A Savage Factory is a true memoir straight from the factory floor of an automotive giant losing the global auto war to smaller, weaker, less experienced foreign competitors that beat us at our own game on our own turf. It gives an inside look, up close, at incompetent management at war with the labor force that created a quality nightmare and caused the car buying public to lose trust and faith in American cars. It is a true story of the inner workings of Ford's largest automatic transmission plant: the people, the machines, and the never ending war between management and labor that produced low quality cars that opened the door for foreign competitors to come to our country and take our auto market. It gives real life examples of the battlefield like conditions in the auto plants that caused alcoholism, drug addition, sexual harassment, and family breakdown, while producing transmissions that received the largest recall in automotive history and would have caused Ford Motor Company to go bankrupt had the Federal Government not intervened.

A SAVAGE FACTORY

An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry's Self-DestructionBy Robert J. Dewar

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Robert J. Dewar
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-5294-9

Contents

Prologue.......................................................ixOne The Sharonville Jungle.....................................1Two Roger And The Wop..........................................19Three War On The Floor.........................................39Four Bad Turbines And Cocktail Hour............................55Five Nightmares Begin At Midnight..............................73Six The Coffee Pot War.........................................87Seven The Downturn: Opec Pulls The Plug........................101Eight Rollmans.................................................115Nine The Upturn................................................129Ten An Equal Opportunity Employer..............................141Eleven Quality Is Job One......................................157Twelve Your Safety Is My Business..............................173Thirteen Foreign Devils........................................187Fourteen The End Of The Sharonville Comedy.....................199Epilogue.......................................................213

Chapter One

THE SHARONVILLE JUNGLE

As I pulled off Sharon Road and passed through a mound of earth and barbed wire fencing that looked more like a prison than a factory, I felt a surge of excitement. I had just quit a management position at Procter & Gamble to take a job as a first line foreman at Ford Motor Company's Sharonville Transmission Plant. It was a step down in status, a big step up in salary, and it was going to be my last job in corporate America. When I saved enough money, I would kiss corporate life goodbye and strike out on my own.

I slipped into a parking space in the lot designated as Management Parking Only, pocketed my keys, and got out. I was still about 100 yards from the guard shack, and the immensity of the Sharonville Transmission Plant struck me. There it was, at the end of a lot built to accommodate nearly 6,000 cars. The gray cinder block walls of a two million square foot industrial plant that occupied hundreds of acres of land. An endless expanse of concrete with dirty, 20-foot-high windows, and a loading dock capable of feeding an entire fleet of eighteen wheelers. Steam or smoke, I could not tell which, punctuated a blustery sky above the plant's flat roof and partially obscured the overbearing letters on the immense white sign that spelled a single word: FORD.

I wasn't the only new kid on the block that day at Sharonville. Two other aspiring managers, dressed appropriately for an interview, sat beside me in the Salaried Personnel Office. We were just striking up a conversation when a man roughly the size and shape of a Sherman tank burst through the door.

He did not look like a manager, yet the clerk stiffened in her seat as he came in. He gave us a disgusted side glance, spat a stream of tobacco juice at a corner waste can and missed, then said, "Which one of you guys worked at P&G?"

I volunteered that I had just quit my job at Procter & Gamble. He sneered at me, looked at the clerk, and said, "I'll take this here one on out to Zone 3."

The clerk nodded and said, "Okay, Ed. I will forward his paperwork to Roger." The tank spun around, without saying anything to me, and I made the assumption that I was supposed to follow him.

Ed rumbled from the office without a backward glance, and I scrambled after him as we made our way through a maze of corridors in the salaried personnel complex, and then turned toward a set of double doors that opened into the factory. I followed Ed into a different world, the likes of which I had never seen.

What had been the distant muttering of a tenor volcano when heard from the heavily insulated front offices was now an infernal roar. Machines, some nearly the size of a house, were lined up end to end as far as the eye could see. They whirled, clanked, churned, and groaned. Some spit fire and sparks; others shot hot metal shavings into the air. Still others spat streams of what appeared to be dirty, diluted milk that fl owed into metal enclosures, and then disappeared back into the machines.

Clouds of blue-gray mist, laced with millions of minute metal particles hung in the air and brought to mind a movie about poison gas attacks in World War I. Fork trucks darted between machines and down endless aisles without regard for the workers who jumped out of the way as they approached with horns blaring.

The factory floor was made of rectangular wood blocks, about the size of street bricks, saturated with filthy black oil that gave the plant an odor of sour rot as if the entire Industrial Revolution had died and was decaying right here in Sharonville.

As we threaded our way through the warren of aisles, Ed, or at least I assumed his name was Ed because that is what the clerk called him, never spoke to me, extended his hand, asked my name, or acknowledged my presence. The feeling that I had somehow stumbled into Hell was confirmed by the faces of the damned that tended the monstrous machines.

They were hard, resentful faces; unhappy, miserable faces; dulled, stunned faces. Above all, hostile faces. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man glaring at me, and I could read his cursing lips. It was impossible to hear what he was saying above the deafening roar of the machines, but I wondered why he hated me. He did not even know me. I speculated that my clothing, which was typical attire at P&G, but stood out as an anomaly amongst the filthy, oily confines of Sharonville, might have been offensive to him. Someone dressed like me had no business in the hellish realm of the hourly.

