GM Strike Hits Home

The recent General Motors strike that began at 11:00 a.m. September 24, 2007 has millions of people worried across the nation. This worry hits home particularly hard. I live in St. Clair County, MI, which is a very industrialized county. There are manufacturing plants, factories and industrial parks all over, many of them being suppliers to the Big 3 auto makers. My mom is an employee at one of these manufacturing plants. She works for the Blue Water Automotive System Company. They are a plastic injected molded system. Blue Water Automotive Systems has seven plants in Michigan alone. They also have one in North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Mexico. The economy in Michigan is in shambles as it is. Nobody can afford to lose their jobs.

I talked to my mom about how the General Motors strike is affecting her and her company today, as we were watching the local news reporting on the story. She said that already, half of the machines at her shop have been shut down. 65% of the parts her plant makes are for GM. There are 50+ people on each of the three shifts at her location. If the GM strike continues, it is inevitable that many employees will have to be laid off. Lucky for my mom, she is thirteenth from the top when it comes to seniority on her shift. She is confident that even if there is a partial layoff that Blue Water Automotive Systems will need at least 13 people per shift to run machines for the remaining 35% of their production.

Regardless of the outcome, St. Clair County cannot afford to lose any more jobs. This year already two of the largest employers in the county have shut down. They too were automotive parts suppliers. My mom's location actually inherited some on the machines and orders from one of the suppliers that had shut down earlier this year. Many of the employees from that location came with the machines. On the downside, many of the employees also did not get to come along for the ride and were forced to go to the unemployment offices.

According to the Port Huron newspaper, The Times Herald, "Blue Water Area automotive suppliers may need to start reducing hours for their workers if the strike continues." Little did anyone realize, this would happen within just days of the strikes beginning. In the first quarter of 2007, the recorded unemployment rate for St. Clair County was 8.9% as sited on the website http://www2.fdic.gov/recon/ovrpt. Hopefully, for everyone's sake involved, the strike will be short and not be in comparison to the GM Strike that occurred nationally in 1976.