June 7th, 2009 by TNM
I guess it has all been said, the talking heads, the government, the conservatives the liberals the GOP the DNC all have stated their positions and all have decided who is right or wrong, who wins and who looses in the GM collapse.
So I will only post something I wrote on another forum, something that I think shows the human side of what the fall of GM means.
So what’s this I hear concerning the people that worked for GM?
It’s not fair! Society owes these workers! We need to help them!!…
Wait; hold on one second there…not so fast.
While that may in fact be a noble idea, I’ll say it again; the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I’m going to tell you a story about one of those 70+ year old workers. A retiree from GM.
I haven’t spoken to my father about the GM crisis, he’s in frail health these days and I try to avoid upsetting him. But I’m fairly confident that even if his GM pension goes away, he’ll be just fine. My Dad is 76. He retired from the GM Lordstown plant in OH some years ago.
I did ask Mom about how it was going to affect them and she said he lost his vision and dental coverage and a small amount of their monthly check, strikingly enough, Mom said “Thank God it wasn’t worse, they are going to keep Lordstown Open, this area couldn’t make it with out that plant”, so I would wager that’s a pretty standard across the board cut for any “legacy” GM employee that is drawing a pension.
So before I start, lets dispense with the vision of retirees being wiped out, tossed out in the harsh Midwest winters and eating Alpo shall we? Because that’s not what seems to be happening. Far from it.
A little history is in order before I begin.
My Father lost a major portion of his company pension in 1979 when after 19+ years of working for them, US Steel folded under pressure from Japanese Imports, much like the same situation we see today with GM the UAW, The USW and heavy handed government killed domestic steel. Them and the EPA. What did him and Mom do? Mind you in 1979 They had just bought a new home, and had two kids in school I was in the 7th or 8th grade.
Mom went to work to help put food on the table Dad got unemployment benefits, and did plumbing work on the side where he could find it.
They took the pittance that US Steel “bought” the Steelworkers out for, added that to their savings, and stroked a check to pay off the house we lived in.
I sat there and watched my Dad do it, and the sadness in his eyes was unmistakable, but he simply said, “well thank god it’s there on a rainy day”.
I remember there was unrest at the union hall, and things got dangerous at the plant, Being too young, I never understood the reason for the USW riots until Dad one day explained it to me when I asked him years later, the pension plans had been treated a lot like Social Security, the money used for other things, and when the company pulled the plug…. the workers were left with almost nothing. The company blamed the Union the Union blamed the Company, and no one ever really did to my knowledge figure out where or who the money went to, Organized Crime was pretty big in Youngstown those days, so I’m sure there were problems there.
A Master Pipefitter III, when US Steel shut down, and for a long 18 months he was out of work. Think things are bad now? As the President quipped the other day, “you ain’t seen nothing yet”, try Unemployment figures of 15+ percent, and inflation just as high, welcome to the steel valley of Ohio in 1979. The “Rust Belt” was born.
GM finally picked him up after the economy started turning around under Regan, to which he gave them another 20+ years and retired some years ago, him and Mom are comfortable in the same house I grew up in although that house now is worth quite a bit more than what was paid for it, and quite a bit larger because of renovations, he never once considered selling it.
Nor did Dad ever consider a new flashy car, or what the neighbor was driving. Oh I’m sure he looked on with a little envy when the guy across the street would pull his Vette out and wash it, but He simply drove his Oldsmobile Cutlass wagon, dang near until the wheels fell off, literally, he was still driving that wreck when I was in HS and I remember doing the front suspension on it for him because it wouldn’t keep alignment.
Correction, There was an extravagance, one time. Dad plunked down the money on a used 1977 Caddy Eldorado, He paid 4500.00 for it. My Mom’s boss was trading up to a Deville, and Dad snapped the car up because the dealer wouldn’t give the man the money he wanted on trade in. It sat in the garage more than anyplace, then That car turned out to be my car several years later when I joined the Navy. I bet I was the only E-2 in the world tooling around in a big old fancy boat like that, on my salary…I couldn’t afford to drive it much even, it sat on the base mostly. But I digress.
In the early 80’s not too long after Dad went to work for GM I can remember a phone call one evening, a man on the line asking to speak to my father, and me handing the phone to him. I remember being exasperated because my girlfriend was supposed to call…
The man was from the UAW, and Dad had been noticed, he was what they were looking for in a management type, He needed to move up and reward his family and himself is what the man told my dad.
Dad said this to my Mom, she didn’t say much but I am sure they spent a long time talking about it afterward, and I think it took a while for him to make a choice.
My Dad never made that move, and years later I asked him why, turns out, he hated the Union, The Steelworker fiasco had left a bitter taste in his mouth, he had to work and pay dues under their thumb just like any one else but he absolutely despised the UAW. So he stuck by his principles and he turned down the UAW’s overtures.
So how did Dad do it? How did he survive the almost total loss of one pension and still make it through the GM collapse as well?
Lucky in the market? Nope, never bought a stock in his life that I know of.
Made his move into management with the rest of the “fat cat lame and lazy (expletive deleted)ers”? (His words one night after maybe one or two beers past his normal) Nope, he retired a blue collar type and was one all his life.
