Don't Blame Our Unions

UAW workers are just about the only people in Detroit making any money except professionals.
Police, fire, and some hospital workers have good salaries.
Companies in Detroit don't think it is worth being here unless they can get huge tax breaks from the
city, and pay sub standard wages to Detroit workers.
In the seventies the UAW began to suffer mightily when much of the assembly lines were robotized.
I was on the Mustang line at  Dearborn Assembly in those years. It was heartbreaking to see guys
reaching and pulling and bending and stretching in such torturous rhythms they could barely afford to cough, or sneeze, or even clear their throats.
They were trying to save their jobs from robots. We already had so many on our lines.
One of the problems driving costs up so high was of course, racism. This is America. The seventies
were about leveling the playing fields white privilege was so dependent upon.
Every black person who was hired in was classified 'major assembler'. At least that was the majority
of the rule.
Every white person who was hired was classified, 'quality control'.
Major assemblers were worked like dogs, mules, oxen. They usually developed alcoholism problems
because they needed such relief after awhile, and alcohol was easy to get.
The overtime was also addictive.
Guys thought if they could get a house and some furniture while they were young, they could begin
to forgo some of the overtime as they aged.
It didn't work out that way. More and more overtime became mandatory.
The union wanted the companies to hire more people, but they only hired enough to keep the lines
going at breakneck speeds, even though a lot of people had to call in sick Mondays and Fridays.
The unions did a break with the white guys. The companies hired way more quality control inspectors
than they needed.
Quality control got all the overtime they wanted, but did very little work. In a ten hour shift, some
guys would find a place to take a nap after four or five hours when I was in the radiator plant.
Mustang Assembly, I'll admit, was a bit more disciplined than that.
All this dysfunction went right into the quality and the price of U.S. cars.
Maintaining white privilege in the auto industry was costly, but the culture of the companies mirrored
the culture of the spaces in which people lived, the majority of the people.
Minorities took what they could get. The only people the Big Three hated more than they hated
minorities were women. In the surrounding culture, look what dominion men had over women?
They wanted nothing to threaten that. Women set the standards nowhere at home or at work. Men
wanted, insisted, it should remain that way.
Now the unions have had to make tremendous concessions; but Detroit needs those jobs.
As I said, hardly anyone else is paying.
Every factory job someone has in this city is supporting at least twice as many people as it normally
would be expected to bolster.
Everyone has a brother, a sister, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a mom, a dad, a son, daughter, niece, nephew, out of work.
No one completely turns his or her back on all disadvantaged family members or the children of
family members
Whereas marriage isn't a norm here, love still is.
But since the Big Three were the main hirers, and they didn't like hiring black people, many young
people who wanted professional jobs left the city at a pretty good clip.
Those black people living here who did get good jobs at auto companies in the seventies, later tried
to get jobs for their kids in the same company.
That didn't work out well.
Monied people would support their kids through a Master's degree, only to have the kid wind up moving back home, or leaving Detroit.
Sooner or later, this began to happen to white families as well, suburban families. Whoever cheats the system on a regular and enduring basis, eventually destroys it for everyone.
Auto companies didn't once give quarter to the fact that Japan, for instance, only hired people best
qualified for the jobs. People in Japan didn't expect to get credit for being white or brown, so their
companies gave credit only for work and work product.
Even the behemoth, Compuware, built their company in downtown Detroit, but wanted nothing to do with hiring black people. Peter Karmanos, the company head, also hated unions. He blamed unions for the fact that companies could not come here to have an easily exploited class of workers. He was the Detroit Mitt Romney.
The unions may have been complicit in auto worker discrimination, but they always did do what they could to protect member workers.
We needed more unions here to be inclusive of black workers.
In the eighties, a school for robotics was training workers for the new jobs. The only way to qualify
for admission was to be recommended by an auto company. The companies left the recommending
to skilled trades' supervisors.
Very few black workers attained apprentice or journeyman certifications in the skilled trades, so
supervisors recommended young white guys.
Even now, electricians, plasterers, plumbers ,etc. are normally white in mostly white or all white unions.
Black skilled tradesmen are very well qualified; but they need to be in these unions, earning union
scale.
We need these unions now more than ever, because even if the organizations don't diversify, when union wages  are paid, our own tradesmen charge just under what union protected earners do.
The Affordable Care Act will create jobs for us because we have an intricate, varied, and vast system
of hospitals,and hospital workers. A new Whole Foods just opened up in our Medical Center this year.
Then when we don't have to pay such high no fault insurance (because our state can no longer claim they pay burdensome costs for auto accident hospitalizations) we can use our ACA wages to
buy more cars.
I can only hope this 'city manager' stuff won't gut our diversity laws in this city.
Old people live here now. More trouble is yet to come if Detroit city pensioners are to lose their
income and benefits. those incomes are sometimes the only steady ones in a Detroit family.
We do care about each other, warts and all. Instead of any of you out there continuing the hatred our state shows us- wish us luck.