Back to the future

The following post was written the day after Rick Waggoner's announcement of our plant closing. I wrote this primarily to vent my own frustrations and therefore never posted it. I subsequently lost focus on this blog and allowed it to become idle. Today i am renewing my commitment to keep this blog updated, if nothing else as a personal diary of the last days of Moraine Assembly. The following is a representation of my thoughts back in June, unfortunately not much has changed.......

Announcement.

So this is it. So this is how it ends. This is how it all comes down. Fourteen years of service and and it all comes crashing down with little more than a pat on the back and a "sorry bout your luck". No advance warning. No "heads up" from plant management or union officials. For months we have been led to believe that no decision had been made about our future....and then suddenly it was made. Suddenly it was over. And this is it.


Management.

One of the most ridiculous and embarrassing aspects of todays announcement was the implication that these moves were part of a plan to return GM to profitability in North America. What a joke! Remember this is the same group that chose to spend HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS to basically rebuild the Saturn Spring Hill plant to produce the Chevy Traverse when they could have given the product to Moraine and spent merely pennies on the dollar to retool. Remember, these guys promised $200 Million to bail out American Axle....a company which GM does not own and has no controlling interest in. These guys piss away money in the hundreds of millions and yet somehow closing one of their most efficient plants is seen as a step towards profitability??

Lets take this one step further. During the recent layoff, several members of our local GM management team were sent to the Orion plant to help implement GMS procedures in the paint department. These management members were appalled at what they found. One said that walking into the Orion paint department was like going back in time 15 years! As a point of reference for those of you not familiar with the paint department.....Moraine Assembly's seal line operates with 14 production employees while the seal line at Orion requires 63 operators. SIXTY THREE!!!! Sixty three operators to seal up a mid size car while we do the same thing with 14 people on a much bigger vehicle? And yet Orion is being rewarded with a 3rd shift and future production and Moraine is being closed to "increase profitability in North America". Are you kidding me??????

Does GM really have any interest in becoming profitable in North America? Or have they simply written off America as a loss while they focus on moving their operations out of the country?


Union.

One word comes to mind...impotent. This is how Dictionary.com defines the word impotent....

1. not potent; lacking power or ability
2. utterly unable (to do something)
3. without force or effectiveness
4. Obsolete.

To be fair, i believe that our current officials gave it a legitimate shot but they were playing out a hand that was dealt years ago. That being said, this union has historically been tricked, fooled and or out smarted by management time and time again. If they wanted us to jump, we jumped. If they wanted us to beg, we begged. All without ever firmly securing the one thing that we so desperately needed....a product. Even the current union team fell victim to this as we waited...and waited...and waited...and yet STILL WAIT for the illusive VEBA to be worked out by upper management and international union officials. Guess what guys, obviously we cant have a VEBA if we don't have any employees to fund it. It is perfectly clear now that GM never had any intention of funding or setting up a VEBA. They were merely dragging their feet while CEO Waggoner put the finishing touches on his grand plan. Meanwhile, what did our International Union boys do?? They followed along. Impotent as always.

So now what do we do? There will be no VEBA. Do we have a contract of any sort? We have been told that everything else was agreed upon, but that was before the plant was written off as closed. Do we have anything now??? Where do we stand?? Where we stand now is where we have always stood. Unorganized and uninformed....even as we stare down the last days of our plants existence. What a shame that such a historically strong and innovative union has been reduced to its current impotent form. Sad isn't it.
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