Workers at GM Plant Relieved, but Fear for Long Haul Persists
“Everybody’s real happy about it, for today. But everybody also worries about what happens next.”
Tim Mervo of Burbank, a 22-year veteran of the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys, spoke for a large number of the plant’s workers Thursday. They had just heard an announcement from the firm’s Detroit headquarters that their factory, long threatened with extinction, was not on a list of GM plants that are to be shut in the next two years.
Most of the workers questioned reacted with a mixture of relief and wariness at the introduction of Japanese-style “team concept” auto building to an American factory.
“I feel great. This is the best news we’ve had so far. But there’s still some uncertainty,” said Juan M. Reyes of Arleta, who has been with the company 15 years.
“We still have to get the team concept to work, and, unless we make it work, we have no future here.”
Local 645 of the United Auto Workers, representing the plant’s assembly workers, agreed last spring with a request by GM’s management to reorganize the plant to operate in the Japanese style, in which small teams of workers take responsibility for making--and even improving--whole sub-assemblies for an auto. It represents a sharp break from the traditional American assembly line, on which each worker repeatedly performs one--often small--task.
The difference in construction methods has been cited by some analysts as one cause of what has been called the quality gap between American and Japanese autos.
GM is promoting a change to the team concept, but so far the only other factory using it is the GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont, which is also the only other auto plant on the West Coast.
“I’m happy I still have a job,” said Gil Durazo of Sepulveda, who has been with GM 17 years, “although I’m sorry for all those guys in the Eastern plants who got it in the neck.
“I think the team concept will work, but first we have to find out what it means.”
Durazo’s complaint was echoed by a number of other workers at the plant, which has 2,500 hourly workers and 350 salaried personnel. Many said they are unsure of how the team concept--expected to be implemented over the course of 1987 in Van Nuys--will affect them.
“I’m a union representative and I don’t know what the team concept is,” complained Barbara Burns of Tujunga, a Local 645 trustee. “The concept just hasn’t been explained, not so we can understand it.”
“Guys with a lot of seniority don’t like it, guys with 25 to 28 years in,” said Steve Hernandez of Arleta, a 16-year veteran. “A lot of them think the old ways are best, but times have changed and we’re just going to have to change with them.”
“The older guys suffer more from this,” said Valentino Flores of North Hollywood, who has been at the factory more than 10 years. “In the UAW, with seniority, you always got a better job, and now, in the team concept, they’re going to have to come back and help do jobs they got out of doing 25 years ago.
“The union is splitting over that.”
“I’m not like that,” protested Dick King of Newhall, who has 33 years seniority.
“I think the team concept is the coming thing. Some of the senior people are scared of change, maybe 25% of us, but even most of the old-timers feel like me. We know we have to change the way we do things.”
“They tell us it will be like a family, working together for a common goal,” said Reyes. “If everybody pulls together, I think we can do it.”
Some Still Skeptical
John Maney of Whittier, a 14-year employee, was more skeptical. He said there has been no change in the factors blamed for the plant’s weak position in the past--such as air-pollution regulations and its distance from Eastern and Midwestern markets and suppliers--and predicted the crisis will return when the plant loses its standing as the only team-concept plant wholly owned by GM. “We’ll probably go through the same thing 2, 2 1/2 years from now when they get the team concept into other plants too,” he said.
Ken Arment of Sylmar, a 14-year employee, said “the general consensus is that we’re happy today but the future will still be real difficult.
“None of us is sure how the team concept will affect us, but we’re willing to give it a try. At this point, we’re willing to do anything to keep our jobs.”
