Working

by Studs Terkel

  He is active in the Little League activities of the trailer community. He is president, and “this crossbreed here, my wife, is president of the women’s auxiliary. We’re tied up six days a week at the ball park.

  “When I first startin’ umpirin’, they would get on me. I even told one manager if he didn’t shut his wife up, I was gonna send her out of the park. I did have that authority.”

  Used to daydream on the job, now I don’t. My mind would be a long ways off. I just really was not conscious of what I was doin’. Like I been goin’ to work in the mornin’, when I go through the light, sometime I know it and sometime I don’t. I don’t know whether that light is red or green. I went through it. I had drived and yet my mind was somewheres else. Now it’s jokin’. It used to be daydreamin’.

  Comin’ outa the plant when the sun’s shinin’, you kinda squint your eye. A lotta ’em wear sunglasses and I wondered why. Now I know. Because you got your fluorescent lights in there, and you open the door and there’s the real bright light. You get used to it. It’s that same routine. You speak to some of the guards, make a wisecrack about one of the guys, about his hair or mustache or he had himself taken care of so there’ll be no more kids. I crack jokes about that. And then you come across the same set of tracks you cross in the morning. Get in the car, roll your window down, and you’re not in a hurry to get home, because you’re not timed to go home. If you get caught by a train, occasionally I’ll stop for a milk shake or a cup of coffee.

  I’m proud of what my job gives me. Not the job. I couldn’t say I’m proud of workin’ for the Ford Motor Car Company, but what makes it good is what the union and the company have negotiated over these period of years.

  If a man’s due any respect, he’ll get respect. Got foremens in here I have no respect for whatsoever. Everyone is passing the buck. Management and they’ve got groups under them and it spreads out just like a tree. Some foremen is trying to make it big, want to go to the top, and they don’t last too long. Respect . . .

  You couldn’t guess what I’d like to do. I’d like to farm. But there is not a decent living unless you’re a big-time farmer. Because you got these different companies like Libby’s, they have these big farms now. Yeah, I would just like to farm. You set your own pace, you’re your own boss. When it comes a little cloud and it comes a little rain, you quit. Wait till the sun comes out before you do the work. But here it’s different. (He’s intense; he feverishly acts out his job, moving his arms in the manner of a robot.) Lightning can strike and it can rain or be eighteen degrees below zero, and you’re still in there, grindin’.

  Suppose a car could be made by robots, and all the people were free to do what they most wanted for a living . . .

  The land’s runnin’ out. Maybe they would like to have a service station or a grocery store or sit on the creek bank and fish or be a loafer or turn hippies or whatever or nothin’. I’d say it’d be thirty percent hippies in the country. They’d just give up.

  It wouldn’t be safe for you to walk out of your front door, because you’d have too many people with unoccupied minds. They got the money and that’s all they care. They’ll either have a gun, they’ll either have dope, they’d be hot rodding. They’d be occupied with trouble. Because someone has got to work.

  Thirteen more years with the company, it’ll be thirty and out. When I retire, I’m gonna have me a little garden. A place down South. Do a little fishin’, huntin’. Sit back, watch the sun come up, the sun go down. Keep my mind occupied.

  NED WILLIAMS

  I done the same job twenty-two years, twenty-three years. Everybody else on that job is dead.

  He has worked for the Ford Motor Company from 1946 to now. His wife is a seamstress. They have six children. In the parlor of his two-story frame house he acts out his life, his work. He cannot sit still. He moves about the room, demonstrates, jabs at the air in the manner of an old-time boxer. He has a quickness about him—for a moment, in the guest’s mind, is the portrait of the agile little forward who led Wendell Phillips High School’s basketball team to triumphs in the late twenties.

  I started out on truck tires. I made sixty to eighty jobs a day, and this is all times six. We put in six days a week. A job’s a whole truck. And six tires to a truck, plus spare. There was a trick to putting the rim in, so that it had a little click. You had to be very fine to know. So you would put this clip around and then you stand over it, and I would just kick it over—boom!—in there. This I had to learn on my own. Didn’t nobody teach me this. I’d take this tire, roll it up, I’ll lay it right beside. I’d come back, get another tire, put it on, get another tire, put it on . . .

