With plant closings, fewer jobs for GM gypsies to chase

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/jobcen...-gypsies_x.htm

With plant closings, fewer jobs for GM gypsies to chase
By Adam Geller, Associated Press
Tom Hoppe was raised the son of an autoworker, the great grandson of another. And when he graduated high school, it seemed natural Hoppe would join his classmates and find steady work on the production line, too.
But in recent years, Hoppe hasn't so much held a steady job as chased a moving target.

As the world's largest automaker has grown ever smaller ? closing plants, cutting shifts and eliminating jobs ? Hoppe has moved seven times from factory to factory, in pursuit of a paycheck and a pension.

Hoppe and thousands of workers like him call themselves "GM Gypsies." And with General Motors and Ford Motor set to close factories again, many of the workers who remain on board may well have to follow their migratory lead. But will there be enough jobs left for them?

"I'm always getting ready to leave. Some GM workers just keep their stuff in boxes," says Hoppe, a 28-year GM veteran who expects his current job at a plant in Lake Orion, Mich. to be cut this spring when production is scaled back. "You never know."

The uncertainty now built into a job on GM and Ford assembly lines was once all but unimaginable. Many GM Gypsies, and their Ford counterparts, are the sons and daughters of auto workers who toiled until retirement at a single plant and promised their children they'd be able to do the same.

"People looked at jobs in the auto plants like property, like something that they owned, something that could be passed down from father to sons," said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. "That was pretty much making it for a lot of people."

That changed for good in the 1980s when GM, and Ford to a lesser extent, went through wrenching changes, closing plants and revamping manufacturing technology. In the past 20 years, GM and spun-off parts supplier Delphi have closed 110 plants (while opening 34 new ones) and eliminated more than 300,000 hourly jobs, mostly through attrition, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Workers hit the road to hold on to prized jobs. Over the past two decades, McAlinden estimates 80,000 GM production workers have moved at least 300 miles to take a new job with the automaker.

While such moves are common for white-collar workers, they have resulted in dramatic and sometimes uneasy changes for many production workers, uprooting families, stretching commutes to hours and causing tensions on assembly lines between transplants and oldtimers.

To ease the strain, the United Auto Workers union won benefits for workers whose jobs are eliminated, granting substantial incentives both to relocate for jobs in distant plants, as well as to stay put.

But the union's contracts with GM and Ford expire in the fall of 2007, fueling widespread doubt about whether those benefits will remain intact.

Workers and labor experts expect the automakers to push to eliminate the "jobs bank" program that continues paying laid-off auto workers after their plants close.

Meanwhile, GM plans to cut 30,000 jobs by closing plants in cities like St. Louis and Oklahoma City where it has few nearby operations, focusing remaining manufacturing on its Midwest core. The closings and a new contract will likely force many of the workers at those plants to choose between hanging it up or relocating.

"There will be another burst of gypsy moves. GM will have to move another 20,000 to 30,000 in the next two to three years," McAlinden said. "You're really going to have to get a lot of these people to retire or move back to Michigan and Ohio."

As GM moves forward with closings, it will try to convince older workers ? the average GM production worker is just shy of 50 ? to retire. That could lead up to 45,000 people to leave the automaker and create openings, McAlinden said.

But not all observers agree, noting that the unsettling shifts at work in the auto business make it difficult to predict what comes next.

The plant closings could severely limit the choices of many workers, eliminating their own jobs and creating increased uncertainty about the plants and jobs that remain, Chaison said.

"Not only will they (workers) be pushed by plant closings, but the closings will be so widespread that there won't be anything pulling them to another job either," Chaison said.

That situation already faces workers like Doug Branscom, who worked at a GM assembly plant in Baltimore until it closed last May.

Branscom got his start at GM in 1976, when he hired on at a Connecticut plant, doubling the $3 an hour he was making at another factory job. When his shift was eliminated after five years, he worked as a school custodian until a job opened at another GM plant in Framingham, Mass. in 1984.

That job, too, vanished when GM closed the plant three years later. So he became a truck driver for a year. But he returned to the automaker in 1989 when a job opened in Baltimore. The move came a year before the large relocation bonuses took effect, but put him in a place where he finally settled down.

Branscom, now 53, bought a home in a neighborhood of concrete bungalows, originally built by Bethlehem Steel for its workers. He's forged friendships with workers whose moves have paralleled his. A self-described critic of ties between the union and the company, Branscom said he is reluctant to leave for another plant, where his reputation might precede him and make life difficult.

When a job opened recently at a GM plant in Kentucky, he passed despite the relocation bonus, hoping instead he gets one of 86 new jobs the automaker is adding at a transmission plant in Baltimore.

"I'm tired of this gypsying for General Motors," he said. "What's to say I go out there and two years later they close that too?"

Hoppe, who has worked for GM since he was 19, also is waiting to see what happens. The autoworker spent years at GM's Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Mich. He transferred briefly to a plant in Toledo, Ohio when he was laid off, before returning to Willow Run. That's where he planned to stay, until GM decided otherwise.

