Doreen Howard discusses her career as a production worker and 
UAW Suggestions Plan assistant at the Fisher Body plant in Lansing, MI


Cheryl McQuaid:	This is Cheryl McQuaid.  We’re at the 602 Greenhouse, preparing to interview Doreen Howard.  Today is December 22, 2005.  It’s approximately 8 a.m.  And first we’re going to let everybody state their name.

John Fedewa:	John Fedewa.

Marilyn Coulter:	Marilyn Coulter.

Cheryl McQuaid:	And Doreen Howard.  [0:25] Could you please state your name and spell your last name?

Doreen Howard:	Doreen Howard, H-o-w-a-r-d, and my first name is spelled D-o-r-e-e-n.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[0:35] And what is your address, Doreen?

Doreen Howard:	1461 Cheboygan Road, Okemos, Michigan.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[0:43] And are you married?  Do you have children?

Doreen Howard:	Yes, I’m married and I have two daughters, Courtney and Alyssa.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[0:50] Where were you born?

Doreen Howard:	I was born in Bay City, Michigan.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[0:55] And could you give us a little bit about your educational level?

Doreen Howard:	Okay.  Um, originally being from Bay City, um, I came down to the Lansing area in 1980 to go to school at Michigan State University.  Um, and I have a degree, a Bachelor of Science from Michigan State University, um, in, um, retailing, being a buyer.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[1:27] What did your parents do?

Doreen Howard:	My dad worked for General Motors.  Uh, he worked up in the Nodular Iron Plant prior to them closing that facility and, uh, demoing that facility.  He retired from there.  He was a millwright.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[1:46] What – why did you hire in to Fisher Body?

Doreen Howard:	Um, after I graduated out of college, um, my husband, who had already been working for General Motors at that time, um, I, I took some time off from school not sure what I wanted to do.  I looked to try to find a job in retailing at that time and you just didn’t have the opportunities in this area and the money that they wanted to pay you was very minimum, so he said hey, they’re hiring over at the shop, why don’t you go put in an application.  I’m like, oh, I really don’t want to work there.  It’s not what I really intended to do.  I said I just spent all this time and all this money to get an education.  I really don’t want to go work in a factory.  And he’s like, well, you know, it, it’s something that if you can get in there it’s a good job and we’d both be working at the same place, you know.  So I was like, okay, well, I guess.  So I went over to the, the unemployment office on Cedar Street, got in line with hundreds of people, um, I can remember being blocks long, waiting for hours to get into the, just to put the application in.  Um, probably a week or two later I end up getting a call and they said come on in for an interview, so I went over, did a, did a small interview.

Um, at the time, um, I was working in retail and we had gone out and, and had a little celebration with the girls that I had worked with.  It was deer hunting time and my husband was, was gone with the boys deer hunting so we had girls night out.  Well, it got, we got a little carried away at the bar that night and ended up, uh, having a confrontation with somebody at the bar and some guy hit me in the eye so I had to go to the hospital that night and get my eye stitched up, so I go into the interview with a big scar on my eye and three hours’ worth of sleep.  Uh, John [inaudible 4:12] was the interviewer.  The poor man just looked at me like oh you are an abused woman [chuckle] kind of thing and, boy, we really have to get you out of that situation [laughter] so I think that’s why he hired me.  Needless to say, that wasn’t the case, but.  So that was quite funny but, um, from – I got hired on in 1984.  November 21, 1984, was my original hire date.  Um, I worked there for a few years and was laid off and when I returned I had an adjusted seniority date of 11/10/88 so that’s my current seniority date.

Um, when I first hired in to the, the plant, um, being a college graduate, you know, I thought I knew everything and I was very w-, worldly and all that kind of stuff.  And my husband kept telling me that you’re extremely naïve and you really don’t know a whole lot about life, you know.  I said I do too.  I’ve been to college.  [chuckle] He’s like no, that’s quite a sheltered world in itself.  And I get in there and was exposed to a lot of lifestyles and different types of people that I had never had any contact with before.  Um, the diversity within the facility was, um, quite extreme.  There was, uh, not only a lot of males that I were not used to working with, in the retailing industry it was mostly women and so I had not really worked with men, a few stock guys but not, not a whole lot of men in, in that arena.  Uh, owners of the companies that I worked with were, were male, but.  So that was, that was very hard for me to get used to working with males.

Um, there was a lot of the different ethnic groups that had come in that were hired in at the same time.  There was people from I believe, uh, Cambodia and Vietnam and, and, and different places like that, that were coming in at that time, um, that were hired, and so, and I had not had any experience around different people of that ethnic group.  Um, there was, um, just about every type of diversity within the plant.  I mean all the different nationalities that when I came in were pretty much prevalent was in the facility.  Um, my – the biggest thing that I saw in the beginning when I was there, um, was, uh, there wasn’t, the women that were there still were not treated equal.  Uh, the, the, the men no matter what their nationality or origin was, were still treated better than a lot of the women.  Um, it just didn’t matter.  Th-, they felt you had no business being there.