  He indicates a photograph on the end table. It is a young Ned Williams, smiling, surrounded by a whole wall of tires. He is wearing gloves.

  After you mount it, you just don’t leave them there on the floor. We had to put air in ‘em, and then roll ’em on to little stalls. And these tires come on racks. I’d go get ’em, and you can’t reach in the rack and grab any tire. You got 7/15s, you got 6/15s, you got 7/18s, you got 10/20s.

  I could knock down five tires like that. Just take my left hand, guide ‘em with my right. If you don’t get production, you’re out of there. I got my skill playin’ basketball. Gotta speed it up. You had a quota, startin’ time in the morning and another in the afternoon. At that time there was two of us, then they cut it down to one.

  Bend and reach—like a giraffe. I had to jump all the time. Sometime I had to climb. I continually told ’em to lower the racks. They wasn’t supposed to put but seventy-five on the racks. But they put 125, 140, 150. And it’s up as high as you could get up on a ladder. A lot of times you pull a tire around like that (feverishly he relives the moment in pantomime)—it might go around your glasses, around your head. Some got hurt.

  I wish I had a penny for every time I jumped. You really don’t have time to feel tired. I’m tired, yeah, but I got a job to do. I had to do it. I had no time to think or daydream. I woulda quit. (Laughs.) Worked on the line till about two years ago.

  I’m arrogant. Not too much now. Before I was. The only way I could object is—don’t do it. When I get tired, I come in there with one of my mean days . . . I didn’t care if they let me go and they knew it. I was proud of my work. Just don’t push me. I was born here.

  For the first four hours I worked there I was gonna quit. I had been addressed just the wrong way. I just came out of service. This foreman, he walked around like a little guard. Shoot me in the back, I was doin’ the best I could. I had never been on an assembly line in my life. This thing’s moving, going. You gotta pick it up, baby. You gotta be fast on that. He was like a little shotgun. Go to the washroom, he’s looking for you, and right back.

  He was pushing. Somebody’s pushing him, right? After I went and ate, I felt pretty good. I said, “I’m gonna defeat him.” I worked under him for ten years. That man sent me a Christmas card every Christmas. We had a certain layoff in 1946. He said, “I’m gonna get some job for you here.” That’s when I got into tires. See, I been here four hours now and he’s on my back. I came back in the afternoon, after that he was love and kisses. I wanted to do a job really.

  I had a sense of responsibility. I been to the Green House many times, though, man. That’s for a reprimand. You goofed. How I goofed? Say I’m runnin’ 400 jobs, 450. I can look at that sheet, and after you look at that paper so long you may read the same thing twice, right? I’d be reprimanded. It’s fast work, but they didn’t see it. You can do twenty years of right and one hour of wrong and they’d string you.

  If somebody else is treated bad, I’ll talk for him. Maybe he don’t have sense enough. They say, “Tend to your own business.” My business is his business. He’s just like me. When a foreman says to me it’s none of my business I say, “If I was in the same shoe, you’d try to do that to me, but you better not. No, they ain’t never gonna get me till I’m down and dead.”

  Sometimes I felt like I was just a robot. Y
ou push a button and you go this way. You become a mechanical nut. You get a couple of beers and go to sleep at night. Maybe one, two o‘clock in the morning, my wife is saying, “Come on, come on, leave it.” I’m still workin’ that line. Three o‘clock in the morning, five o’clock. Tired. I have worked that job all night. Saturday, Sunday, still working. It’s just ground into you. My wife tap me on the shoulder. Tappin’ me didn’t mean nothin’. (Laughs.)

  Sometimes I got up on my elbows. I woke up on a Sunday goin’ to work. We were working six days a week then. I still thought it was another workday. My wife, she sees me go in the bathroom. “Where you goin’? Come back.” I got washed up, everything. “Where you goin? You got a girl this time of the morning?” I said, “What? What girl? I’m just goin’ to work.” She says, “On Sunday?” I said, “Today’s Sunday? Jesus Christ!” A mechanical nut. Yet, honest to God, I done that more than once. Nineteen fifty-four, I know I done it twice.

