History from the ground up
Fighting for dignity on the job – then and now

Workers have always had to earn a living.

Not too long ago, working for a living in a manufacturing plant meant being exposed to unsafe working conditions, handling fast-moving machines in small spaces without safety guards, lockout procedures or other protections.

Hours were long.  Wages were low.  Managers were like monarchs with unlimited power.  They could pick you out of line at the front gate and give you a job – or fire you at a moment’s notice.

“In 1929 we had a foreman who cracked the whip,” recalled Rafael Arceo in a 1986 interview.  “There was a time when I’d come home from work so tired I’d lie on the floor so my wife could feed me. I’d eat right on the floor. There was no limit, sir, to how many cars we’d sand.”

Arceo sanded cars at General Motor’s Fisher Body plant in Flint starting in 1928 – several years before workers joined together and organized a union to bargain for better wages and working conditions.  At the time, pensions were only for rich people and health care coverage was nonexistent. 

If Arceo got sick, his only choice was to get to work anyhow or stay home and risk losing his job.  There were no such things as “sick days” back then – and precious little in the way of paid vacation.

“Before the union,” Arceo said, “the foreman had the power to lay you off or fire you, and you had no one to fight for you.”

The more things change:  A great deal has changed in the American auto industry since Arceo used sponges, rags, oil and sandpaper on GM car bodies in the 1920s.  But some things aren’t so different.

Then, as now, management was forever coming up with a new theory or “buzzword.”  Then, as now, most of the buzzwords were just excuses for new and better ways to get people to work harder for less money.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the reigning buzzword was “Taylorism,” after the teachings of an engineer named F.W. Taylor, the author of a book called “The Principles of Scientific Management.”

The biggest problem in American industry, according to Taylor, was the
laziness of American workers:

“[I]n a majority of cases, instead of using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, (a laborer) deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can, to turn out far less work than he is well able to do; in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day’s work. 

Underworking...is almost universal in industrial establishments; and the writer asserts without fear of contradiction that this constitutes the greatest evil with which the working people are nowafflicted.”

Mr. Taylor, meet Mr. Arceo: Rafael Arceo, who came home from work in a nonunion plant so tired that he could barely stand up, probably did not agree that “underwork” was the “greatest evil” faced by working people.  But more than a few workers at today’s nonunion auto plants might relate to the exhaustion Arceo felt at the end of a working day, all those years ago. 

That’s because today’s management buzzwords – like “lean production” or “just-in-time” production – are just a new name for Taylorism:  breaking down tasks into the smallest possible steps, and forcing workers to repeat those steps over and over, as fast as possible.

In today’s nonunion automobile plants, workers are again being pressured to churn out maximum production.  Again, safety often takes a back seat.  And again, workers who get hurt due to these conditions are often abandoned by their employer – too sick to work but not qualified for “permanent” disability.

Working until your hands hurt: “The first year I worked all the overtime they gave me,” says John Sparks, who has worked at Toyota’s Georgetown, Ky., facility for the past eight years. “I worked till my hands hurt, but that was OK – I chose to. I could take it.” 

“Over the next three-and-a-half years I watched 12 out of the 30 people on the line leave,” says Sparks. “I was on the door line, and that’s where many hurt people were sent. I lost count of the people who would come and go.  Some just quit, some had injuries and said they had lawsuits.”  

The revolving door experienced by Sparks and his co-workers is a sad return to the early days of the American auto industry, before workers like Rafael Arceo and his co-workers joined together to change their lives – and change how auto plants operate.

In 1935 workers from individual local auto unions met at a convention to form a single organization:  the United Auto Workers.

UAW members now have a strong voice on the job, with fairness in the workplace, good wages, top-notch health care benefits and a secure retirement.

At $27 an hour or better, jobs at Nissan, Honda, Toyota and other nonunion plants pay well enough so that workers can feed their families – and then some.

But industry pay practices might change.  Competition is getting tougher than ever. Nissan is cutting jobs.  Toyota is cutting back on U.S. capacity and planning to reduce U.S. labor costs.  [See related story - Are you next? Toyota memo]

The more things change in the American auto industry, it appears, the more they stay the same.  Those who say unions are “outdated” probably don’t come home from work every day so exhausted they can’t stand up, and have likely never been subject to the arbitrary favoritism of management.