Generation gap: Dad's factory dream job is today's rocky career path for son

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080403/AUTO01/804030356

Thursday, April 3, 2008
Detroit's changing work force

Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News

In 1950, Stan Marshall arrived in Flint from a hardscrabble farm town in the Upper Peninsula and within hours was hired as an assembler at General Motors Corp.'s massive Buick complex. It was the start of a 45-year career, during which the United Auto Workers union rose to become a substantial social force and won unrivaled wealth and benefits for its blue-collar members.

In 2006, Marshall's son, Stan Jr., hired on as an assembler at Delphi Corp.'s Flint East facility for $14.50 an hour. The temporary position at GM's now bankrupt former parts unit was the best shot he'd had in years of landing a permanent UAW factory job.

Father and son have lived the union life for more than five decades. But where Stan Sr. rode the rise of the domestic auto industry, Stan Jr. has known only decades of struggle and decline in the industry and his hometown. The contrast in their lives tells the story of how an age of turbulence for Detroit's Big Three and suppliers like Delphi has redefined what it means to be a blue-collar auto worker.

Stan Sr.'s factory job lifted him and hundreds of thousands of other autoworkers into a solid middle-class life that created Michigan cities like Flint.

Stan Jr. was one of 900 workers hired as a temp at Flint East, beating out several thousand applicants vying for jobs that paid about half the average hourly wage of the workers they replaced.

If Delphi survives, 29-year-old Stan Jr. hopes to buy a single-family home, which would be his first. He lives in a Davison trailer park, not far from the small farm where his father lives.

FULL story at link.

[tbyg52]

1. It is a crying shame what's happened to the blue collar jobs in our country

Thank you for all your great posts, Omaha Steve!