The very first supervisor that I ever had, I worked in the trim department, he was extremely old school.  Uh, I can’t remember the gentleman’s name but he came out of the military and was extremely prejudiced of women in the workforce at General Motors.  He felt that you were taking a man’s job and you had no business being there so he would make sure that he’d put you on the jobs that he knew that you would have to really work extra hard to, to succeed at and most of the women could not do it and the guys knew they couldn’t do it but yet he would put them on these jobs anyhow.  So it, it, it was interesting to find out how the people on the line would, would help you out.  They wouldn’t, they wouldn’t let you fail ‘cause the guys knew that that supervisor would do that to you just because he could, so they, they would try to help you out as much as they could.

Um, I was lucky enough that at the same time when I hired in I had two brother-in-laws that hired in about a month after, after myself.  They happened to both be in the same department as, as myself.  One of them actually worked right next to me.  The other one worked probably about four or five jobs down the line so that, that helped a little bit because my husband did not work in my department.  He worked in the paint department at the time and, um, so they kind of kept on eye on me and made sure that the guys stayed away from me and, you know, they, th-, they made sure that the guys knew that, hey, you don’t mess around with her or we’ll see to, to it that you won’t be a happy camper later on so, so that, that helped a little bit.

Um, what else?  Um, I just remember going in there and never being in such a huge building as that before.  I was just amazed at, at how big it was.  And my husband and I, we drove to work together.  It was the nightshift that I worked and his paint department was quite a long distance walking, at least a 5 to 10-minute walk of really brisk walking from where his department was to where I had to go.  And he would sh-, he showed me once how to get from the paint department in the, in the parking lot through all the maze of doors and stairwells and everything else just to get to the paint department was a trick in itself, let alone getting from the paint department to the trim area was, was another trick.  And it took me, oh gosh, probably a month just to, to figure out how to get in and out of the building by myself because each time he would bring me, he wouldn’t bring me the same way everyday so it’s like I didn’t know where I was.  I’d get in there and one day he’d bring me through the paint department and the next day he’d bring me through the body shop instead of through the paint department, so I couldn’t figure out how to get in and out of the building.

So luckily, it’s like, okay, after a while it’s like I can’t do this anymore.  I figured out that if I parked in a different parking lot on the other side of the building that all I had to do was walk in one door and my job was the very first row of, of assembly that came out of the building.  So it’s like all this time I’ve been walking for 15 minutes it seemed like from one parking lot all the way across through all these buildings when I could have just walked about five minutes in another door and I would have been at my job, it’s like, thank you, [chuckle] you know.  He’s like, well, you know, he’s like, well, that’s just how it is.  You have to learn your way around here.  And I was like, yeah, you’re right, so that was the extent of, of that.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[12:07] Doreen, how old were you when you hired in?

Doreen Howard:	Let’s see here, I was 23 I believe.

Cheryl McQuaid:	And you hired in on second shift.  [12:18] Do you remember what job you did?

Doreen Howard:	I worked in the trim department.  I had quite a few different jobs when I first hired in.  Um, I’m – being only 5’ 2” they weren’t really sure where to put me because my height limited a lot of the jobs that I could do.  There was a lot of them where you had to be able to reach to the middle of the car to wipe things or put things on and I, I just physically couldn’t reach that far.  Um, some of the other jobs that, that they had tried to put me on, uh, like I said, I couldn’t reach so they end up, most of the jobs that I end up doing were I did door panels.  They were originally building up the door, the inside of the door panels.  You take hot glue and put them on these pads and stick them on the inside of the door for sound, sound barriers.  I did that for a while but then after, it was, it was kind of a premium job.  It wasn’t really a very difficult job so a lot of people liked to get in to that so I ended up getting bumped off of that.

Um, I did a lot of different jobs, mostly on the outside of the vehicle, what they called hard trim.  Um, I put door moldings on, um, the body side moldings of the car, um, trim around the, the windshields of the cars.  A, a lot of things that required the use of air, air tools, guns that you would drill screws into these panels [throat clearing] to hold them on to the vehicle, that kind of stuff.  I did not do a whole lot on the inside of the car when I was in Trim.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[14:16] Were these jobs very physical?

Doreen Howard:	Um, to me, the job itself just to do one job was not hard.  I never found the, the, the jobs to be physically hard in any way if you were only doing one.  Um, it was the repetition of doing it over and over again that was, was hard.  Um, anybody can just go over there and show you, hey, you do this.  Well, but when you had a timeframe, okay, well, yeah, you got to do this but you only have, you know, 50 seconds to get it on there and do all this.  Well, that, that adds another whole dimension to something which I never had to deal with before.  I always had, you know, the jobs I had ever done prior to that I was always able to work at my own pace.   Um, so that, that was the biggest trick to me was just learning how, how to pace yourself with, with the line speed, um.

