The newest workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler have an unusual name. They’re called two tiers … as in second tier income. Will Dunlap is one of them.
WILL DUNLAP: There’s a joke within the two-tier people that if two two-tier people died in a fire, they’d save one GM employee lost … (laughs), you feel like half an employee.
Half an employee because when you’re two-tier, your starting pay is 14 dollars an hour. But when Will Dunlap reports to the assembly line outside Lansing, Michigan every afternoon, he works alongside “traditional employees” … who make nearly twice that. People like his mom, Debbie Dunlap.
DEBBIE DUNLAP: When I hired in in ’84, I was making 13.61 an hour. And here we are twenty something years later … it just doesn’t make any sense.
WILL DUNLAP: I would love to buy one of these cars that I put my blood, sweat and tears into, but it’s such a faraway thought, it’s sad. And I crank out 500 of them a night and I can never afford a single one.
Plant ambi
Will and Debbie Dunlap make GM’s popular crossover vehicles at the company’s newest assembly plant. And this place is humming.
Lyle Birchman shows me around.
LYLE BIRCHMAN: We’re building the Buick Enclave, the GMC Acadia and the Chevy Traverse on three shifts here at Lansing Delta Township. So in a three shift 24 hour period we expect to produce 1200 vehicles.
Three shifts … scheduled Saturdays …. and more than 3,000 people working round the clock …
LYLE BIRCHMAN: We’re very blessed to have hot selling products.
This scene would have been almost unimaginable 18 months ago ….as the American auto industry teetered on the edge of collapse. The day General Motors filed for bankruptcy, President Obama took to the air.
OBAMA: Good morning everyone.
By then the two-tier system was already in place … and Mr. Obama warned that building a leaner GM would involve further costs to everyone … including workers’ families.
OBAMA: I want you to know that what you’re doing is making a sacrifice for the next generation – a sacrifice you may not have chose to make, but a sacrifice you were nevertheless called to make so that your children and all our children can grow up in an America that still makes things; that still builds cars; that strives for a better future.
For older workers, the sacrifice comes in their precious health care coverage and other hard fought benefits. For newer workers, this reversal of fortune shows up most dramatically in their paycheck.
And for Debbie Dunlap the two-tiers bring back memories of her first day on the line a quarter century ago. Back then, GM was building the Grand Am. And when Debbie Dunlap showed up for work, her supervisor turned to her and said:
DEBBIE DUNLAP: One thing you need to know right up front. I don’t like women working here. And if you can’t do the job the same as a man in here, then you’ll walk out that door the same way as you just walked in it. And I said, okay that’s a deal.
Today, a lot of two-tiers say they feel like second class citizens.
DEBBIE DUNLAP: Well back then it was the same thing. I felt like I had to do 150 percent just so I didn’t have to walk out the same door I walked in.
Adding to some two-tiers’ sense of isolation is the fact that GM is still recalling laid off workers … who come back at their traditional wage. So at least for now, there aren’t that many new hires. The company says it has about 2,000 two-tier employees …. out of more than 50,000 hourly workers nationwide.
So these two-tiers exist in a kind of bubble … people who were hired in the right place at the wrong time.
JUSTIN JEWELL: My name is Justin Jewell. I work in trim shop, General Motors, general assembly. I make 16 dollars an hour. And I’m sitting here with my brother…
DERICK JEWELL: My name is Derick Jewell, and I work at the Pontiac Parts Plant. Make 28.18 an hour.
The two brothers live together in Holly, Michigan … older brother Derick bought a house in the country. The Jewell brothers are both young … both strong. The main difference between them?
DERICK JEWELL: I’m 24.
JUSTIN JEWELL: I’m 22.
2 years and 12 dollars an hour.
Still, Justin says, he’s got a good union job … he’s not flipping burgers for seven bucks an hour.
JUSTIN JEWELL: We’re just kind of thankful to have a job at the moment. And a lot of plants have closed down and we’re not too far from Flint where, for a long time, a lot of people were laid off, so … There’s a little bit of remorse but at the same time there’s some faith and just being glad to have a decent paying job.
But even the financial secretary of Local 602 worries about what her union’s agreed to. Connie Swander helps represent the workers at that Lansing plant … including her own daughter … a two-tier raising three kids on 16 dollars an hour.
CONNIE SWANDER: You know, they do the same job, they stand on the line next to people making again what they’re making. It’s kind of a slap in the face to ‘em. So I feel like we kind of sold them out.
Plant sound
Meanwhile the assembly line keeps moving.
As the plant’s second shift ends every night and the overnight begins … 24 year old Will Dunlop walks his mother to her car. Debbie Dunlap loves their time together. Still…
DEBBIE DUNLAP: When you have children, when they hurt you hurt. It’s hard for me to even, at break time, go over and watch Billy do the job that they’re doing. Because, it’s sad.
The veteran auto worker says she sometimes wishes she’d never given her son a referral to work here.
DEBBIE DUNLAP: I wish I could just tell Billy, okay, you’ve had a life experience, it hasn’t been pleasant. It’s time to move on. But how can you? I mean, he needs an income.
WILL DUNLAP: I mean it’s not like you have to wear a badge or something, and we have to drink out of a different drinking fountain… It’s just you know every day that when you go in there that the life that these people have and made for themselves is never going to be anything that you have.
It’s a reversal of fortune a lot of families here grapple with. And it’s certain to be an issue when the union and the car companies begin negotiations to replace their current contract, which expires next year.
For Changing Gears, I’m Kate Davidson.
ANCHOR TAG: "Changing Gears is a public media project of ideastream, Chicago Public Radio and Michigan Radio.