Saturday, November 19, 2005
The industrial revolution mass produced good jobs. What about the digital?
For a G.M. Family, the American Dream Vanishes - New York Times
There has been talk in the press recently about whether General Motors, once the largest employer in America, will survive the next decade. General Motors says that this speculation is without foundation, but it is clear that the mighty have fallen. The big auto companies are no longer the engines of American prosperity and growth.
Danny Hakim, writing from Flint, Michigan for the New York Times, describes what the automobile industry meant to the American worker for much of the 20th century. Well paying, unionized factory jobs with good benefits were the foundation of American prosperity after WWII. The social contract between organized labor and the auto industry was an economic bargain for both parties.
There has been talk in the press recently about whether General Motors, once the largest employer in America, will survive the next decade. General Motors says that this speculation is without foundation, but it is clear that the mighty have fallen. The big auto companies are no longer the engines of American prosperity and growth.
Danny Hakim, writing from Flint, Michigan for the New York Times, describes what the automobile industry meant to the American worker for much of the 20th century. Well paying, unionized factory jobs with good benefits were the foundation of American prosperity after WWII. The social contract between organized labor and the auto industry was an economic bargain for both parties.
"Four generations of the Roy family relied on General Motors for their prosperity.Will the digital economy be as good a provider as the industrial economy was after WWII? The postwar economic boom moved many American up and out of poverty into the middle class and their own homes and yes, automobiles. China is experiencing that industrial growth that we once enjoyed (at a much lower pay scale.) In the U.S., high wages, health benefits, and pensions, did not just arrive as a corporate gift to the worker, they were the product of a long and bitter struggle between unions and management fighting for a share of the wealth. That kind of struggle is no longer possible because of off-shoring and out-sourcing and the mobility of industry. CEO salaries rose by more than 30% last year. It is clear that there is great wealth to be made in the digital economy. Google stock has quadrupled to more than $400 a share. But will this prosperity enrich American workers on the scale that the Auto industry once delivered? Should we read the article and weep for lost jobs? Or should we grasp the situation and begin to plan and work for a more equitable future?
Over more than seven decades, the company's wages bought the Roys homes, cars and once-unimaginable comforts, while G.M.'s enviable medical and pension benefits have kept them secure in their retirements.
But the G.M. that was once an unassailable symbol of the nation's industrial might is a shadow of its former self, and the post-World War II promise of blue-collar factory work being a secure path to the American dream has faded with it.
After a long slide, it now looks like the end of an era. "General Motors, when I got in there, it was like I'd died and went to heaven," said Jerry Roy, 49 - who started at G.M. in 1977 and now works on an assembly line at a plant operated by Delphi, the bankrupt former G.M. parts unit that was spun off in 1999.
When Mr. Roy was hired at G.M., nearly three decades ago, his salary more than doubled from his job at a local supermarket. He traded in his five-year-old Buick for a new Chevy and since then he has done well enough to buy a pleasant house on a lake near Flint.
But now he faces the prospect of either losing his job or accepting a sharp pay cut. And for those coming after him, "it's just sad that it's ending, that it looks like this," he said. In his hometown, he added, "all these places that used to be factories are now just parking lots."
Those factories supported the Roy family for generations."