Cheryl McQuaid:	You said that the job was, it was the repetition.  [15:25] How many times do you think you’d have to do a job a night?

Doreen Howard:	Oh gosh, at that time, they were running probably close to I’m thinking 500 jobs a night, somewhere in that, that range.

Cheryl McQuaid:	Marilyn Coulter.

Marilyn Coulter:	[15:42] Doreen, what type of transition was that for you having been someone who had just come out of college being trained to do something else and then now you’re doing the same job eight, nine hours a day, six days a week?  How did that do and how did you get through that?

Doreen Howard:	Um, the transition was horrible for me.  Um, I liked, I was a, a very hands-on person so that part was not bad because as long as I would keep moving and keeping myself busy, it helped some of the monotony.  In the beginning, you, you were so fo-, focused on just trying to do the job and learning it that you didn’t have extra time.  You were just, oh my God, did I do it, did I get everything on there, just the anxiety of learning a job, but after a couple weeks of doing it, it was like second nature to you.  You had no other thing to do all day long.  You already knew how to do it.  You know how to get it on there.  You figured out the easiest way for you and, and how you could, uh, have a few seconds extra time to, to rest, um, so your mind would start to wander and that was just horrible because you, you would just start thinking that you were someplace else, you weren’t here in that particular environment, on, on vacation someplace else, [chuckle] you know.  Basically, I would just check out for, for hours at a time and just let my body do the work but mentally I wasn’t there at all.

Marilyn Coulter:	[17:28] Being that you had come from retail, being that you were used to, um, having employees and having people knowing that something needed to be done and doing it and then how was that transition for, for you when you go to the line and maybe there were some changes you felt that needed to happen, whether it was employees or the job?  How did that work for you, um, basically giving up power like that?

Doreen Howard:	Um, it, it’s very difficult when, when you’re the one that, um, set the pace, when you’re the one that said this is what we’re going to do today, this is what we need to do, um, this, to, to give all that up to go into an environment where you had no control whatsoever, the control was in the line speed, that was the control.  And you had only this certain length of time to, to do the job and, and get that work done and, um, you didn’t have any control over anything.  You were told be here at this time and you may get out at four hours, five hours, six hours, ten hours.  You didn’t know when you were going to be leaving to go home.  Um, you really had no control over any part of your work life at all.  Your breaks were controlled as far as when you were going to take’m, who was going to give you the break, how long your break was going to be.  Um, when, if you had to use the restroom, you had to ask someone else, hey, I need to go, it’s not like, hey, my body is telling me I need to go use the restroom now, I think I’ll go.  Well, you didn’t have that luxury.  You had to wait until someone came and did your job so that you could leave the, the production line in order to be able to go and, and do what you needed to do.

Marilyn Coulter:	[19:22] Um, working on the assembly line and having to go to the restrooms and there would be more men there than women, how were the facilities for women?  Were they close?  Was there abundance of them?

Doreen Howard:	Well, being an older facility like ours was, it was never intended for women to originally come in to those buildings so it wasn’t set up for, for women or their needs.  Um, they, they refurbished some of the older facilities and made them so that the, the women could now use these and they added on some bathrooms but like most things, it was never enough.  Um, women just generally take more time and there’s just not as many restrooms as what the men had and so you would spend more, a lot more of your break times just getting in the bathroom and doing what you needed to do on a daily basis.

Marilyn Coulter:	[20:29] So, um, with being a new hire, being in off the street and somebody who thought they knew it all, were there any special kind of pranks that were played on you or any kind of new hire initiations or maybe pranks that you witnessed?

Doreen Howard:	Um, yeah.  Our group was the – like I said, I was very naïve.  I didn’t realize it.  My husband kept telling me that I was but I, I didn’t seem to think so.  And not knowing any better, we came in around the holiday time, Thanksgiving timeframe, it was just right before Thanksgiving so the, the usual prank, hey, go over to the union hall and pick up your, your Thanksgiving Day turkey.  It’ll be there waiting for you.  All you have to do is go in and show’m your, your ID badge and, and they’ll give you a turkey.  Okay, you know, I was all excited, you know, I get out to the car, I was like hey, you know, we get a turkey and my husband starts laughing.  He’s like no, you are the turkey.  [laughter] So needless to say, I, I didn’t make that trip over to the union hall but I really, if I wouldn’t, if my husband wouldn’t have told me, I would have been on my way over there to get my turkey ‘cause in retail we really did give turkeys to our employees [chuckle] so I thought it was, you know, the same.  I didn’t know it was a joke, so, but everybody got a good laugh the next day at my expense.