"When they closed my plant in 1993, I was building a garage in my backyard and I was finishing up and putting a floor up in the attic," he recalls. "When I heard on the radio they were going to be closing my plant down, I stopped hammering nails right then and I brought the pieces of plywood back to the lumberyard because I knew I was going to be moving."

Hoppe moved with his wife and two children to Spring Hill, Tenn., where GM builds its Saturn models.

They stayed seven years, but moved back to take an assembly job at the Orion plant in 2000 after Hoppe says he "saw the writing on the wall." GM has since announced plans to close one of the Tennessee plant's two production lines.

Two years later, the Michigan plant eliminated a shift and Hoppe transferred to a GM truck plant in nearby Pontiac. When his shift was cut there, he was assigned to the "jobs bank" at another GM site in Pontiac. After five months there, a job opened at Orion, where he works installing interiors of Pontiac G6 coupes and sedans.

Hoppe says he expects to lose his current job in April, when the company plans slow production at his plant, setting the stage for a move to a ninth GM location.

The moves have had their pros and cons. Hoppe says the transitions strengthened his marriage because he and his wife grew to depend on each other. But since leaving Tennessee, he's largely avoided forging friendships with co-workers, knowing he's likely to be moving again.

He's fairly confident he'll make it to retirement with GM, given its remaining concentration of plants in Michigan. But that is where the family's connections with GM will likely end, Hoppe says.

"I told my kids from a very young age that: 'Don't count on a job at General Motors because there won't be one,'" he says. "We really are at the end of the line."


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Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Boats]

Mort

The way our industry is going - it won't be too long and many more will be put out of work. This restructuring crap is going on everywhere and I'm caught up in it as well.

The out-sourcing to 3rd world countries is turning the US into an assembly farm. Last I heard we don't even own any major steel mills anymore - all foreign interest own the bulk of our most power industries. It's our own fault. Ever since 1980 things have been rolling down hill for US workers.

I don't know where it will end but its going to impact many lives and how we pull out of it has yet to be uncovered. It seems our government doesn't really care much who owns what as long as they are getting their cut.

I wish I knew the answers I'd sure like to stuff some of those smart ass know it alls into the unemployment lines where they've put so many others.

What's with the gas prices of late!!!!!!!!!! $2.69 a gallon and last I heard we have an oil glut of late we are producing more than two million gallons per day over the demand. So whose buying this expensive stuff and when will prices drop back down to $2 a gallon?

Medical issues are also impacting the bult of US personnel and its causing many to stop buying the drugs they need. Pretty damn shame our government has really let us down and so many are really suffering because of it. I'm beginning to sound like HC and I really don't want to get that angry.

[Advisor]

I'm seriously considering voting against ALL incumbants or the incumbant party in the next election. Both parties whore themselves to the same interests so at least I can contribute to changing the ho's on the corner every few years. Maybe, just maybe, if we put enough of our 'leaders' out of work they just might get the idea that they represent us & not their 'johns.'
Hey, I can dream, can't I???

[DMZ-LT]

GM and Ford are both closing assembly plants in Atlanta next year. I live about a mile from the GM plant , it employes 9,000 and was built in 1947

[39mto39g]

Are closing plants because all its loyal customers are now buying Jap crap. Keep buying Toyota, nissan, and the rest and they will close more plants. But then they will build Toyota plants wont they ?
When a Jap or a China company comes and outsorce for your job maybe the light bulb will light up? Maybe 15 years ago the argument was sound that the Japs built a more reliable car, but that just isn't true today.
But then I don't really care I sit on the couch and drink beer for a living.

[b3196]

I luv my Toyota Tundra V8 4X4 (No Moose wheels).....Havnt been back to the dealer yet for repairs and its been 3 years....Made right here in Indiana
Bob K

[39mto39g]

And where do the profits go for that Toyota?
You can get the same reliability for just about any new Chevy or Ford Truck. Japs could probibly provide a police force cheeper than the one you work in also. Maybe even more reliable.

Ron

[b3196]

Ron
Its funny you should mention that....Larry started a thead about the Indianapolis airport. It's true their police dept is owned and operated by a British company. They go through the same academy and their training and salary are not paid by the tax payers of Indiana. So you might have something here
Bob K

[Packo]

You know guys, one thing I like about economics and the free market system. Supply and demand. If Ford and GM were making a product that everyone wanted, they would buy it. If the Japs are outselling US stuff in America....it's because that's what people want. Nobody holds a gun to your head and says...By a KIA! Now, my truck is American, Dodge, (the company that keeps turning a profit when Ford and Chevy are in trouble), and why aren't they laying off and closing plants???? Suppy and demand. They are putting out a product people want to buy. Look at GM's GTO. For less money you could get a 300 SRT 8 that would blow it's doors off and it's a luxury vehicle. What's Ford got...well the new 500 and some other thing that replaced the Taurus. Wow.....seeing many of those going down the highway? Nope. Same same GM and their line of auto's. I don't feel sorry for any of them. Make what people want and they will buy it. You don't, you lose.

Pack

[b3196]

Edsel PacK
You hit the nail right on the head......Todays payday so I have to go downtown and get my Yen.
Bob K