Ex-Doraville GM workers face uncertainty

It’s been seven months since General Motors shuttered its plant in Doraville, scattering workers like dandelion seeds on a windy day.

Ryan Hill now lives in Fort Wayne, Ind., which he describes as small, flat, homogenous and chilly.

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TOM PENNINGTON / Associated Press

Brian Kieckbusch got a job at the GM plant in Arlington, Texas, after he heard the Doraville plant would close, but chances for such relocation are dwindling.\uFEFF

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It’s April, and it’s snowing. And Conyers was more exciting, he says, laughing. But Hoosiers are friendly and the plant feels familiar.

Chris Crumbley, a third generation Doraville worker, is at the GM plant in Arlington, Texas. He misses his extended family in Atlanta. But the move was a no-brainer.

Judy Ashby started at GM in Michigan, worked in Doraville and moved to Bowling Green, Ky., to finish out the 30 years needed to retire. Bowling Green was a favored destination for high-seniority workers, but the work there — repeatedly bending to install wiring and carpeting in low-slung Chevrolet Corvettes — was hard and ended in back surgery.

“It was a long road,” said Ashby, who lives in Tennessee. “It kept getting longer and harder.”

What was once a secure 30-year route to a middle-class living and comfortable retirement has become a stressed daily vigil of determining what plants might exist in the future and calculating for how long.

GM workers have always been attuned to the vagaries of the economy, of supply and demand, of consumer druthers. They’ve seen their ranks dwindle for years.

Now GM’s future is uncertain. The company has suffered record losses and gone hat-in-hand to the U.S. government looking for another bailout. Talk of bankruptcy swirls, and workers and retirees sweat. Will another plant take them? What would a GM bankruptcy do to pensions?

Dislocation has almost become a term of employment for GM, as it is when joining the military. Doraville workers have gone to Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Iowa, Delaware, Missouri, Colorado and even the company’s ancestral homeland — Michigan.

Crumbley moved to Arlington in 2006, a year after GM announced Doraville would close in 2008. He played it right, jumping to another plant when tens of thousands of union workers took retirements or buyouts and spots to land were wide open.

“I did not get stuck” without a GM job after Doraville closed, he said. “That’s what I was afraid of. It was the best thing I could have done.”

As many as 200 Georgia workers moved to Texas with Crumbley, who says “it was weird seeing that many people every day at work from Doraville. We always feel like gypsies. GM gypsies.”

The 35-year-old bought a house near Arlington with the $67,000 in relocation fees and still makes $28 an hour, which allows his wife to stay home and raise their two small daughters.

“If we want to keep this lifestyle, there’s not many companies that pay this kind of money,” he said. “I’m content where I am; I hope I’m here for a while. I’ll transfer again. I want to get my 30 years in.”

But thoughts of how to switch to another career is always in one’s mental calculus, especially for those who are under 40 or have less than 15 years of service.

“I think of a Plan B all the time,” said Crumbley, although he’s unsure exactly what that second career would be. He lived with rumors of the Doraville plant closings since he was hired in 2000 and now hears rumors of looming layoffs at the Arlington plant, which builds SUVs. But he remains optimistic. “I’m lucky to still be working,” he said.

Until recently, laid-off manufacturing workers could uproot and find work in another city. “We call them industrial migrant workers,” said John Russo, co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University. After steel mills and other factories closed in Youngstown, Ohio, many workers moved to places such as Houston and Sacramento, Calif., to ply their skills. “We called those places ‘little Youngstowns.’ “

The “migrants” have difficult lives. “They know they have episodic employment; they often don’t put in roots,” Russo said. And many, those who have “bumping rights” like the union GM workers, “are seen as outsiders where they go because they are taking away local jobs.”

One assembly line over from Crumbley is another 35-year-old Doraville alum, Brian Kieckbusch, a third generation GM worker himself. He started in Oak Creek, Wis., in 1999, moved to Doraville in 2003 and to Arlington in 2006. “I never wanted to be a GM gypsy,” he said. “I just ended up being one.”

Kieckbusch worries there might not be any more GM lily pads to hop to. There are two shifts of workers now producing SUVs and speculation that the second one might be cut. The future of many plants across the country is iffy as the company fights for survival.

He feels he’s paid for his 10 years at GM.

“I gave up my family in Wisconsin, my house (which was foreclosed) in Georgia, and if it tanks here, I’m lost. I’ll feel like I wasted 10 years of my life,” he said. “If it goes down, I’ve already decided I’m not moving again. Besides, I don’t think there will be anywhere else to go.”

Kieckbusch attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for three years, taking many engineering classes. He spent last weekend on the Internet looking at potential classes to expand his skills and education. “I feel I’ll have to start over,” he said.

Former Doraville worker Joey Allen ponders the next phase of life from Atlanta, where he remains in a state of limbo. Allen stayed with the plant until the end and now is on a waiting list for transfer to other plants. The phone hasn’t been ringing.

The 30-year-old said he did not pursue transfer opportunities earlier so he could stay in town and help his ailing mother. Now he’s on a supplemental GM income plan for 48 weeks that, together with state unemployment, provides workers about 80 percent of their pay.

Taking a new job would end that arrangement. And few jobs would come close to equaling that pay.

“I’m used to working. I want to go back to work, I’m going crazy,” he said. “I’d work for $10 (an hour) less in a heartbeat.”

But many companies look askance at hiring former GM workers. “One thing is the union membership,” he said. “And they think that you’ll transfer away as soon as GM calls you back.

“I like working for GM,” he said. “It’s like a big family.” It was a place where a worker without a college education could make a healthy wage, he said. “But it’s a dying brand of a job.”

When asked how many people are ahead of him on the transfer list, Allen responded: “I’d love to find out myself.”

In 2005, there were about 2,000 union workers at the Doraville plant building minivans on two shifts, said Tony Lovely, who was chairman of United Auto Workers Local 10, which represented the Doraville workers. Of those, 1,300 either retired or transferred before the plant closed, he said.

After the plant closed, about 300 qualified for transfer, although some of those have retired. Lovely thinks Doraville’s transfer list now numbers less than 150.

“It’s very slow,” said the 51-year-old Lovely, who has retired. “Arlington asked for 10 last month. That’s all we’ve placed in the last three months or so.

“In this day and time, if you want to stay with them, keep a suitcase packed.”