Cheryl McQuaid:	This is Cheryl McQuaid.  You mentioned that your husband worked there.  [21:59] How hard was it to maintain a relationship in the plant?

Doreen Howard:	Um, it’s, it’s a very difficult relationship between a husband and wife to work in an assembly plant, especially both working the same shift.  Um, it was very hard.  Um, in the beginning, we worked in two separate departments, which gave us some autonomy.  Um, but over time it was nice because years later, um, I ended up working in the paint department and my husband and I actually worked on the same line together.  But in the beginning, it was a lot more difficult being a young female in, uh, basically a man’s world, what I felt was a man’s world in there.  Um, I felt a, a lot of harassment by fellow workers and things that I felt were inappropriate comments, um, even though they knew I was married and they knew that my husband worked there, they, they didn’t care.  They still said inappropriate things to you just because they could.

Um, the – a lot of times they would, uh, start rumors and make up something just to see if it, how fast it would get from one department to the next.  People would make up things whether it was true or not, just because it gave them something to do.  Your mind would begin to wander so it’s easy just to, hey, let’s do whatever, you know.  They’d make up some type of a, a rumor and see how fast it would go through the whole department.  It wouldn’t matter, oh, you know, what, what it was but that was just entertainment for the day and that ended a lot of relationships that were in the facility.  I think that, that was easy because the, the people got to know both, both of you so it was easy targets was what I would call it.  But, um, my husband and I, we knew better.  We knew what our relationship was, so it, it didn’t, it didn’t really affect us.  It affected other people more because we would not let it bother us, the things that, that people would say.  But, um, I know a lot of other people that were married couples in there where they did let that kind of stuff bother them and, you know, ended up getting divorced and things like that.

It’s a, it’s a hard lifestyle on, on families as we got older and we had children.  The, the auto industry is not conducive to families in any way.  Uh, we both worked in the evenings and there was nothing that we could do as far as, uh, rearranging our schedules.  My husband, he was hired in in ’81 so he had higher seniority than what I had had so he had a little bit more flexibility with his job than what I had with mine.   Um, so after the kids got a little bit older – in the beginning, grandma would take care of the kids when we were younger but as we, they got older, um, it was a lot more difficult.

My husband ended up going to the first shift and I worked second shift so we would swap kids.  He would come to work and we’d swap kids in the parking lot and I, I would drive there and, and meet up with him.  And I’d come, if we wanted time together, it’s like, okay, I’ll come over at your lunchtime and bring the kids so we can see each other and, and do that kind of stuff and then he’d come back later in the evening and bring the kids back on my lunchtime and, and I could tell them goodnight or whatever and then he’d bring them back home and put them to bed.

But, um, it, it was very hard but luckily over, over years, um, I was able to get in the last five years or so, I was able to get into the suggestion department and we had a little bit more flexibility.  I was able to move to a day shift job and, and my husband worked days so it, it, it was a lot easier on the family when we both worked the same shift and the same hours and we could ride to work together, we had same vacation times.  Um, so it made it a lot of easier when, when I was in that position compared to working on the line because a lot of times because of my seniority in the department that I worked in, I wasn’t able to get vacation time at the same time my husband did and he had more vacation time than I did so there would be times where he’d get, get days, a lot more days off and he’s like let’s go vacation here.  Well, yeah, that’s all fine but in my department I didn’t have the seniority to be able to get those days.  Other people with higher seniority were able to, to get those days and I, I couldn’t do that, so, it, it limited us somewhat.

But overall, um, I really, I liked it because during the changeover times, which is the change of the model vehicle from one year to the next, they would have, uh, the assemblers did not work and so you had anywhere from a week to two weeks or more, depending on the year, off in which you were able to take, take basically a vacation time and so that was nice.  The Christmas holidays, uh, the Thanksgiving holidays, any of the holidays that in retail that, you know, you normally you would not have off, we had off every year and we were able to spend it together as a family and that’s been really nice and enjoyable and some of the, the positive aspects of being a married couple working in the same place.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[28:36] Have you ever, have you ever had the chance to ask the kids if they have memories of meeting up in the parking lot and...?

Doreen Howard:	Yes, um, they do.  They remember coming over to the facility and, and meeting us and their biggest, their biggest thing was they hated it.  They did not like it because Mom was at work, you know.  They didn’t, they didn’t like me working.  Most little kids that’s, that’s pretty much I think a given that they, they would want one of the parents to at least be home with them, insecurities as, as little children.

But, um, they, as they got a little bit older, though, and we would start to bring them, they had developed a program, bring your child to work program, which was quite an interesting program that was supported through General Motors and the UAW and they would have tours throughout the facility where the kids, you could bring your children in and show them where you worked and show them some of the things that you did and, and they thought that was very interesting.  They thought that it was a pretty neat place.  But I still can remember as, as young children their, their biggest thing that they thought was the coolest part of our whole job was the ERT truck they had for emergencies.  They let the little kids put the helmets on and sit on the trucks and take their pictures and they just thought that was the coolest part of the whole, the whole process.  It wasn’t building the cars, it was sitting on the little truck for the emergency usage that, that they thought was the coolest part of the building.