Got some hotshot Whizkid finance broker guru doing an investment portfolio? Nope, Don’t think he even ever had a 401k come to think of it.
Win the lottery? Nope, Dad never gambled a day in his life other than maybe a nickle or two playing poker with friends.
Rich Relative die? Nope, out of 10 bothers and sisters Dad is by far the most successful in fact I remember family feuds periodically this one mad at dad for not helping so and so, or this one not talking to Dad because he was “uppity”, I kid not.
So How’d he do it?
Simple, Dad started working 66 years ago at the age of 10 hauling tin cans to the mills, and he never stopped working until he was 65.
He’s been blown off of blast furnaces in accidents, scalded with steam, his hands are crisscrossed with scars, and his legs now weak from the years of abuse. But he never took a sick day that I can remember. I can remember him coming home from the mills blowing black crud out of his nose, his face streaked with sweat and his hands bleeding from one cut or the other. Or the time he lost a friend who fell into a vat of molten steel, or the friend the fished out of the Mahoning River, he lost control of his car on an icy road, and was killed on impact. Lot’s of funerals for those Steelworkers it seemed like.
I can remember being very young and I’d sit on the front stoop (we lived in the inner city in those years) and wait for his Bronze Plymouth Fury III to come growling down the street, It had a pretty hot 360 in it and I was 6, and thus started my love affairs with cars.
He went to the Mills as a laborer when he was in the 9th grade back then I guess you could do that sort of thing, and the mills taught him a trade.
I can remember him pouring over complex blue prints, and diagrams, drawing them out from memory, stacks of books and manuals night after night studying for one test or another to get his Master Pipe Fitter certifications. Mom had to help him learn to read and used to lord over him because his writing was so much “chicken scratch I can’t make head or tail of this HONESTLY James, Really…!! ” She’d huff. And he’d not say a word, he’d just go back to work and do it better.
I never got a lot of mail from my Dad in the Navy he wasn’t the writing type, like I am apparently(!!) But the few lines I would get once in a blue moon would make me smile, those letters were written in pain staking block letters perfectly spaced, even, and perfectly legible. I’d remember my Mom hounding him about his “chicken scratch”.
I can remember Christmases on hold, “Wait”, Mom would say,in that tone that brooked no argument lest you wanted a good whack, “Dad’s working late at the plant, he’ll be here soon” Pure Torture to a 8 yr old kid with a stack of presents under the tree , and it shames me now to think of how angry I would feel, at that “stupid plant” let me tell you. I never thought to consider where those presents came from, how much OT may Old man had to put in at that “stupid plant” to get them for us. He wasn’t working ‘late” he was working a double for the Time and a half he would get.
I never once remember them using Credit cards, or taking out loans to do anything they wanted to do, it was always cash.
I can remember not a lot of extras growing up, but it was a good solid life, and being taught the importance of saving your money, and working hard.
I know there were some investments into IRA’s and CD’S how much I have no idea, but that’s all I know of, nothing risky, nothing flamboyant.
Just living within their means, saving money for rainy days, working when it would have been easy to just say the heck with it, and taking the personal responsibility for his life, and his families life. He to this day is the same way.
So do I agree that “we the taxpayers owe something” to these “retirees” that are having problems because of GM’S fall? Unless there are very strong mitigating circumstances such as a devastating illness, work related injury, or other very acute reasoning, No I do not.
Now what I am going to write will really set peoples hair on fire, but my father is a dying breed, workers today be they non union or union only want what they can get out their jobs monetarily and as much of it as they can get, more if they can do it and not get caught.
That dogged determination of my fathers era is gone, that perseverance that vision for the future is gone, tell me, if it still exists why are these people in the shape they are in after 20 years of working for GM? Is it GM’s fault? I don’t think so.
20 years of Making well above average wages, and with great Benefits, did they save, invest and try to look towards the future? Nope. But I’m willing to Bet there’s a lot of Boats, and cars, motorcycles and houses and who knows what else getting taken back by the banks in Detroit right now, but then again my dad never had a boat, go figure.
I’d say more than a small majority of them got the cushy Union Job, didn’t have to strive to better themselves as long as the UAW had their back and so they never did. Like Millions of their countrymen with the sub-prime debacle they lived far, far beyond their means and beyond responsibility, it really is that simple.
Why is that? Hmmm? Maybe it’s Because they wanted GM to do it all for them, they wanted something for nothing, the money train was never going to stop, or so they and the UAW thought, and they kept right on spending.
Come to think of it, Need proof? Did the UAW sell off that golf course yet? You know the one up there in MI I think it has some sort of 80 MILLION dollar price tag attached to it? No?
Well then A GM retiree isn’t getting on god dog darn cent from me until that golf course for the UAW fat cats is turned to a parking lot, all 300 acres of it!!
In the end, They failed to take any active role in their own lives, they gambled it all on the future they thought would be there, & they lost, I’m sorry the GM my father knew is gone now, but do I feel I owe someone that had the same chance as my father did? Yet that person can’t make it now?
Sorry I don’t.
It’s called personal responsibility.
