Detroit Free Press Motor City Journal Column
By Bill McGraw, Detroit Free Press
Dec. 8–PARTS MAKER PAIN: Whether you believe the American auto industry is restructuring or collapsing or something in between, it’s an increasingly painful time in southeastern Michigan. “Motor City” is starting to sound more like an ironic statement than a catchy nickname.
And no one is feeling the pain more than autoworkers.
Take, for example, Bill Courtney, an hourly employee at the former Visteon Corp. parts plant in Saline.
He and his co workers are watching as other plants are scheduled to close and Delphi Corp. asks UAW members to take pay cuts from about $27 an hour to $12 an hour.
“I’ve seen a lot of people getting their ‘Plan B’s’ together. They’re not sitting back thinking, We’re going to be here for the next 10-20-30 years,” Courtney said this week, fresh off the 4 a.m. – to-3:30 p.m. shift he has been working recently. He was sipping a beer at Appleby’s and wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed, “Built Ford Tough.”
He added: “Delphi wages, in this area, that’s poverty level. How do you have a family of four on $12 an hour? Is there going to be any loyalty at $12 an hour ? I don’t think so. People are going to say we can’t afford our own vehicles. We’re going to have to buy Kias.”
The plant where Courtney works was owned by Visteon until this fall, when Visteon transferred the plant to Automotive Components Holdings LLC, which is managed by Ford Motor Co. , which, of course, spun off Visteon in 2000.
Courtney, a 39-year-old former Marine who grew up in Jackson, has been standing up for autoworkers during the autumn of their discontent. When someone said in a letter to the Free Press in October that workers were being “overpaid to turn a screw,” he fired back his own letter, denouncing that remark as “uninformed and unintelligent.”
In fact, until he recently changed jobs in the plant, Courtney punched 4,000 to 5,000 screws a day with a power screwdriver as he helped make glove-box doors. The repetitive motion, he said, gave him tendonitis in the shoulder, so he has physical pain extending to his hands to go along with his psychological discomfort. He said the affliction has forced him to give up bowling, tennis and weightlifting.
“At night I was wearing Velcro braces because my hands were going numb,” he said. “You wake up, and everything is just dead. It’s a very strange feeling. You know something’s wrong.”
Courtney is no crybaby, though. He said he appreciates his $27 an hour, and getting a job with Ford Motor Co. seven years ago was one of the high points of his life. But he plans to leave Michigan in a couple of years, probably to work in Florida, and he doesn’t want to install truck vents, as he is doing now.
“People actually dream about getting into a place where you can actually be a very comfortable middle-class person, with decent benefits, of course, which is thanks to the union,” he said. “Things were great, but you see things changing kind of rapidly.”
Having had one beer, Courtney got up. He was headed to his Belleville home. It was 5 p.m. He was due at the plant in 11 hours.
“I’m going to shower, clean up, eat a little something, then it’s to bed. I try to go to bed at 7:30, 8.
“Four a.m. It really wears on you.”
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