But, um, for the most part they didn’t like, they didn’t like us working there, um, because over time and years of working, the repetitiveness of the jobs tend to play a very large toll on your body so you would have a lot of injuries that would occur, repetitive injuries, and so I would come home and complain that my hands hurt and my shoulders hurt and things like that and, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t like that.  They didn’t like that because I couldn’t go do things with them because, you know, my hands and my shoulder would hurt.

Cheryl McQuaid:	Marilyn, did you have a question?

Marilyn Coulter:	Um, I was going to ask, did you ever – we’ve talked about your home family.  [31:24] Did you ever view the people that you worked with as your work family?

Doreen Howard:	Um, somewhat.  Um, I never really, um, developed a lot of personal friendships with a lot of the people that I had worked with.  Um, at the time when I came in, a lot of the people were single and, and, you know, we were young.

Marilyn Coulter:	Mm-hm.

Doreen Howard:	And I wasn’t in to the lifestyle that they chose to be so that separated me somewhat being married already.  I, I didn’t, um, choose the lifestyle that the singles did.  Um, and, but I still enjoyed being with the people that I worked with and, and, and I enjoyed talking with them and the relationships that we had during work hours but I never extended that outside of the workplace.

Marilyn Coulter:	[32:28] When you were at work, um, and I know you said sometimes you just checked out, but were there things that went on like on a daily basis, like how they went through like how did you do lunch?  I mean, did you guys do anything at holidays?  What did you do when the line might have broken down to pass the time?  What are some of those things that were like, because most workplaces are like cities within cities and what, what happened in, in that community of Fisher Body?

Doreen Howard:	There was all types of activities, like, like you had brought up.  The plant, there was so many people that worked there and, and I had never worked in a facility that, that had that many people.  I had worked in small retail establishments that had at most 20 people and I come into a facility and you’ve got hundreds of people just in, in one department and everybody had, there were so many different personalities and, and interests of people that, um, just about everything and anything that you wanted to, to seek out was in there, um.

Marilyn Coulter:	[33:48] Examples?

Doreen Howard:	They had, um, dinners.  A lot of people would, would bring in dinners and cook and, and, and I participated in that a lot because I liked to cook so I would bring in food and we, we’d, we’d celebrate different occasions, birthdays or holidays or whatever, by eating dinner together.  Um, sometimes reading, a lot of people would read books.  I lot of people would play cards.  Um, once in a while I’d do that.  I wasn’t really much for cards.  We would – I enjoyed they had walking, our facility offered healthcare programs to help the employees stay healthy and learn healthy lifestyles, which interested me quite a bit, so I would be involved in walking during lunchtimes instead of sitting.  I mean I would sit and rest a, a little but I would use that as my time for me and I would do my walking and do something for myself because once I was out of the facility [coughing] it was family time and the kids were young so you were involved more with running of the kids and taking care of the family and, and things like that, so I liked to do my exercising and things like that during the lunchbreaks, um, I was involved with that.

Um, there was a lot of people that would have bus-, what I call businesses within the business.  They set up little areas where they would serve coffee and snacks and things like that, which I enjoyed frequenting.  The cafeteria was to me too far to go to.  I didn’t want to take the time to walk to the cafeteria and, and get food or drinks or anything like that for the most part.  I usually brought my lunches in so that on my breaks I could, could sit and rest so that during the lunchtime when I had more time then, then that’s when I did my walking.  Um, but I didn’t really want to spend my breaks running all the way up to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee or something that tasted terrible, for the most part instant coffee, when somebody just a few feet away would have fresh brewed coffee for half the cost so, so that made it interesting.

I had never, ever saw anything like that in the retailing business.  I mean you just didn’t think of having a business within one of those businesses.  It just never happened.  Um, there was all types of people doing crafting, any kind of crafts that you could possibly imagine that they did on their breaks or if the line broke down and they had extra time that they would do knitting or crocheting or some m-, men liked to do woodworking and, and different things like that.   Um, and that was always fun because you could always learn new crafts or holidays especially you could buy gifts from these people and have well-made crafts and enjoy helping out a fellow worker and putting money in their pocket and, and also receiving a very beautiful gift at the same time.

Marilyn Coulter:	[37:28] Um, in working there, did you find that there were many people like yourself there who, um, were working there but they were also people who had, had four-year degrees or more?