  I was sleeping in front of an American Legion post. I had more than a few drinks. This was Sunday. Somebody says, “Go home.” I thought they said, “Go to work.” Whoosh! I had a brand-new 1955 Montclair Merc and I whoosh! I cut out of there. I went out to the plant and drove all the way to the gate and got there, and I don’t see no cars. I don’t know what, baby.

  It just affected all the parts of my life as far as that go. I’m looking at the fellas been here longer than me. They the same way, worse. I talk to’em every day, and I hear fellas that got forty-two years, thirty-seven years, thirty-five years. Mechanical nuts.

  The union does the best they can. But if the man has a record, there’s nothin’ union can do. They put the book on the table and he gets his time off, maybe a week, maybe three days, maybe three weeks. It’s no paid vacation.

  Some of the younger guys are objectin’, oh yeah. They got nothin’ to lose. Just like my boy I got hired out there. Some of ‘em are twenty, twenty-two, ain’t got no wife, so they don’t worry about it. They don’t show up on Monday, they don’t show up on Tuesday. Take ’em to the Green House. Give ‘em a week off, they don’t care. If I could figure ’em out, I could be a millionaire and just sit on the porch out here. I could retire right now if I could figure ’em out.

  If I had my life to live over again, it would be the first thirty-five years of my life. I didn’t do nothin’. I don’t like work, I never did like work. There’s some elderly people here right now who looked at my mother and said, “I never thought that boy would work.” My hands were so soft, like a sponge. Went to a manicurist twice a week. I always wore gloves at work. I didn’t want to get my hands messed up.

  I am a stock chaser now for the audit area. I get all the small parts you need, that I carry on a bicycle—like a mirror or chrome or door panels. I get ‘em as quickies, ’cause I’m on the sell floor. This job is ready to go. Been doin’ this last two years. Up front. There’s hardly anybody there that’s under twenty years’ service. That’s old folks home.

  It’s a cut in pay. I have what you call a nonpromotion job. It’s easier work, I don’t have to bend down now. It ain’t right, but this is what you live under. I was a good worker, but I suffered that for this. Say you lose $1.20 a day. I come home and I can still play volleyball.

  I don’t feel tired, just older. I haven’t talked in my sleep since I got off that job. I don’t bring nothin’ home now. I got the keys to the bicycle and that’s it. (Laughs.) I don’t worry about it till I get there.

  Is the automobile worth it?

  What it drains out of a human being, the car ain’t worth it. But I think of a certain area of proudness. You see them on that highway, you don’t look and see what model it is or whose car it is. I put my labor in it. And somebody just like me put their area of work in it. It’s got to be an area of proudness.

  TOM BRAND

  He is plant manager at the Ford Assembly Division in Chicago. He has been with the company thirty years, aside from service in the Navy during World War II. At forty-eight, he exudes an air of casual confidence, ebullient, informal . . .

  He came up from the ranks. “I was in the apprentice school in Detroit. Then I moved over to the Highland Park plant and was a leader in the milling department. I was eighteen. They were all women and they gave me a fit. All had kids older than me. ‘Hey Whitey, come over here.’ They kidded the life out of me.” (Laughs.)

  After the war he attended the University of Michigan and earned a degree in engineering. “Went to work for Ford Research.” Various moves —test engineer into quality control, processing . . . five moves around the country: St. Louis, Twin Cities, back to Detroit, Chicago. “I’ve been here three years.”

  There’s a plaque on the desk: Ford, Limited Edition. “That was our five millionth car. There are about forty-five hundred people working here. That’s about 3,998 hourly and about 468 salaried.” Management and office employees are salaried.

  You’re responsible to make sure the car is built and built correctly. I rely on my quality control manager. Any defects, anything’s wrong, we make sure it’s repaired before it leaves the plant. Production manager takes care of the men on the line, makes sure they’re doing their job, have the proper tools and the space and time to do it in. But the quality control manager is really our policeman. Quality control doesn’t look at every item on the car. Some by surveillance. You take a sample of five an hour. Some, we look in every car. They make sure we’re doing what we say we’re doing.

