<< I lived in the Flint area for 23 years until I moved to Atlanta. Flint is a very narrow-minded, clastrophobic town. It seems that a lot of the people who live there don't understand that there is an entire world out there. >>
Hey, a Flinter! Or is it Flintstone? ;-)
Anyhoo, Flint is narrow-minded in some ways, that is true. Its MUCH better than it was around 1985. But narrow-minded wasn't its chief failing. Complacency and gluttony was its chief failings.
As you said, for so many generations, sons and grandsons went straight into GM from high school, if not sooner, where they made a very good wage and worked for 30+ years then retired. It became the way of life for the whole community, like a mining town. Most people simply "expected" there to be a job available for them when they were ready for it, because that's the way it had been for their brothers, uncles, fathers and grandfathers. There was no reason to obtain any more than a high school diploma (and you spent most of your high school years partying at that), because you could hardly make a better living even with a few years of college under your belt.
My father, seven uncles, three aunts, and who knows how many neighbors and friends of the family, all worked for General Motors. My father retired from Chevrolet in 1993 with 37 years seniority.
I've never applied to work at General Motors, because my parents pounded into me that I should never "expect" to have a job there. Nobody 'owed' me a job. So I was conditioned to, as you say, "branch out" and consider other opportunities. Once I discovered there was 'another world' out there besides GM, I never even considered working there.
A couple people I knew, however, seemed as though they had been living under some notion that working at General Motors was a sort of 'destiny', as if they believed it was their 'right' to work at General Motors, because that's what everyone else did, and so should they. I've talked with people who could not get a job at General Motors, and to hear them talk, you'd swear they believed as though they had been "robbed" of a job that 'belonged' to them by some birth-right. It is the most bizarre thing, but that was the predominant mentality in Flint.
This mentality wasn't nearly as prevalent if you were raised outside of Flint, in one of the surrounding communities from which many GM workers commuted. But, inside of Flint, it was like another planet!
This is actually an old problem, you have 40 year olds who behave this way, and coupled with the union's grip on GM that made it virtually impossible to fire bad employees, it began to severely and palpably erode the work ethic of many workers. Although most employees were in fact good workers, it was a rotten-to-the-core minority who ruined it for the rest.
This minority began to flagrantly violate company rules, attendence was atrocious, drinking and substance abuse on the job was commonplace, along with gambling and the occasional prostitute who would be smuggled in the plant. Flint's bargaining units were as militant if not more so than Detroit's, and there was a palpable disrespect for the company. The motto among this minority became "stick it to GM before they stick it to you". Employee theft of tools and parts was rampant, vandalism was considered a 'healthy' way to express your dissent, it is well known that sabotage was used to stop the assembly line so that workers could go home early...paid, of course.
It became so flagrant that these workers would BRAG about what they had done to 'stick it to GM' - a badge of honor of sorts. Productivity plummeted, quality control was deplorable. GM actually had to devise and implement incentives just to get absenteeism rates below 30% (that means on any given day, 30% of the work force didn't show up).
Can you get the union to admit any of this? You sure can. But, they're not going to admit it to "outsiders", no more than someone who smokes pot would admit it to you unless they were reasonably sure you were "one of them" (a fellow pot smoker). If you're from Flint, have mutual friends or family in the union, and they're reasonably sure that you are "one of them", you can get confessionals.
Only someone from Flint or the surrounding area, or has witnessed the same thing in another community, would know I'm speaking the truth. It is Flint's dirty little secret, one that people such as Michael Moore would hate for you to know since they've made a great living 'demonizing' GM and promoting the plight of the 'benevolent' union worker. lol!
After fighting tooth and nail with the union for 20 years to eliminate this bad seed from their ranks, GM just threw up their hands and allowed it to go on virtually unchecked for several years. The union, pathologically myopic, took this to mean it had "won" and gave itself a big pat on the back, but they didn't "win". GM had decided what it would do about the Flint situation, it would simply award contracts to plants based on quality and productivity, knowing that Flint would lose miserably in this respect.
Most of Flint's manufacturing jobs that weren't lost to technology went to other high-paying plants in the United States, many to other plants within Michigan, not to foreign countries so it could employ "slave labor" as the union claims. In fact, GM is building two brand new plants in Michigan, it just won't be building them in Flint. Not now, not ever.
When the workers finally realized GM's gameplan, it made a desperate 11th hour effort to improve productivity and quality control so it might have a chance of competing for these contracts. There was a major upheaval in the union leadership, the corrupt and militant union element that ruled the roost for a half-century was tossed out, the new union leadership made concession after concession, including allowing GM to summarily fire all these bad apples they previously couldn't get rid of for anything short of murder. But, it was too little, too late.
GM did award Chevy Truck and Bus, which was scheduled to close, a new contract for pickup trucks when trucks were selling so well that GM couldn't seem to build enough of them. But, that was ONLY because it benefitted GM to do so. What happened in Flint was inexcusible and GM doesn't forget. As soon as GM has the capacity to build these trucks elsewhere, it will do so.
The really tragic part about this is that most of the workers were hard-working and decent folks who did NOT agree with what went on there, but when you belong to an industrial union that indoctrinates their membership into "solidarity" (using deception and other dirty tricks if need be), you go along to get along and you look the other way, even if you hate it.
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