Doreen Howard:	Um, as a matter of fact, um, I did.  Um, when, when I first hired in, um, I didn’t think that that’s how it was.  I had envisioned the autoworker as being something totally different than, than what, what they were in our facility.  The only – my dad being, uh, an autoworker at Nodular Iron Facility, he would come home from work and, and tell me about how dirty it was, how loud and how noisy but it was a foundry and, um, so he never wanted that for his child.  When I told him I was going to work in a factory, oh, he was very upset, very upset, but, um, when I got in there it was totally different.  It – I’m like, Dad, this is a nice place.  I worked in the trim department.  It was to me clean.  I said it, it wasn’t very, it wasn’t dirty.  It was light and, and fairly bright and it kept clean.  There was a lot of stock and things laying around and it wasn’t immaculate by any means but for a factory, this isn’t dirty, this, this place is pretty clean, um, so that, that was one misperception there. 

Um, my dad talked of a lot of the people that he had worked with were, um, uneducated, which in the older workforce I’m sure that that’s how it was but I got in there and I had the stereotypes of, oh my God, these people are just going to be basically idiots, you know, that I’ll have to work  with and  to my amazement there were so many educated people in our facility that I, I couldn’t believe how many people had degrees from all walks of life.  Um, people who were teachers that left the teaching profession and came into the arena, um, people that were continuing their education or, or working on degrees or, um, the, the tuition assistance program that General Motors provided offered so many people the opportunities to further their education that they wouldn’t have ever received outside of that facility, they just didn’t have the capabilities or the means or the motivation to, to continue their education outside of the facility and, and those were some luxuries that were offered to the, the employees and there was a lot of people that took advantage of that and...

Marilyn Coulter:	[40:40] That was the tuition assistance program?

Doreen Howard:	Uh-huh, yeah.  And so I was amazed at how intelligent the workforce really was and how the perceptions of the autoworker that you see on the television and that the media tries to portray of the autoworker to be totally a fallacy.  I mean that is just about the opposite.  Sure, there is a few and, like I said, the older workforce that may have applied to a lot more than now but the workforce that we have in there today that is not true.  There is very – there is a majority of the people I, that I have come in contact with that have had some type of education as far as a formal education because of the training that they need in order to do work within an auto industry.

Marilyn Coulter:	[41:41] Doreen, for your time there, I know that you said you had different jobs that we’re going to get to in a minute but did you always work in the trim department?

Doreen Howard:	No.  I, I started in the trim department.  I worked there for approximately three, a little over three years.   Um, I was laid off at the time.   Um, during that layoff, um, I went back to the retailing, um, and then, uh, I was laid off approximately 3 ½ years and then returned back to work.  At that time, they had, the union had negotiated what they called a jobs bank.  That was something new to, to General Motors.  Um, it was a new program that helped, um, people who were being laid off so that they, they were not just put out to the streets without any funding.  They had monies that they were, they were given to help tie them over until they could be recalled back to work, um, which was, um, something that was never heard of prior to that.  It, it was something that I was extremely grateful for, being a young person just getting our first new house, children that came along the way.  I mean I didn’t have to worry about, oh my gosh, I don’t have any money, all my unemployment has run out, what am I going to do now.  I never had those worries, so I was extremely grateful for that bargaining benefit.

Um, but over, over the time when I came back off that layoff, I was in the job bank program.  I worked in all three, paint, body, and trim.  When, when they reinstated me as a full-fledged employee, what they called, back into the, the workforce, I was put into the paint department.  I had worked in the paint department on the night shift.

Marilyn Coulter:	[43:51] And how long did you work in the paint department?

Doreen Howard:	Oh gosh, approximately maybe about five years [coughing] I worked in that department on the sealer line.

Marilyn Coulter:	[44:02] Was there a difference in the paint culture and the trim culture insofar as people were concerned?

Doreen Howard:	Um, I noticed a big difference between all three of the departments, between the paint, the trim, and the body shop.  Um, the culture in the, the trim department, um, there was more people.  There was – they were closer together in space.  Um, they worked more in teams so you had – it wasn’t as loud, it wasn’t as noisy.  Um, you were able to converse.  There was a lot more movement.  Everything was more fast paced.   Um, the managers were more uptight, making sure that everybody was doing their job and ‘cause to them the, um, the trim was where the public perception of quality was more prevalent.  They, they saw the, the trim as, um, a real big quality issue, not that paint or body shop didn’t see that.

In the paint department, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do.  Most of the quality was inherent in the system itself.  The operator had fewer chances to, um, change the quality of the outcome, you know.  On the sealer line, you either had sealer in it or it didn’t or it had bubbles in the sealer or it didn’t.  I mean, there was not a whole lot of, of errors.  The paint was either smooth and there was no bubbles or no dirt or it had it and you, you didn’t have a whole lot, so the, the management in the paint department was a little, not quite as, um, uptight as in the trim department but they were still very anxious supervisors there.

