Furloughs strain GM workers
General Motors workers Mike and Ghada Srour have started playing a new game with their 6-year-old son: counting down the days until their factory’s long furlough will finally be over.
On Friday, their son, Hadi, counted to 74.
“We don’t want to complain, because these are good jobs,” said Ghada, 34. “But what do you do with all that time? What do you do when your paycheck is cut for that long?”
In years past, many workers used to look forward to the automotive industry’s week or two of summer downtime, designed to ease the inventory backlog at dealerships and help plants prepare for the new models.
But this year, with the industry reeling, the furlough has become a grueling test of endurance and patience.
At the GM plant here, the furlough will extend for 11 weeks -- the longest the factory has ever been closed in its 22-year history. The factory’s 2,600 workers found out how long the furlough would last only a few days before it was scheduled to start.
Twenty-eight of GM’s 47 plants in the U.S. will be shuttered until July 13. But the truck assembly plant, located just outside Fort Wayne, will be closed the longest. Part of the reason is sluggish sales: Company sources said there were enough Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks to keep dealers supplied through September.
Hourly union workers are getting paid during the furlough, but only about 70% of their regular pay. The workers qualify for state unemployment but still won’t make their usual take-home pay.
When the power was shut down and the factory doors officially closed May 1, it also meant the truck factory’s nonunion workers, the cleaning crews hired by GM from an outside contracting firm, were out. They are having to make do with just state unemployment benefits.
All this comes at a tough time for this corner of northeastern Indiana, where unemployment hovers around 11%.
Though the factory is located in Allen County, a majority of the workers live in the nearby county seat of Fort Wayne, the state’s second-largest city with 304,000 people. It was once home to International Harvester’s truck plant and scores of automotive part suppliers. Now, GM has the only automotive assembly plant in the area. It is one of the city’s top 10 employers.
The Srours work opposite shifts at the factory, where wind-stripped barns and lowing cattle surround the mile-and-a-half-long stretch of smokestacks and low-slung warehouses. Mike, a 32-year veteran, earns $29.40 an hour coordinating a team that does the final assembly of full-sized pickups. Ghada, who has worked for GM for three years, draws about $26 an hour attaching trim inside the trucks.
Normally, the Srours used the furlough time as a once-a-year chance to spend extended time together: During the work week, Mike returns home as Ghada leaves for the plant. They talked about taking a furlough road trip with Hadi and their daughter, Mary, 9.
They have hiked in Yosemite, wandered across Arizona’s deserts and swung through Montana to see where Custer made his last stand. Hadi pleaded for them to go to Niagara Falls this time.
Now, the road trip is out. So are presents for Mike’s birthday in June.
Another GM worker, Robert Blackburn, who earns $14 an hour cleaning out the assembly line pits, said he started wondering last Christmas whether the annual furlough might be longer than normal this year. Rumor on the factory floor was that the public wasn’t buying the trucks as fast as they were making them.
He started keeping an eye out for discounts at the grocery store and stacking canned vegetables and fruit in his pantry. When it was full, he stuffed a broom closet with boxes of rice he bought four-for-$1.
After GM announced the extended furlough, he turned his backyard into a vegetable garden.
“Tomatoes. Cabbage. Potatoes. Even bell peppers, because you can chop them up and freeze them,” said Blackburn, 51. “You have to prepare as if the plant won’t come back.”
But it’s not just financial hardship that weighs on these workers. It’s also the pressure to be productive and avoid dwelling on an uncertain future. After the furlough began, Wesley Franks, 31, a facilities worker, gave up his apartment in Fort Wayne and moved back in with his parents. He spends his days vacuuming the house and running errands. “Anything to make the time go,” Franks said.
Orval Plumlee, president of UAW’s Local 2209, set up dozens of laptops at the union office for workers to apply for unemployment benefits. The ad-hoc help center will be open, and keep him busy, throughout the furlough.
“I’m happy to do something helpful,” Plumlee said.
The workers’ deepest fear is that GM will extend the furlough beyond July 20. Or worse. Rumors fly that GM may decide to close the factory altogether.
As GM’s revenue and cash reserves plunge, the workers here say they are increasingly convinced their employer is heading into bankruptcy. The company has until June 1 to finalize its restructuring plan.
Mike Srour has devised his own agenda: He’s bracing to be out of work -- along with Ghada -- for a year, and still pay for their children’s private-school tuition.
He remembers when GM laid him off from a Detroit plant back in 1979. The company, he said, told him it was temporary. It was two years before he was able to return to his job on the assembly line.
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