From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:
No, I’m not talking about the new season of “True Blood.” The vampire shift is what some auto workers refer to as the third shift. You might know this as the graveyard shift. It’s 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. and it’s being added at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan. That’s extremely good news considering the last time they ran the vampire shift at this plant was back in 2009. Now, I get why this would be called the vampire shift because workers have to adjust to staying up in the moonlight hours but isn’t most of the work that happens in a graveyard during the day? I’m just saying…
RETURN OF ‘THIRD SHIFT’ FOR AUTOMAKERS BRINGS HOPE, ECONOMIC RIPPLE EFFECT
By Jessica Hopper reporting for Rock Center
Anthony Pylant, an idled auto worker from Tennessee, was relieved and excited when he got a letter that a General Motors assembly plant in Flint, Mich., was adding a third shift.
“You don’t know what you got until it’s gone and man, we didn’t realize what we had, you know, until we lost it,” Pylant said.
In 2009, the Spring Hill, Tenn., GM plant where Pylant worked shut down. Pylant searched for work for two years, but nothing he found matched the money or benefits he had before he was laid off. “It’s sort of a pride thing,” Pylant said. “It really hurt, so when this came up. It was like, I got to do what I know how to do, you know.” In November of last year, Pylant and two of his co-workers from the Tennessee plant moved into a sparse apartment in Flint, Mich. “After a lot of crying and tears and packing up, here all three of us are in Michigan,” Pylant said.
Pylant and his roommates, Dave Gray and Marcus Tyler, pack their lunches and travel to their 11 p.m. shift together five nights a week. They work on the assembly line until 7 a.m.
“You got to be a vampire, sleep during the day while everybody else is living their life,” Pylant said.
The third shift in Flint is one of five places where General Motors has added a graveyard shift since it received a $50 billion bailout from the government in 2009.
Nationwide, other automakers have added third shifts as well. In Belvidere, Ill., Chrysler recently announced plans to add a third shift by the summer. Ford recently added a third shift to a plant in Chicago.
“We have studied third shifts and we’re very careful about when we put them on. The last thing we want to do is put on a third shift, bring people in from around the country, disrupt their lives, bring them here and then something happens,” said Larry Zahner, manufacturing manager for General Motors North America. “So we’ve been very careful assuring when we put the third shift on, it’s going to stick.”
Two years ago, GM shut down the third shift at the Flint assembly plant after the automaker was forced to file for bankruptcy and ask the government for help. GM pared down pension packages, got rid of thousands of jobs, hundreds of dealerships and watched their stock price tumble.
Now the automaker that some nicknamed ‘Government Motors’ in the wake of the economic collapse appears to be turning a corner. It is now the number one automaker in the world, a title it regained in part to Toyota’s struggles after the devastating tsunami. The company is expected to announce its 2011 net income Thursday and some have predicted it will be a record high for the company.
“While what’s good for General Motors is good for the U.S. may not be the slogan of the day, when we create a job, we still help the economy and we create more jobs outside,” Zahner said.
The addition of the third shift in Flint has added 750 jobs at the plant. Most of the jobs have gone to long laid-off auto workers. The jobs pay around $29 an hour with benefits.
Union local head Barry Campbell and plant chief Amy Farmer said that since the bailout, there’s been a shift in how labor and management relations interact with one another.
“We strategize together, we plan projects together, we execute together,” Farmer said.
Both Farmer and Campbell were born and raised in Flint. They say that the third shift makes them hopeful about Flint’s future.
Read the rest and see the video report from MSNBC