Um, the body shop out of all the departments to me there was fewer people, it was loud, it was noisy but even though they were spaced out farther apart, they seemed to be more of a cohesive group.  The management and the hourly people relied on each other more because of the environment that they worked in so they built, to me, more better working relationships as far as a management’s hourly team where I didn’t see that in, in the other areas only because there was fewer employees that they had to manage so that gave them more time to get to personally know the employees.  And like I said, because of the environment that they were in, you tended to be a little more segregated in your group so your, your work group was a little more cohesive where in the Trim there was hundreds of people in, in a department so they were very close, within a couple minute walk you could go and meet up with other friends.  And I don’t think the supervisors tended to really care as much in that department, at least I didn’t feel that way, um, as in other departments.

Marilyn Coulter:	Now over the years, uh, the UAW and GM negotiated contracts and things like that on local and national levels.  They allowed, um, the business to change and the way that business changed was they allowed employees to get involved in the business.  Now I personally know that you had an opportunity and you said earlier that you did a what is known as a non-traditional job assignment, something away from the line called Suggestions, so therefore, you go back into, you’re away from the line now, you’re put into another office setting where you’re able to use your own skills and make an impact on the business and your fellow employees.  [48:28] You want to tell us a little bit about, um, how you felt about doing that job?  How was it for a woman doing that job?  Any types of things that you could tell us about that experience you had?

Doreen Howard:	For, for myself, I, um, was extremely happy to have the opportunity to go into the suggestion department.  Like you said, getting off the line, um, it’s a wonderful opportunity for anyone to be able to use skills other than just your physical body.  Um, to be able to actually use some of the knowledge that I had acquired over the years, um, it, it was nice to actually be thought of as, gee, you have a brain, not just a, a physical body that they needed, um, to be more considered a person.  I felt working on the line, they really didn’t care whether or not people were smart or had anything to offer the company.  You were just there, you had to put this part on or that part or, or, um, anything else.  [phone ringing] I have to get that.  [recording clicked off]

Okay, um, having the opportunity to go into the suggestions department to me was, was, um, I was very grateful for that to be able to, to use my, my mind once again, um.  I h-, had the luxury of not being tied to the line.  Um, I had, there was a small office.  There was five hourly employees and one salary supervisor that worked in the group.  Um, it was nice because you’re not being tied physically to the line and, and I once again had the freedom to, to come and go as I pleased, um, and to do the, my work in the timeframe that I wanted to work at and the pace that I wanted to, to work at, not at the pace of somebody else as a discretion as far as working on the line and having to work at the line pace.  Um, it was a totally different type of work, um, all over again.

Um, the suggestion pro-, program was a joint program between the union and, um, General Motors, uh, management.  Um, it, I liked it because it gave the employee a chance to write down their ideas and express some of their ideas and it gave them an avenue to, um, try to make an improvement in the workplace.  Um, and to me that’s exact – in some instances they truly did make significant improvements in the actual production or the ways in which production, um, ceased to exist.  There was a lot of different changes that happened because of the suggestion program.  Um, safety and, um, wise, th-, they had, uh, a lot of things that were put into place because of employees’ ideas.  Um, and it was nice because the people were able to get money for, for their thoughts and, and it was a way for them to, to use some of their, their mind and their education.  Was it always something that the management agreed with?  No.  The program they didn’t feel was necessary.  They didn’t like the program.  To management, it was a useless program that they didn’t need the employees’ ideas.  They didn’t need the employees telling them how to run their business or, or what can be improved, um.

Marilyn Coulter:	[52:42] But in saying that, what was one of the largest because of, because of, because of the way it helped the business, what was one of the largest, um, payouts [inaudible 52:51]?

Doreen Howard:	The largest...

Marilyn Coulter:	[52:53] To an employee?

Doreen Howard:	The largest payout that you could possibly receive would be a $20,000 award as an individual.  If you went in on your suggestion with more than one person, you could receive up to $25,000 split.

Marilyn Coulter:	[53:08] Did you ever, did you ever see that happen?

Doreen Howard:	Uh, yes, um, there was, uh, several, uh, at least one every couple months we would have a large payout to that extent within one of the departments.

Marilyn Coulter:	So that even though some of the managers didn’t see it, the employees did.

Doreen Howard:	Yes.

Marilyn Coulter:	[53:30] Can you tell me, um, given the fact that you went from the line into an office, how did the coworkers that were left back on the line treat you?

