as told to Doug Collins

The Free Press

It was a job in the summer of '78, in a Ford stamping plant, a plant that puts together parts of cars before they go to the final assembly plant. It was in Lackawana, New York, a suburb south of Buffalo. I was working on doors and chassis for the Ford Fairmont, I believe. I was new along with a few others, and we worked at the end of the line, which is the more difficult part of the line to work because the parts are the heaviest. At the beginning of the line there's just small parts or a light shell of a door, but at the end of the line all the interior parts have been added and eventually it's a heavy door. The more experienced workers, the "lifers", were all at the beginning of the line.

We had a quota, so that if you made a certain number of parts in a certain time you could get off early or take a break. The lifers would do whatever it took to do that, which beat up the new workers at the end of the line. Many of the lifers would be on some sort of amphetamine, usually speed, to pick up the pace, because it was a very monotonous job, the same motion over and over. Basically it would drive you mentally dead. They would be whipping along like a ferret on a triple espresso, that was their pace.

As you moved down the line, people just couldn't keep up with the pace, especially new people at the end of the line. Somewhere along the line, people would tend to use other drugs to mellow them out, usually just marijuana, but it could also be acid. Typically people during the break would find their way to a place behind a machine, or sneak outside, or go up to the roof, and there'd be people rolling joints, and pipes passed around, just to decompress from all the pressure down below. It seemed like almost everybody. It was truly a medicated stamping plant.

Besides the pressure of trying to make the quota, there was also the oppressive environment of the plant. Very smelly, loud, bright lights, sparks flying. You wear protective gear, but you still get singes or burns. Forklift trucks would circle around restocking supply points, and the truck fumes would get to you.

The foremen and supervisors didn't seem to care much about the work environment. Maybe it was because they had been through it all themselves. But there was a general lack of concern about quality. There were pallets of parts that would show up rusty. One time I mentioned that to the foreman, but he said the parts were fine. There was an environment of "who cares-let's just throw it together". It was also at a time soon after the oil embargo and the competition from well-built smaller Japanese cars. Instead of designing a new quality economy car, Ford was just trying to make its same designs with lighter parts. To be fair and forward, Ford's really come a long way. This was not like anything they're doing now. It was really junk back then.

My partner on the line was a woman who often took acid. For her the work was laid-back, easy-going, and the machines, about a city block long, were just part of her wild visual experience, and before she knew it, the night was over for her. One night I handed her a heavy part, but she was looking at something else, so it just landed on my leg. It gave me a real nice bruise, not a serious injury, but more like a frustration. It made me think perhaps I was taking the job too seriously and getting worked up too much about making quota, whereas a lot of people around me were saying, "Relax, quota happens only on some nights when the machines are running smoothly." So I decided to try acid that night. It was quite a scary experience. I just saw the huge machine with fire shooting out of it, it was like a monster. My partner was just enjoying the ride, but I was standing as far away as I could.

Roughly 400 people in support of the farmworkers rallied at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery in Woodinville on September 11, blocked the entrance to the winery, and disrupted a Tony Bennett concert on the grounds (the event received scant coverage in the mainstream press). The United Farm Workers have recently relocated their number two official, David Martinez, to Washington State to help the struggle for union recognition. The company is under no legal obligation to recognize the union, since farmworkers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.

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Retraining Fails

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The Bellingham Herald and the Daily Olympian reported that millions in federal job retraining money for dislocated timber workers may have largely gone to waste. Reasons cited were excessive administrative costs and ineffective programs such as self-confidence seminars, role-playing games, and retraining loggers to become scuba divers (none of the trainees found scuba jobs afterward). The articles cite one successful program, the Pacific Resource Conservation and Development Agency, which has re-employed 55 workers on habitat restoration in union jobs. (WA State Labor Council)

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150 Years of Co-ops

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October l994 is the 150th anniversary of modern cooperative businesses. The modern business structure for co-ops started in Rochdale, England with an ambitious and successful grocery store initiated by 28 working-class people initially denied tenancy to open their shop. Co-ops, both consumer and producer varieties, are one of the few institutions guaranteeing some amount of democracy in the corporate world. Today, about 30% of US farm products are cooperatively marketed (e.g. Darigold). Retailer-owned food and hardware supply stores (like True Value) make it possible for independent stores to compete with Wal-Mart, and co-op housing houses 1 million Americans economically.


Have a Labor-related story to tell? Good news or bad.. send it to Doug Collins WAfreepress@gmail.com and he'll tell the world.

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Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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Copyright © 1994 WFP Collective, Inc.