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Lansing autoworkers worry about their futures, too

AP National Writer LANSING, Mich. (AP) — As a 10-year-old, Rollin Green was awestruck when he saw the line of hulking orange-and-silver robotic arms swinging with rhythmic precision during his first visit to an auto plant. But something impressed him even more:

His dad worked there.

As a fifth grader, Rollin didn’t daydream about becoming a baseball player or an astronaut. He wanted to be an autoworker. Just like his father, Mike.

And grandfather, Richard. And great-grandfather, Kenneth.

And grandmother, Janice. And step-grandmother, Connie. And aunt, Cindy. And great uncles, Bob and Tom, among others.

Over seven decades and four generations, the Greens have together poured nearly 300 years into building Chevys, Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Pontiacs and Cadillacs. They’ve shared holidays, deer hunting trips, even the same 160 acres of land 25 miles away (they jokingly call it ’Green Acres’). They’ve traveled the same path with almost clockwork precision — making a beeline from high school graduation to a General Motors plant.

Through layoffs and strikes, births and deaths, boom times and bust, the family survived — and thrived — thanks to autos.

Until now.

With GM’s future uncertain — the automaker received $13.4 billion in rescue loans and faces a Feb. 17 restructuring plan deadline — Rollin Green may represent the end of the line.

He was recently laid off from the Cadillac plant.

“It’s tough,” he says, studying a photo of four generations of Greens (and GM workers) as he sits in the office of his father, the president of United Auto Workers Local 652. “It’s always been the family business. A great-paying job, with great benefits, close to home. It was pretty much everything I ever wanted. ... It’s provided me with whatever I had growing up.”

Rollin started working for GM straight out of high school. With overtime and night shifts, he earned $37,000 in about nine months. Four years later, he bought a four-bedroom house. Now 23, he still holds out hope of returning — hope that “things turn around. I’d like to be there to see it happen.”

The next few months, he figures, will determine his future — as well as that of GM.

The story of the Green family offers a glimpse into the ups and downs of the American auto industry over a half-century — from symbol of the nation’s industrial might to the brink of collapse.

The Greens were around when GM was on top of the world, when Toyotas and Hondas were not yet a fixture on the nation’s highways. They built Cutlasses, Skylarks and Grand Ams, they bought Camaros and Silverados, their union grew stronger, their paychecks got bigger.

But they were there, too, when the energy crisis took hold, the demand for smaller cars increased, foreign automakers started building plants in this country — and buying American lost its luster.

Today, as GM fights for survival, the Greens are emblematic of so many autoworkers who worry about the future and mull over the mistakes of the past — even as they acknowledge they’re not surprised by the latest turn of events.

“It’s been coming a long time, I saw it 25 years ago,” declares Richard Green, who spent nearly 40 years at GM and the UAW before retiring in 1993.

“There’s enough blame to go around,” the 73-year-old says, choosing his words carefully. “The quality dropped. We lost the loyalty of the customers. They stand for the national anthem, but they’re not as patriotic as they should be. A lot of people will wave the flag ... but not buy an American-made car. If they can save 2 cents on an item made in China, they’ll save that 2 cents.”

His wife, Connie, another former GM worker, sees the problem through a wider lens.

“I wish I could come up with some magic solution to start building things here...,” she says. “Steel’s gone. Textile’s gone. And now autos.”

Not quite.

The auto industry still employs hundreds of thousands of workers in this country, with much of the growth coming from foreign carmakers based in the nonunion South. One sign of the times: UAW membership, which peaked at 1.5 million in 1979, was about 465,000 by the end of 2007 — the first drop below a half-million since World War II.

As the Big Three slashed their work force by about 40 percent — to 241,000 — from 2001 to 2007, foreign automakers in the United States boosted employment by nearly a third, to more than 113,000, according to the Center for Automotive Research.

While 2008 was a disastrous year all around for the auto industry, GM marked its centennial in a sea of red ink: Shares plunged 87 percent. More than $21 billion in losses were recorded in the first three quarters.

“Being a blue-collar worker in a highly competitive environment is not a very pleasant place to be in a world that has gone flat,” says Douglas Baird, a University of Chicago Law School professor and bankruptcy specialist who follows the industry. “Auto assembly-line jobs don’t put you on the trajectory to the middle class anymore.”