Bob Farr

What distinguishes these times from efforts to create a better auto industry in the past? To some extent we’ve been there done that all before. Old plans just get dusted off and revamped.

Let the governor appoint another committee? It’s all driven by theory, and by theory that may be flawed. It’s never been this bad before.

The chief executive should run the executive branch, not the auto industry. One of the dangers when an agency answers to no one is that it will overstep its bounds. So when a single legislator threatens to exact retribution if the agency doesn’t do his bidding, its tendency is to give up or acquiesce.

I am so tired of people who have jobs trying to watch out for people who don’t. They aren’t very good at it. And look who suffers for it.

Sorry, I’m ranting (again).

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After so many years in the auto industry I am a firm believer that bigger not always better.

Simply restructuring companies doesn’t always work, and politicians will take you one extreme to the other with no consistent goal or direction.

We desperately need to get a clear vision for what the future of American auto businesses should be, back off on all the environmental hassle issues, would be my recommendation.

To some degree what has been part of our down fall has been all the weenie little recommendations and rules of the government.

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The first thing I think we need to do is see where we are spending money and where we can save. Mortgage is a big one. No more going out to eat. How can we lower the grocery bill? I wonder if we qualify for food stamps. No more Starbucks, that’s for sure.

Anything we can do for cutting expenses should ehlp. Staying to our budget.

Heating is huge here. Like it or now we’ll be turning down the thermostat in the wneter and trying to get by without AC in the summer.

No major purchase. Not even a CD or stereo player.

The little severance didn’t help much. Not when you already owe money.

Government programs may help in the short term Training programs are probably something I should take a serious look at. As much as I still want to be an auto-worker, I don’t know that I want to move to Japan for it. Or China.

Additional income is what we need now. Thank goodness the wifey still has her job. Maybe consider some part-time work, even if it is minimum wage. How embarrassing.

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I’m a car town kid. I remember the days when no jap car was allowed in town.

My parents at one point both worked in the car industry.

After the war my father came from the Army to work at Buick from 1949 to 1989.

I came along in 1967, following my sister’s birth, after they had got married.

All I remember growing up around cars, and talking about cars, and auto manufacturing. It was who we knew and what we knew. I remember driving in Dad’s 1965 Buick Wildcat which he still has stored away on his brother’s farm in the barn. It was a honey of a vehicle.

But then you could see that times in Michigan were starting to turn . Gas prices went up in that dang gasoline crisis. The unions started to lose ground. The Big Three got stronger with workers. It ended up cars were created that nobody wanted.

People even stopped buying USA cars and started to go for the more fuel-efficient cars from overseas: the Toyotas or the Hondas.

Then it really started to get bad, started to chang. It got to be hard to sell your house. No new workers were coming in. Plants began closing, and the people were laid off.

We were used to annual or seasonal lay offs, or lay-offs because they couldn’t get parts when a supplier was on strike, but this was different. Businesses were starting to leave the city and the outlying area.

Unemployment rose seriously and rose continuously. It’s not an honor when your town has the highest rate of unemployment in the entire country.

And you could see it happening—the city transitioned from a clean city to an economic depression.

What will happen to all the pensions for people in my family, not just me? I know that pensions are insured, but their full pension? Or some fraction?

Autoworkers have kind of seen this whole Pearl Harbor coming and feeling pain for a long time now. We saw the factories emptying out. The town going down hill. The jobs being lost. Still we held on to our life there. That was stupid. We’re feeling that pain and trying to hold on for three decades or more. How silly was that to be so loyal. To believe those lies that things would turn around.

I hope that the President does something to help.

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I’m an autoworker, even if I have no job. It’s my identity and was my dad’s before me.

I’m sick and tired of walking around with a bullseye on my back because of the current economic meltdown. It may be my job never comes back. I don’t know.

Not only has it adversely affected my wallet and job security, threatened the family,as I’ve been laid off for several weeks now, with several more lay-off’s coming in my factory.

Anyone who tries to say that a hard-working auto-worker is lazy, doesn’t know any, and actually truly has no small clue about what the work involves. Especially the long hours you put in. You are on your toes anywhere from 8 to 12 hours a day, all week.

You have less than a minute to apply your part.

And you are doing the same robotic thing all day every day. It wears on your body and the body can start to break down from any number of maladies like back pain, or tendinitis, or you slip a disk.

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When you don’t have a job, it’s easy to see that the cost of living is gett ridiculously high.

I can understand bankruptcy when it comes to business. Things can happen to change supply and demand. Personal bankruptcy, now that’s scary. Some people face financial ruin because of hospital bills. Now people are facing it because they have no jobs.

In the meantime, when I’m not looking for a job I plan to continue writing on the computer so that I can inspire other laid off auto workers to keep moving forward.

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You know how when you buy a blue car, all of the sudden you notice how many other people have blue cars too?

No one is safe these days. Seems like every where I turn, every conversation I have, it’s either another auto worker like me who got the boot, or somebody who knows somebody who got laid off or fired.

And it stings like a wasp when you are let go of a job after giving so much to it.

And of course there goes ur self esteem, your future dreams, and what little ambition you used to have.

If we are lucky we will survive to live through it, the depression, mourning, and find a different thing to work at.

With all these firings and layoffs, I suspect a giant shift may be occuring in America.

It used to be making lots of money or top notch job title.  Type A personaly working hard. Now it’s just tryin’ to get by. Trying to put food on the table.

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My wife heard an old story, but it was new to her, about that one of her co-workers was been laid off.

This guy wasn’t in her dept, so she’s not close to him at all but still it’s scary.

Now I understand that there are times from time to times that people have to be let go. Sometimes I wonder why a few people around her office have not been. But you know, they should have some tact when they give someone the big bomb and fire them.

This worker, as my wife recounts it, was under the microscope for a few weeks.

He made some enormous mistakes, but it’s not like everyone doesn’t make errors.

This is now where it gets bad to worse. Can you say scumbag.

His company (same company as my wife, now remember) sends him the official notification letter on 23^rd of December, which arrives of course on 24^th of Dec., a blessed day, Christmas Eve.

The letter gives him 24 hours to clean out his office resign his keys and computer and all of his work property.

I know I’ve worked with some prima donna scum balls in my life, but nobody so low life as to send out a pink slip on Christmas Eve and not even tell you to your face.

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Today I got a call from my cousin.

He told me that his previous company laid off 37people Friday.

I was floored basically because people that I knew got laid off.

Being fired is only the beginning because now you have to figure out what to do next. Basically doing what I need to do next. However you do that next.

I need to figure that out.

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Here’s my story. How I got here to be writing this.

One day my boss calls me in to his office.

I wasn’t feeling especially good about this.

And then it started– the firing. The boss –well, that would be my EX-boss now– was telling me that it was just the times, was not me, and the Economy, and yada yada, and only the struggling times, that is making the decision in these difficult times that the company come to these measures.

By then of course I stopped listening. Thinking of all of the signs and signals before this that were on my dashboard that I ignored and failed to pay attention to.

Why did I believe in job security? Lots of the other people left the company and found other jobs that suited them. All of the hours that I gave in this darn company for no overtime to now be given the pink slip.

Boss kept talking. I got up, filled up my little box (just like in the movies), like so many thousands of others, and left.

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