Plant Closing Leaves Workers with Grueling Commute

MERIDEN, Conn. _ They gathered in the blackness of 3:45 a.m. in a commuter parking lot here last week, pulling their coats around them, shrinking into the seats of the Ford Club Wagon with their lunch boxes and their makeshift pillows and their gruff greetings. They drove the 87 miles to the General Motors assembly plant in Tarrytown, N.Y., by 6, still in darkness. They worked nine hours on the assembly line.

As they drove home, the morbid banter rolled on: old age, aching muscles, spouses who have become complete strangers, and especially this winter's closing of the GM plant in Bristol that took away their old jobs. Then, somewhere around Waterbury, there was a subtle change, immediately perceptible to people who know one another's rhythms: Ricardo Torres stopped joking.

"I don't think I can take it," said Torres, 49, who has worked for GM in Connecticut for 22 years. He said his new job, installing radiators on the Tarrytown assembly line, was killing his hands, which are still sore from carpal tunnel surgery 10 weeks ago. "The way we work, I don't think we're going to make it," he said quietly.

Detroit calls these people "GM Gypsies," and automotive industry experts say that across the country, as the nation's largest car manufacturer has closed plants and consolidated its parts and assembly systems, tens of thousands of such workers are in similar situations, commuting to the outer limits of endurance.

For many of them, co-workers have become a support group. Torres's expression of distress transformed the atmosphere on the ride back from Tarrytown. Sarcastic tones turned earnest. Hands reached out for a reassuring touch.

"We'll make it," shouted Domnick Ferraro from behind the wheel. "Don't worry, think positive." Nancy Taylor looked back over her seat at Torres. "We've got to do it," she said. "That's it. We've got to do it."

In Lordstown, Ohio, displaced workers converge from across the state, traveling 120 miles or more each way. In Michigan, thousands of new commuters crisscross from Flint to Pontiac to Saginaw to get to their new jobs. Other plants, in Baltimore and Shreveport, La., are staffed mainly with transfers who have moved in from closed GM plants hundreds or thousands of miles away.

This group from Connecticut is among 75 displaced GM workers from the closed parts assembly plant in Bristol who are making the daily trek to a place that is both far away and foreign to everything they have ever done, starting all over again in middle age learning jobs intended for 20-year-olds. About 80 other Connecticut workers pulled up stakes completely and moved to Ohio, where the Bristol plant's work was being consolidated.

The added twist is that Tarrytown is scheduled to close, too, sometime next year. Even if the displaced Bristol workers were assured of permanent jobs in Tarrytown, most would be disinclined to relocate. In their late 40s and 50s, they have homes, children and sometimes grandchildren, and the long daily trip is as much change as they are prepared to deal with for now.

But the closing of Tarrytown, in turn, could send former Bristol workers to the next nearest GM plant, in Linden, N.J. Linden is another 42 miles past Tarrytown, which is 87 miles from their homes near Meriden. And industry experts say Linden's future is also far from certain, and the next GM plant after that is in Delaware.

"They may cascade right down the coast," said Sean McAlinden, a research scientist at the Office for the Study of Automotive Transport at the University of Michigan.

For New York, the closing of Tarrytown will mean the end of car manufacturing in the state, although thousands are still employed making car parts in plants in Rochester, Syracuse and elsewhere.

For Connecticut, the end is already here. Closing the 106-year-old Bristol factory ended the last vestige of the car business. None of the big three auto makers have any production in the state now.

McAlinden, who estimates that 120,000 GM production workers have had to move or commute 90 miles or more to keep their jobs, said he thinks the company's policy of trying to maintain work for current employees even as the company shrinks is humane, however wrenching it seems.

Still, the Bristol group, he said, is probably singular because Tarrytown's scheduled closing means there is no incentive for anyone to relocate. "They're stuck with this commute," he said.

Certainly, many people would jump at the chance to make the salaries auto workers earn, upward of $21 an hour, with a generous benefits package that increasingly looks like a holdover from some earlier age. And while thousands of people work on car assembly lines all the way to retirement, learning its ways in the late 40s or 50s is another matter altogether.

Two members of this car pool, for example, have already been injured on the job after only one week. General Motors did not allow a reporter into the Tarrytown plant, saying through a spokeswoman that a story about the Bristol transfers "would not be in GM's interest."

Taylor said: "There are people our age and older who have been doing it for a long time, but their bodies are accustomed to it. We're in shock. When we walk out of there, we can just about lift up our legs to get in the van."

Unquestionably, these are tough people. Taylor, 48, saw her mother put in 42 years on a stamping press, making ball bearings for General Motors. And she has lived the shop-floor life herself for 26 years, assembling roller clutches, strut bearings and water pumps at GM plants in Meriden and, after that closed, in Bristol. Like Torres, she has had tendinitis and carpal tunnel surgery, to repair damage to her hands from the constant, endlessly repeated motions. She casually shows the scars on her hands. The surgeon did a good a job, she says.

But it is not just the work or the travel or the stress of a new job. What is gnawing at these people is that in the closing years of their working lives, when many people are coasting, they have to learn everything from scratch. There is an unmistakable nostalgia for their lost little corner of an old industrial heartland.

In Bristol, they said, you could get up from your bench when you wanted to stretch or go to the bathroom. In Tarrytown, all free will and individuality are sacrificed to the line: 67 cars per hour, and you have to be there every second to get your one or two tasks done. The plant makes mostly Chevrolet Lumina mini-vans, with a lesser sprinkling of Pontiac Transports and Oldsmobile Silhouettes.

"There's not enough time to blow your nose or tie your shoelaces or take a swig of coffee, that's how close it is," said Ron Pelatzky, who at 58 is the oldest member of the car pool.

So they all cling to something: Torres thinks about his 3-year-old granddaughter, Danessa. How could he move far away from her? Taylor thinks about her 16-year-old daughter, Amy, entrenched and glorying in high school, pleading not to move. Bart Bonet, 48, said he thinks about soaking his hands in warm water at the end of the day, and about a cold beer.

All are chasing the prize at the end of the plant-closing rainbow: their pensions. They were left short in some way as Bristol closed down gradually over the last few months, either because they did not have enough seniority (the minimum is 28 years) or they were not old enough (the minimum age is 50), to qualify for the special provisions that allowed many other Bristol employees to retire outright, or take a paid leave of absence until they can retire. If Tarrytown closes on schedule in late 1996, all will have enough chevrons to grab the ring themselves.

Taylor's husband, Rich, who also worked for GM in Bristol, had 29 years of seniority, and so made it just under the pension wire, but his life has changed just about as much as his wife's. In the same week that she began her Tarrytown regimen, he was left holding the bag at home, retired at age 48, sort of. Perhaps he knew how tough his end of the bargain would be as well, because he offered to keep working with her in Tarrytown.

"I said no," Nancy Taylor said. "I'm going to need you at home, I'm going to need support at home, because I'm in no shape to do any cooking or cleaning."

Tarrytown veterans have been generous with advice as well. Nancy Taylor said a supervisor told her after the first few days that she would wear out her arm setting screws the way she was. Let the drill do the work, he said. Don't push it.

But these workers all say that what will ultimately get them through this period is their own little rolling support group. That's their anchor.

"This is the family now," Taylor said. "We know what we're going through _ we've got to help each other."

Copyright 1995
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