagging system that failed TWICE. How many hours were wasted organizing and building this system, TWICE? How much in materials wasted, TWICE? By the way, we aren’t using this system …again. Yet, you won’t listen to the suggestions that will really save you money. Like the scrap mentioned above, or cutting small rubber mats out of the big used rubber mats to save money. Why buy small ones when we can reuse big ones? How many thousands of dollars would that have saved over the years? Somehow Management doesn’t think it’s a good idea! Who makes these decisions? I want to see them on St. Aubin begging for their jobs. These are some of the reasons why we feel we are being set up for failure. Imagine the money saved if someone listened to us years ago. Really, years ago.

AAM spent $150,000 to develop a class that would train and instruct us on how to run and repair an Upsetter. 4 people took the course (I was one of them) and there were numerous errors in the textbook and on the video. This is a training video and there is a safety violation RIGHT ON THE VIDEO! It is a shame that an hourly worker is looked at as disposable and useless. It is ironic that the same employee is the one who is correcting your textbook and has to educate the “teacher” on the finer points of Forging.

We have gone for years without the proper tools. At one time we had them. Then Management took them and threw them away because they were going to “re-do” the system. We have never received replacement tools. This causes much more down time and consequently money is wasted…again.

As we all know, Toyota is an important client. Then why is the quench protection for Hino shafts barely operable? Equipment is broken. The process is hardly documented; as we have been instructed to do. The whole process needs to be re-evaluated. Good parts are continually being scrapped in large quantities. Modifying this process would save a lot of money for AAM and maybe even Toyota.

Then there are safety issues. There is plexiglass in the windows of an overhead crane. OSHA standards require shatterproof glass. Maybe I should mention the Upset crane that doesn’t have brakes. The list can really go on and on. Safety issues are ignored until we are fined or somebody gets hurt. 2 ½ years it took to put a mirror inside the bay door of the Upset department so Hi-lo’s won’t injure people.

These are just some of the issues in my department. I know there are issues in other departments as well and those employee’s could share a wealth of suggestions too.

While Mr. Dauch, was at Chrysler, he was quoted as saying “We would go in, stop operations, and talk to people” You felt it was important to hear what the workers had to say. Why not now when it is YOUR OWN company? Who better to give you insight on the struggles or successes on the floor? It has been said that you are purposely ignoring these issues because you want the Forge to fail. We know you want to shut it down. And who better to blame than the hourly employees that manufacture these products. I don’t want to believe that. Who in their right mind would want any part of their company to purposely fail? But how can such a shrewd businessman let all of this go on under his nose and be none the wiser?

I don’t need to quote all AAM and Dauch’s profits,. We have heard it many times. We all know about his large salary, bonuses etc while the company lost 222 million dollars in 2006. We are all aware of the bonuses of Upper Management. But not one of them are willing to take a cut. Do you even consider the consequences your actions are going to have on our families? 3600+ people will lose their homes and maybe even their cars. Some of your employees have spouses or other family members here too. So, in their case you are affecting two salaries in one household. In our situation, my wife has already taken a pay cut similar to the one we have heard you suggest. We simply can’t do it again. I am a forth generation Forge employee. I have worked for your company for 14 years. We have built a life around AAM and our pay. You can’t just take 60% of our pay and benefits and not expect a fight. What is left after I pay benefits with $11.40 an hr? How can I support my family with that? How would you support your family with that? With gas going to $4.00 a gallon, how can I even drive to work on that? With all this said; I have to say I know you have a negative opinion of the hourly worker. You feel that we are all replaceable and dispensable. I can assure you I am not. I am that worker who gives 110%. I go over and beyond. My Supervisors never have to tell me what to do because it is already done. I am never someone who says “that isn’t my job”. I can run and problem solve an Upsetter better than most people on the floor and any Manager that has come through this plant in my 14 yrs. I gave you 14 years of dedicated service and I deserve the respect as such.

In Solidarity

We have just released some guidelines on ‘Child Labour Remediation Guidelines in the Industrial Context” which might interest you.

There is also a newsfeed on labour standards and ethical trade issues

thanks

Martin