Dan Buick Man
Buick lover
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2004
No Reason to Leave GM
Detroit Free Press
By Michael Ellis
April 11, 2006
On her 83rd birthday, Lillian Winkel celebrated the same way she spends
every day – going to work at a General Motors Corp. metal stamping plant in
Indianapolis .
The great-great grandmother, who is the second-oldest woman working at GM,
made $74,000 last year cleaning floors and emptying wastebaskets.
At nonunion plants, somebody cleaning offices couldn't dream of making the
$74,000 that Winkel earned last year. Including the pension and Social
Security she also gets, she received $114,000. Delphi Corp. Chief Executive
Steve Miller has said that janitors and landscapers should be paid nonunion
wages.
"I always work on my birthday," said Winkel, who turned 83 on March 2. "I
don't know anybody else who's going to give me three hundred and some-odd
dollars for my birthday. Thank God for General Motors."
Winkel loves her job, and she has no intention of accepting a check for
$35,000 from GM to retire. In an effort to cut costs following last year's
$10.6 billion in losses, GM has offered incentives to all its 113,000 U.S.
hourly workers to retire early or quit their jobs. The goal is to cut
30,000 hourly jobs by the end of 2008.
Tens of thousands of hourly workers are expected to take GM up on its
offer, which includes cash payouts of up to $140,000, depending on how many
years of service they have with the automaker.
"We haven't had a lot of clients who have flat-out said, 'no, I'm not going
to take it,' " said David Kudla, chief executive of Mainstay Capital
Management, a Grand Blanc financial advisory firm that has nearly 1,000 GM
and Delphi Corp. workers and retirees among its clientele.
That's the kind of response GM was hoping for when it announced last month
a historic plan to rapidly downsize its U.S. hourly payrolls.
Years of falling U.S. vehicle sales and lessons learned from Japanese
automakers in making the plants more productive have left GM with more
workers than it needs to run operations.
As GM lost market share over the years, it couldn't just fire excess
workers, due to the strength of the UAW and the protection it won for its
members in labor contracts – thus the early-retirement and buyout packages,
agreed to with the UAW in March after months of negotiations.
The attrition package is being offered at the same time GM plans to close
or idle a dozen plants or facilities in North America by the end of 2008.
For many GM hourly workers, especially those 36,000 who are already
eligible to retire and were thinking of settling down anyway, the package
is tantalizing.
Many of his clients are probably going to accept the GM offer, Kudla said.
"More so, many of them who are about ready to go anyway, and they have the
$35,000 sweetener on the deal," he said.
But not Winkel, who first joined GM as a spot welder in 1972, when then-new
government requirements on hiring minorities and women opened doors for
her.
"It was rough. You were working in a man's world," she said. "A lot of men
objected to us women coming in. They gave us the hardest jobs."
However, some of the men were more welcoming.
"The men used to never dress up, but when the women came in there, boy,
there were more divorces," she said. "It was like another Peyton Place ."
Ironically, GM's attrition package comes when Winkel says that workers are
busier then ever, and their numbers are already down considerably from
years past. Years ago, the work was hard. Workers, both men and women, had
to lift heavy steel auto parts, Winkel said. But workers could also slack
off or skip out of work, she said. People used to refer to her workplace as
the Las Vegas plant.
Not anymore.
"I have seen one of the biggest metamorphoses in my life," she said. "When
I went there in '72, it was noisy, it was dirty. But now it's a clean
plant."
Clean, in part, because of the broom she first picked up about 10 years ago
when she switched jobs in the plant.
GM has provided her with a good life, Winkel said. Winkel has a comfortable
nest egg and plenty of family to watch over. She's outlived three husbands.
She has two grown sons, who are both still working in their 60s. Then
there's the 14 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and four
great-great-grandchildren.
But people know and like her at the plant. About two months ago, Winkel
spent time with GM Group Vice President Gary Cowger when he visited the
plant.
"He's really nice. He said to me, 'Ms. Winkel, you look fabulous.' I said,
'Well, black don't crack.'"
She's known other people who died soon after they walked through the
factory gates for the last time.
"I'm not ready to be thrown away," she said. "I'm not going anywhere. I
couldn't live the way I live if I weren't with General Motors."