Ed turned and shouted, but the noise was so intense I could not hear him. He moved his head so it was six inches from my face, and the smell of tobacco juice and body odor overcame the aroma of rotting oil.

He pulled a pair of safety glasses from his back pocket and snarled, "Put these on. You don't never come out on the floor without no safety glasses. How the hell you supposed to write a man up for not wearing no safety glasses when you ain't got no safety glasses on your own self? The UAW would laugh you right out of the hearing room."

After a long trek through the roar of the machines and the clouds of haze, we arrived at a filthy cement block structure built like a battlefield bunker. I soon learned that this was the General Foremen's office. As soon as we went inside the decibels were subdued, and it was obvious that the structure was soundproofed so that people inside could communicate without shouting in each other's ear.

Inside there were four dirty, dented gray metal desks. Ed herded me to the desk occupied by a man who looked like a fully clothed skeleton. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and his right eye was obviously false. A yellowish liquid like Elmer's Glue, or the snot under a three-year-old's nose, seeped from the fake eye, which was turned to the right even though his good eye was looking to the left.

The skeleton was aware that Ed and I were standing in front of his desk, yet he ignored us. Ed acted like being ignored was normal etiquette at Ford Motor Company, and risked a long shot at the corner waste can. The tobacco juice fell short and ran down the side of the trash can over ageless stains of previous near misses.

After an uncomfortable minute or two, the skeleton looked up and examined me with his good eye like a customer in a butcher shop evaluating a steak. He shook his head slowly with an expression of utmost despair and moaned, "You aren't telling me that this is the boy wonder Roger hired from P&G, are you?"

Ed spat another stream in the general direction of the waste can and said, "I just do what I'm told. I was told to go to salaried personnel and get the guy from P&G and that is what I done."

The skeleton got up and moved around to the front of his desk.

He said, "I'm Larry, senior general foreman of Zone 3. This here is Ed. Ed is general foreman. Ed is your boss. You report to Ed. Ed reports to me. I report to Roger. Let me tell you up front. I don't give a hairy rat's ass how many college degrees you got or where you worked before. You don't work there no more. You work at Ford. At Ford Motor Company there is only one thing that counts - your numbers. You don't make your numbers, you better have some good reasons, and you better have a stack of 4600s.

"Don't be coming in here saying 'here is what professor so and so said,' because I don't give a fuck about professor so and so. He don't work at Ford.

"Don't be coming in here and saying 'here is how we did it at P&G.' I don't give a fuck how they do things at P&G. I work at Ford Motor Company. Just so we understand each other.

"If you don't make your numbers, Ed will be on your ass like stink on shit. If he still can't get you to make your numbers, he will have your ass in front of my desk. You don't want to be in front of my desk. I won't fuck with you. If you can't cut it, I'll haul your ass up to Roger. Roger will give you one more chance. That's all you get at Ford. After that you will be back out on Sharon Road looking through the fence, wondering what in the hell happened."

Larry paused. His withered, skeletal face softened for an instant turning almost human as he looked at me and shrugged, "I don't make the rules. I just do my job. Ford is a hard place to work. But you make a lot of money. You do your job, you'll be okay. You don't do your job, you'll be gone."

Then he turned to Ed, "Take him out to 258 and get him broke in."

Ed had been wiping his safety glasses to remove the oily fog left by the haze from the floor. He looked a little surprised and said, "You sure you want him in 258? You want a brand new foreman in 258?"

Larry spun around and said, "Did I stutter? What did I say? I said take him out to 258 and get him broke in. Roger hired him for 258. He is supposed to be a P&G hotshot. Roger figures he can handle 258. It ain't my decision and it ain't your decision. Take him out to 258."

Ed shrugged his shoulders indifferently, put his safety glasses on, and headed out the door. I followed, past the long lines of clanking machines, hostile faces, and toxic clouds of machine vapors. We reached a rusty, oil smeared green metal desk with a bent leg that seemed to be half digested by a row of large machines that shot red hot sparks every few minutes.

Ed put his face close to mine so we could communicate and shouted, "This here is Department 258, Torque Converters. 258 is a bitch and a half. You don't make your numbers in 258, you shut down assembly. You shut down assembly and we ain't making no transmissions. When we don't make transmissions, final assembly plants in Michigan, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and Canada shut down. If that happens, your ass is grass and Roger got a lawnmower."

Ed turned to me, almost sympathetic, and said, "If it was up to me, I would never put a brand new foreman in 258. I don't care how many college degrees he got or where he worked before. It don't make no sense. These sons a bitches will chew up a foreman and spit him out if he don't know what he's doing. But it ain't up to me. Roger hired you for 258, and Roger is the big boss."

I glanced around, but could not tell where one department ended and the next began. There were yellow lines on the floor, but I did not know their significance. I wondered how the three inch yellow lines adhered to the oil soaked wood blocks. Everything was tied together in a continuous, unending web of steel, conveyor belts, and rows of machines seemingly connected like the intestines and organs in a person's body.