Doreen Howard:	Um, it was interesting.  In the beginning, they, they thought it was okay.  They, they were, they were happy to your face but you knew they weren’t because you were the one that had been afforded the opportunity to move on and they weren’t, they were still there, so they resented it a lot.  But I’m the type of person that I have my own work ethics and I do things for myself because that’s how I want to be treated so, um, I worked very hard when I worked in there and I worked hard for the people and I changed a lot of the ways in which the program existed prior to coming into that department.  Um, prior, when I, before I came into that group, a lot, I had suggestions that were on the books that were three to four years old that were just sitting there.  The supervisors didn’t want to do them.  They didn’t care about them.  Nobody cared whether they were done or not and a lot of them were suggestions that could have easily been [inaudible 54:50] and answered, you know, we either want it or we don’t, you know.  It doesn’t matter, you make a decision, at least let the person know.  Don’t wait two years and then send them a piece of paper in the mail saying, oh, by the way, we didn’t like the idea.

So I worked with management and got them to at least let the person know within a reasonable timeframe whether or not it’s something that they wanted to do and, and that helped encourage the people on the line because they were starting to get responses to their suggestions and the turnaround time had went from years to when I had left, the majority of my suggestions were done within a 30-day timeframe.   Um, some of them that had larger payouts obviously th-, they took longer because the more money that was involved, the more time that it took to investigate it, the more, um, it took more time to implement some of them because you might have to go outside the company to get something to make it happen.  Um, so the, the bigger the reward, the longer the timeframe was what I would equate but, um, whether they received a yes or a no, um, yes, everybody wanted to have their idea submitted and they wanted to receive money for it but that’s not why a lot of the people put the suggestions in.   A lot of the people wanted to, they put the suggestions in because they wanted the supervisor to recognize that they had some input.  They had some ideas that would work if they would only listen to them, um.

Marilyn Coulter:	Uh, last question.  They called Lansing Fisher Body the capital of quality.  It went through a lot of name changes.  Now, it’s going to be closed.  [57:03] What’s your reaction to what made it that and how do you feel about the plant closing?

Doreen Howard:	Um, when I came in, I believe they had just gone through one of the first initial name changes.  I came in as BOC I believe.  Um, no one called it that.  Even when I came in, I never called it that.  Everybody knew it as Fisher Body and that’s what the plant life in there, everyone in there called it Fisher.  The public called it Fisher.  No one even in the Lansing area knew what you were talking about if you called it any other name.  Um, you know, that’s just what it was.  That was the, the heritage behind the name Fisher.  The people took that as personal pride in their work.  Um, when they saw the vehicle going by with Body by Fisher on it, they, they thought of that as pride in, in themselves and in the work that they did and that they were, um, putting a quality product out to the public and it made them feel good.  It made, it made the work that they did, it gave them meaning to why they were there, why they were doing this monotonous type of work.

And, um, like I said, I think it was just an overall, um, pride for the community, so for them to lose that identity, it really hurt a lot of the, the feelings of the people who, who worked there because they felt that they were the ones that were being neglected or shunned by the company.  How could the company do that to us?  They took it very personal even though the company didn’t see it that way because they didn’t, they didn’t look at it as that personal but the people that worked there took it very personally and so to them it will always be Fisher and, and that’s, it won’t be, the name won’t, it doesn’t matter what name was on the building, that’s just what this community knew that building to be.

Cheryl McQuaid:	[59:23] Doreen, is there anything that we’ve not asked you about that you’d like to talk about?

Doreen Howard:	Um, oh golly, um, let’s see here.  I just, you know, I enjoy the work that, that I do at the plant, you know.  It wasn’t something that I would have ever chose as a lifestyle.  That’s what I consider it to be because the auto manufacturing is a lifestyle.  It’s, it’s not – it’s a way of life.  It’s a way that people even in your own community who don’t work in the auto industry just have no concept of what it’s like to be an autoworker and the, the demands that that type of lifestyle puts on your life and your family’s lives.  Um, it’s, it’s such a unique way of life to me that hopefully in the future we continue to see a lot of, uh, the manufacturing industry and General Motors continue to thrive in the way that it has.  It’s provided a wonderful lifestyle for my family.

Um, is it ideal?  No.  Is any job ideal?  No.  Does everybody like everything about their job?  No.  But the benefits that you receive, you, you, it’s hard to compare any other job to me that I’ve ever worked in to what we receive as far as the benefits.  And I, I mean benefits not just by the benefits that have been negotiated through the union’s efforts but the benefits that you receive from the amount of people that you work with and the benefits of having opportunity to, to meet such a varied, um, ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds of people that I know I probably would have not, if I continued in the retailing I would have never experienced that type of, uh, opening of the horizons I guess for, for, at least for myself.  I don’t think I would have seen that because there’s so many people from a lot of different, um, areas of the world that have come and congregated at that facility and so I’ve learned a lot from the people that I work with.  And, you know, that has a lot to do with growing up and, and you realize how wonderful people are that you work with and they’re not just putting a part on, that’s not what the facility is about.  The facility is about the people working there and that’s what makes it nice.

Marilyn Coulter:	Thank you.

Cheryl McQuaid:	Thank you Doreen.

John Fedewa:	Thank you. 


/mlc