In Motor City, Anger Yields to Pragmatism

The altered landscape is dramatized in the reaction of younger workers to buyout offers of $140,000 and no other benefits for those with 10 or more years; $70,000 for those with fewer. Most of those interviewed said they would pass up the cash -- they could make that much in another year or two with GM, and the next job wouldn't come close to matching their pay and benefits. Besides, those with children said, they can't afford to forgo the health coverage.

But unlike old-timers who once called their employer Generous Motors, they have no illusions of lifetime security at a GM that lost $10.6 billion last year.

"This is a signal to the younger people: Make the best of my time here," said James Williams, a 34-year-old father of three and third-generation autoworker wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a Chevrolet SSR, which GM recently discontinued. With nine years in the factory, and 21 until retirement, Williams said, "This tells me if I do stay, I better get on the ball with Plan B." He has taken courses in home remodeling and construction, paid for by GM.

Even here in Motor City, where the Big Three loom larger than anywhere else, the conversation is moving pointedly beyond them. A news anchor on WWJ Newsradio (950 AM) asked a career counselor at Lawrence Technological University how he would counsel an engineering student who wanted to work for GM and design "the Chevy Camaro of the future." The counselor said he'd tell him or her to check out biomedical engineering, life sciences and the hottest new opportunity center: homeland security.

The Autos Talk chat page on the Detroit News Web site has been dominated by autoworker-bashing in the wake of the retirement offers. "Let me enlighten you morons," read a message posted last Thursday and signed Mr. Reality. "When you can not get a job for the same money as the last one you had, YOU WERE OVERPAID. Welcome to the Real World, I hope you can manage!"

"Where were all of you 'loyal' Michiganders when Kmart was struggling and I was losing my job???" asked a chatter named L. Sacker. "You were shopping at Wal-mart, cause [its] prices are cheaper."

Back at Local 22, George McGregor says that L. Sacker is right: Global market forces have engulfed the country, not just the United Auto Workers. But inside his office, the golden age is preserved, as if in a museum.

There are framed yellow newspaper clippings of the massive union picket lines that in 1941 forced Ford to recognize the UAW. There are models of every Cadillac he ever worked on in the assembly plant. There are pictures of his beloved Detroit Tigers winning the World Series in 1968 -- the year he came to Detroit and to GM, when everything here seemed golden.

McGregor grew up in Memphis, when his dream job of firefighter was off limits to African Americans. Instead, he went to work in a handle-making factory at 18, where his take-home pay was $46 a week. Drafted into the Army, he went to Vietnam as a paratrooper and one night was comparing paychecks with buddies from Detroit. "They worked for Chrysler. I said my paycheck was $46 and they had hundreds of dollars," he said. "I said, damn, I'm going to Detroit when I get out."

He did, and when he got to the Fisher Body Fleetwood plant, he saw a sign on the bulletin board that he will never forget: "If you know anyone who needs a job, please bring them tomorrow." They put him to work that very day, welding back seats to car trunks. His first paycheck was $216, more than four times what he'd made in Memphis. To this day, it hangs framed on the wall in his den. "I didn't want to cash it. I just wanted to look at it," he said.

Overnight, he had become middle class--and has remained so. Now 59, he looks back in amazement at what feels like the rise and fall of a way of life, all under his nose. "First they were begging me to come. Now I'm holding an offer that says we'll pay you to leave!" he said. "How can things go from the top of the mountain to halfway down in so little time?"

Gary Wilson, the union financial secretary who has lived similar experiences, said it is the well-off who don't understand the global forces that can level companies, jobs and the good life. "Our kids are on the line fighting and dying," he said. "When we came home from Vietnam, we had jobs to come back to. These kids in Iraq are fighting for the American dream, and what do they have to come back to?"

As the pain spreads, he said, more Americans will see the world as the UAW sees it.

"One day the workers are going to take a stand against the people who don't see what is happening," he said. "Capitalism has been great for our people. How can we sit here and let it destroy us?"