I looked at Ed and said, "I can handle 258. When does my training start?"

"Right now. Your best bet, until you get your feet on the ground, is to stay here by the desk. From this desk you can watch just about every sorry piece of meat in 258. Let 'em know you are watching them. Let 'em know you ain't gonna take no shit. They think you ain't looking, they'll fuck your brains out."

Ed started my training tour of Torque Converters, Department 258. He pointed across the aisle where two men were taking various parts from large steel baskets and hanging them in slots on a moving monorail. The monorail snaked through a steaming washer, came out of the other end dripping wet, and then climbed to the ceiling, snaked around in an "s" pattern, and wound past four men who took the parts off the monorail and assembled them.

Ed motioned toward the two men hanging parts and said, "Right there is operation 10, the first thing that happens to converters. If operation 10 ain't running full, you won't make your numbers. Watch them two stock handlers. Make sure they hang a part on every hook. Make sure the hilo keeps ZE34 racks fed in. They think you ain't watching them, they'll start missing hooks. Then the assemblers won't have no parts to build. Those two stock handlers can fuck you harder than anybody else in 258, other than your set up men.

"Now over here what you got is four assemblers. They are called minor assemblers. Any assembler that does not assemble the final transmission is a minor assembler. Major assemblers work on assembling the final transmissions. Different job classification, same pay.

"What you got on that monorail is the impeller housing, a cover plate, and a turbine. Minor assemblers have the stators, the 812 washers, the fiber washers, and the yellow washers at their work stations. They assemble the converters. When the monorail gets past the last assembler it should be empty. If it's not empty, that means them assemblers aren't building their parts, or it means the welder is down. If they ain't buildin' their parts, you put a 4600 on their ass. If the welder is down, you find out why.

"Minor assembly is operation 20. The assembled converter goes up that conveyor to operation 30, the welders. You got one automatic welder that welds the converters from each minor assembler. You got four assemblers and four automatic welders. You got two automatic welder operators. Each one tends two welders. There is one set up man for all four welders.

"Like I said, they are automatic welders. The only time they should be down is for cleaning tips or adjusting the angle of the guns. You watch them welders. If you don't see fire and sparks from each one, you better find out why, and you better find out quick. Each welder gets you one fourth of your numbers. A quick way to not make your numbers is to have a welder down.

"After the converter leaves the welder, it goes down this conveyor to the turnover. At the turnover you got a plate feed and clamps. One of them steel plates, that looks like a pancake with a ring in the middle, slides down. Then the clamps grab the converter, turn it upside down, and set it on the steel plate. It got to be turned over because it gets welded upside down, then has to be flipped over so it can be tested, oil filled, and balanced.

"They can't fuck you too much on the turnover. About the most they can do is take a stick or something and jam up the plate feed. You see anybody messing with the plate feed, you put a 4600 on his ass. The turnover is operation 40.

"After operation 40, the converter goes down the conveyor to the Inteco, operation 50. You can get your brains fucked out on the Inteco. It is a real delicate piece of equipment. Electronic, pneumatic, shit like that. They think you ain't looking, a man can pound his fist on the electronic panel and the damn thing will be down for two hours. You see a man that even looks like he is going to fuck up an Inteco, you rack his ass.

"What the Inteco does is it leak tests the torque converter. It sticks a tube down the hub and sucks out all the air. Then it pumps in nitrogen. Then a sniffer sniff s around the weld to see if any nitrogen is leaking out. If it is, the Inteco kicks the converter down that side conveyor to the weld repair booth. There is a man in the booth, and he manually welds the leaks on the converters kicked out by the Inteco."

I looked closely at the Inteco. It was about the size of a backyard storage barn, and clanked and hissed each time a torque converter went into it. The repair booth was approximately the same size as the Inteco. There was a slit in the side of the booth, and a pair of eyes watched me through the slit, like a peeping Tom. I was also very aware that 25 pairs of other eyes were watching every step I took.

Ed spit a stream, aiming for the base of the conveyor, and asked if I had any questions.

I said, "Not at the moment, but I'm certain I'll have a million questions as I get into the job of managing 258."

He nodded and continued with my training.

"After the converter gets leak tested, it goes to operation 60, oil fill. As it goes over the conveyor a metal stop pops up and stops it under the nozzle. The nozzle comes down automatically into the impeller hub, and fills the converter with transmission oil. Then the nozzle retracts, the stop pops back down, and the converter continues on the conveyor. There ain't a whole lot they can do to fuck you on the oil fill."

As Ed talked, I could see that there were two distinct production lines in 258, a north line and a south line. They were exact duplicates of each other. The two north welders fed the north line and the two south welders fed the south line. Ed walked about 20 feet past the north Inteco and stopped in front of a monstrous machine the size of a hunting cabin. It was encased by a wire cage and had a panel of gages, lights, meters, needles, and control knobs that brought to mind the Starship Enterprise.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A SAVAGE FACTORYby Robert J. Dewar Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Dewar. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.