Detroit Free Press
By Michael Ellis
April 11, 2006
On her 83rd birthday, Lillian Winkel celebrated the same way she spends
every day – going to work at a General Motors Corp. metal stamping plant in
Indianapolis .
The great-great grandmother, who is the second-oldest woman working at GM,
made $74,000 last year cleaning floors and emptying wastebaskets.
At nonunion plants, somebody cleaning offices couldn't dream of making the
$74,000 that Winkel earned last year. Including the pension and Social
Security she also gets, she received $114,000. Delphi Corp. Chief Executive
Steve Miller has said that janitors and landscapers should be paid nonunion
wages.
"I always work on my birthday," said Winkel, who turned 83 on March 2. "I
don't know anybody else who's going to give me three hundred and some-odd
dollars for my birthday. Thank God for General Motors."
Winkel loves her job, and she has no intention of accepting a check for
$35,000 from GM to retire. In an effort to cut costs following last year's
$10.6 billion in losses, GM has offered incentives to all its 113,000 U.S.
hourly workers to retire early or quit their jobs. The goal is to cut
30,000 hourly jobs by the end of 2008.
Tens of thousands of hourly workers are expected to take GM up on its
offer, which includes cash payouts of up to $140,000, depending on how many
years of service they have with the automaker.
"We haven't had a lot of clients who have flat-out said, 'no, I'm not going
to take it,' " said David Kudla, chief executive of Mainstay Capital
Management, a Grand Blanc financial advisory firm that has nearly 1,000 GM
and Delphi Corp. workers and retirees among its clientele.
That's the kind of response GM was hoping for when it announced last month
a historic plan to rapidly downsize its U.S. hourly payrolls.
Years of falling U.S. vehicle sales and lessons learned from Japanese
automakers in making the plants more productive have left GM with more
workers than it needs to run operations.
As GM lost market share over the years, it couldn't just fire excess
workers, due to the strength of the UAW and the protection it won for its
members in labor contracts – thus the early-retirement and buyout packages,
agreed to with the UAW in March after months of negotiations.
The attrition package is being offered at the same time GM plans to close
or idle a dozen plants or facilities in North America by the end of 2008.
For many GM hourly workers, especially those 36,000 who are already
eligible to retire and were thinking of settling down anyway, the package
is tantalizing.
Many of his clients are probably going to accept the GM offer, Kudla said.
"More so, many of them who are about ready to go anyway, and they have the
$35,000 sweetener on the deal," he said.
But not Winkel, who first joined GM as a spot welder in 1972, when then-new
government requirements on hiring minorities and women opened doors for
her.
"It was rough. You were working in a man's world," she said. "A lot of men
objected to us women coming in. They gave us the hardest jobs."
However, some of the men were more welcoming.
"The men used to never dress up, but when the women came in there, boy,
there were more divorces," she said. "It was like another Peyton Place ."
Ironically, GM's attrition package comes when Winkel says that workers are
busier then ever, and their numbers are already down considerably from
years past. Years ago, the work was hard. Workers, both men and women, had
to lift heavy steel auto parts, Winkel said. But workers could also slack
off or skip out of work, she said. People used to refer to her workplace as
the Las Vegas plant.
Not anymore.
"I have seen one of the biggest metamorphoses in my life," she said. "When
I went there in '72, it was noisy, it was dirty. But now it's a clean
plant."
Clean, in part, because of the broom she first picked up about 10 years ago
when she switched jobs in the plant.
GM has provided her with a good life, Winkel said. Winkel has a comfortable
nest egg and plenty of family to watch over. She's outlived three husbands.
She has two grown sons, who are both still working in their 60s. Then
there's the 14 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and four
great-great-grandchildren.
But people know and like her at the plant. About two months ago, Winkel
spent time with GM Group Vice President Gary Cowger when he visited the
plant.
"He's really nice. He said to me, 'Ms. Winkel, you look fabulous.' I said,
'Well, black don't crack.'"
She's known other people who died soon after they walked through the
factory gates for the last time.
"I'm not ready to be thrown away," she said. "I'm not going anywhere. I
couldn't live the way I live if I weren't with General Motors."