new-me

back in the day, americans used to build cars. pretty good ones too. they had most of their factories for building these cars in detroit, but there were others.
consider this one originally opened in 1962 by GM in fremont, california.
"the choice of the fremont plant and its workers was unusual. at the time of its closure, the fremont employees were 'considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the united states', according to the united auto workers. employees drank alcohol on the job, were frequently absent (enough so that the production line couldn't be started), and even committed petty acts of sabotage such as putting 'coke bottles inside the door panels, so they'd rattle and annoy the customer. in spite of the history and reputation, when nummi reopened the factory for production in 1984, most of the troublesome GM workforce was rehired, with some sent to japan to learn the toyota production system" (from wikipedia)
in one of my many short timer stints, i did a little time on the line here myself. like a page out of the movie "gung-ho" the toyota corporation turned this place around and it became the first factory in america to begin employing toyota's "lean" method of production. part of lean meant reducing costs and waste. and so for a couple weeks yours truly worked down in the cardboard recovery section of the plant where all shift long little tram cars would tow buckets of cardboard that had contained manufacture parts to a conveyer belt and dropped them off for sorting.
i'm not going to kid you. this wasn't rocket science, and we weren't exactly making the world a better place to live by "greening" the planet. it was a brain dead job where those of us on the belt would work as quickly as we could pulling styrofoam, plastic and staples out of cardboard without stopping that belt. it was a cost saving measure for toyota because on the end of the belt we were crushing, baling and stacking cardboard that could be sold back to paper companies. one day our foreman posted the holiday schedule and i remember all the temps ogling over it. they had something like 29 holidays on that thing.
the plant was enormous. once on my lunch break (we worked all the way on the south end) i walked all the way to the northern end of the plant just to check out all of the different work stations. i wish i'd had a video camera. it would have made a hilarious short film as i passed auto workers, some bantering on about something on tv the night before, some sitting around reading the paper because the line was stopped. a tour tram went by with local students and teachers. japanese engineers in white coveralls and hardhats were doing mock-ups in preparation for a change on the line. and everywhere these guys walked around with this swagger. this "i got me the sweetest little unskilled gig and i ain't hurryin' for nobody" walk. by the time i reached the other end of the plant i had to hurry back before my break was over.
and one day, while sorting cardboard, all these alarms started going off. loud pulsating alarms. and i look around and see all of the regular workers are stopping what they were doing and start to walk out of the building. i look at the other temps like "are we, should we--supposed to go somewhere too?" our foreman was outside in a work trailer on the phone and we walked out to ask him what was going on. when we got outside we saw a huge column of black smoke coming up from the far side of the building which looked like it was a mile away.
"hey cap, are we supposed to leave too? it looks like there's a fire goin' on down there" the foreman squinted at the cloud of smoke and then said "naw, they would have called me if they wanted us to leave too" as we stayed on our work the alarms occasionally blared and i kept thinking this somehow didn't seem right. eventually we did get the call to evacuate in a safe and orderly manner. and when i got home that night i caught the story of what had happened on the local news. apparently, at the other end of the plant where they partially gassed the newly completed toyota tacoma trucks, some genius had left the nozzle in and driven away. and when it fell it sparked and started a gasoline fire. i guess all the japanese training still hadn't blossomed in the american workforce. the funny thing is, i can't remember if we still got paid a full day or not.
and so, when i heard the other day that they had rolled the last of the vibes off the assembly line and shut 'er down for good, i felt a little sad for all those guys. there goes that pension and another sweet gig for the moderately skilled american worker.