  Okay, we’ve got to build forty-seven an hour. Vega, down in Lordstown, had a hundred an hour. They got trapped with too much automation. If you’re going to automate, you always leave yourself a loophole. I haven’t seen their picture. I want to show it to all my managers. Okay, we build 760 big Fords a day.

  These things go out the door to the customer. The customer, he comes back to the dealer. The dealer comes back to us and the warranty on the policy. That’s the money the Ford company puts out to the dealer to fix any defects. We listen better. If the customer comes in and says, “I have a water leak,” the dealer’ll write up an 1863 and the company pays for that repair. Everybody’s real interested in keeping this down. We’ve been very fortunate. It’s been progressively getting better and better and better. In December, we beat $1.91. It’s unheard of for a two-shift plant to beat $1.91 in the warranty.

  I’m usually here at seven o‘clock. The first thing in the morning we have a night letter—it’s from the production manager of the night shift. He tells us everything’s fine or we had a breakdown. If it was a major problem, a fire, I’d be called at home. It’s a log of events. If there’s any problem, I get the fellas, “What can we do about this? Is it fixed?” It’s eight o’clock in Detroit. I might get an early call.

  Then I go out on the floor, tour the plant. We’ve got a million and a half square feet under the roof. I’ll change my tour—so they can’t tell every day I’m going to be in the same place at the same time. The worst thing I could do is set a pattern, where they’ll always know where I’ll be.

  I’m always stopping to talk to foremen or hourly fellas. Or somebody’ll stop me, “I got a suggestion.” I may see a water leak, I say to the foreman, “Did you call maintenance?” Not do it myself, let him go do it. By the time I get back in the office, I have three or four calls, “Can you help me on this?” This is how you keep in contact.

  Usually about nine thirty I’ve looked at our audit cars. We take eight cars, drive ’em, rewater ‘em, test ‘em put ’em on a hoist, check all the torque, take a visual check. We look over the complete car for eight of’em. Then there’s forty more each day that we go and convoy and take an expanded audit look.

  We usually have a manpower meeting, we’ll go over our requirements for next week. In our cost meeting every Thursday afternoon, we have both shifts together. The operating committee meets usually every other day: my assistant plant manager; an operations manager, he has two production managers; a controller; an engineering manager; a quality control manager; and a materials ma
nager. That’s the eight key figures in the plant.

  We have a doctor. We like him here at ten o‘clock in the morning, so he overlaps into the night shift. There are four nurses and one standby. If there’s an accident, they’re the first one to go down. Is it carelessness? Is it our fault? Was there oil on the floor? Did they slip? Make sure everybody wears safety glasses. We provide them prescription lenses free—and safety shoes at a real good discount. If I went into the store to buy these, they’d probably run around $30. Here they’re only $11.50. And we bought 257 earmuffs in the body shop where we do a lot of welding and in various areas where we have compressed air. Or big blowoff stations. The federal government says you must provide ear protection for anybody in a high noise level area. We baffled all those. Some of the fellas said, “I’m not gonna wear ’em.” We said, “Either you wear ’em or you’re not gonna work here.” We’ve never had a hard of hearing comp case in all the years I’ve been with Ford.

  We have a big project now on the spot-weld guns and manifolding of all our guns. The company’s paid a lot of money. Earplugs and earmuffs. A fella wears ’em and if it’s ninety degree temperature, okay, they get warm. I can appreciate that. I wouldn’t like to wear ’em all day myself. So what we’ve done on the big blowers is put insulation that thick. You can stand right next to it. We’re well within the noise level requirement. In the summertime, we have big 440 fans. They really move the air. It’s much cooler in the plant than it is on a ninety degree day outside.

  We had an accident about two years ago, a fella on the trim line. He slipped and he hit his head and he was laying on the conveyer. They shut the line down. It didn’t start up again until the ambulance took him to the hospital. There isn’t any car worth a human arm or leg. We can always make a car. But if anybody’s hurt, an act of God—a human eye—my brother’s got only one eye. That’s why I’m a bug on safety glasses.