Blue Collar Blues

by Rosalyn McMillan

  “Amen!” a man shouted.

  “Uncle Ron, I need a favor,” Khan said.

  “Yes?” he said, his chest poked out as proud as a robin’s red breast and looking every bit like a plant chairman. Or so he thought.

  “I finished early. How about taking me out to lunch?”

  Ron stopped. “You’re broke.”

  Yeah, and so are half the people I work with.

  “My pleasure, Khan, though I did warn you to put money away.”

  Oh yeah, and what about you, Casanova? she wanted to say.

  They had lunch at Cicero’s on Long Lake Road two miles from the plant. A familiar eating spot for Troy Trim employees, Cicero’s was a good place but the wait was long. It was nearly a half hour before Ron and Khan were able to sit down.

  Khan knew better than to broach the subject of Valentino. Even though Ron appeared to be frustrated with his son, Khan knew how Ron worried about him. During the entire time Valentino had been in jail, Ron hadn’t missed a day of visiting his grandchild and his daughter-in-law. He made sure they had everything they needed. Yet Ron refused to see his son in jail. No one could convince him that what he was doing was selfish. He was adamant; he could not condone what Valentino had done. At the same time, Ron knew his duty was to take care of his son’s family.

  Ron didn’t stop talking. He started with the CAFE laws (the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard). The law, established in 1975 by a Democratic and a Republican senator and called the Bryan bill, sought to increase the fuel efficiency of American-made automobiles.

  So what? Khan thought.

  Ron continued to eat and talk. Khan knew that all she was required to do was nod. And so she did.

  “If the Big Four hike average auto mileage by forty percent, it would save two-point-eight million barrels of oil each day—four times the amount imported each day from Kuwait and Iraq before the Gulf War.”

  Khan still didn’t get it. Why was he going on and on about this? What does this have to do with my life? Khan wondered.

  “This is exactly why all nineteen ninety-nine models, according to government standards, are supposed to average twenty-five-point-six miles to the gallon.” Ron exhaled. “In order to reach this goal, Champion has had to cut their costs in other areas to compensate for the growing costs of fuel efficiency.”

  “Mm-hm,” Khan said.

  Before Ron finished his sentence, Khan had nodded her head. She couldn’t really retain the details of what Ron was saying; all she cared about was her job.

  “I’ve got friends in pretty high places. And they tell me that our jobs aren’t secure at Champion. They know exactly what they’re doing. Every move they’ve made has been calculated. Just because they negotiated with the national doesn’t mean they’ll deal with us fairly on the local level. To put it bluntly, Khan, Champion is getting out of the trim business. Like I said back at the plant, all those divisions of each company are moving toward merger, and you know what merger always means.”

  If she’d been listening, Khan would have taken in the picture: everyone she knew at Champion was now at risk. But her mind was on simpler things. Buddy had promised to take her on a tour of his shortening company. The first time he’d taken her to see his home, she was astounded by how many trophies he had. Most were Boy Scout prizes. She thought his being a Scout was so cute. But when he added that he was on the national board of directors for the Boy Scouts of America, it wasn’t cute anymore; it had opened her eyes to a part of Buddy she hadn’t seen before. Lately, she’d been taking another look at this man. He was coming together like building blocks, and the more she learned about him, the more she was able to see his true shape and form. The more she did this, the more she admired him.

  She thought about the night she’d seen R.C. and Tomiko at the theater. Thanks to Buddy, she’d finally gotten over R.C. She knew she really cared about Buddy because thinking about R.C. didn’t hurt anymore. She also knew that she was falling in love with Buddy and was powerless to help herself. And the beautiful part was that he wasn’t even trying to persuade her. His actions spoke for themselves.

  She could feel her uncle’s eyes boring down on her. Apparently she’d missed something. “I’m sorry, Uncle Ron. What did you say?” But her mind stayed on Buddy. Khan wanted to call Buddy right then and talk to him. She was hoping she hadn’t done anything the other night that turned Buddy off. She was beginning to see just how blind she had been; now she saw that many women would give their right arm to have a man like Buddy in love with them.

  “One day you’ll understand what I’m saying. Just know this: we don’t have many choices. We need to face the facts; we may all be out of jobs soon.”

  “What?” Suddenly Khan heard what her uncle was saying. She realized that she’d been lost in her own thoughts, probably not wanting to listen to the reality facing her.

  Throughout the rest of the afternoon, Khan began to take a serious look at her situation and began thinking about security for the first time.

  Ordinarily, Khan would have been tickled by a message from Buddy when she returned home from work. But not this afternoon. She was plagued by what-ifs. What if the plant closed? How would she pay her mortgage? Her car note? The only thing she could afford to do was eat, and that would probably be sardines, or welfare cheese.

  Shit! I knew I shouldn’t have come here to Detroit. I should have kept my country ass home. The next voice she heard was Thyme’s: “You should have stayed in college and finished your degree.”

  Trying to decipher everything her uncle had told her that day had given her a headache. By the time she finished writing out all her bills she was in a panic: $356.12 on Visa; $129.00 on American Express; $138.00 for her utilities. Damn! That’s almost $625.00 and I haven’t even started on groceries yet. She wrote out the checks, inserted them in their envelopes, and licked them shut, leaving a horrible taste in her mouth. Checking her balance, she had twenty-four dollars left to last until tomorrow, her next payday, which may be her last. Then what?

  She wished she’d paid more attention to what her uncle had been saying. There was still a chance to avert the actual walkout. She prayed the plant wouldn’t strike.

  Later that evening, while Khan was eating a Healthy Choice fish entrée, Champion Motors headlined the evening news. The local issues between the union and the company hadn’t been settled. The sticking points seemed to be outsourcing, overtime, and health and safety issues.

  The next morning when Khan arrived at work, Allister handed her her weekly paycheck. But she noticed that half her co-workers received a layoff slip as well. Silence, like fate, fell upon the unit.

  It was no longer a rumor that someone else had taken their jobs. Ron called Khan that night to confirm the union’s plans. All talks had broken off, and they would strike a week from Tuesday at midnight. They all had their schedules.

  * * *

  By the time Tuesday night arrived, three hundred more hourly workers had been laid off. Tensions were high. When the clock struck twelve, a third of the workforce followed Ron inside the plant, including Khan.

  “Let’s walk!” he shouted.

  Khan spoke her piece. “We’re striking, people. Let’s go!”

  The sound of people whistling and shouting filled the air. No one was sad. Relief was apparent on all faces.

  As the hourly workers formed a group and walked around the plant announcing the strike and building their ranks, Khan was scared. She’d never been involved in a strike and had no idea what to expect.

  By 12:30 A.M., over six hundred employees had marched out of Troy Trim. It was as bright as daylight under the crime lights in the parking lot. The television cameras were rolling. One cameraman stuck a microphone in Ron’s face. Khan blinked and stepped back.

  “Mr. Lamott, you’re the union chairman of Troy Trim?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve instructed your union workers to walk out tonight?”

  “That’s correct. Champ
ion Motors is refusing to bargain with the union. They’ve cut off negotiations. We have reason to believe that the company is planning to ship four more of our units down to their Mexican operations. This has caused a recent layoff of over three hundred union workers in this trim plant. We won’t stand for that. We demand fair treatment. We understand competitive wages. We understand helping developing nations. But not at the expense of our labor force here in Michigan.”

  “How long do you feel the strike will last, Mr. Lamott?”

  “I can’t answer that. Only Champion Motors can answer that.”

  They were cut off by cheers and whistles. A van arrived with the picket signs. Hourly workers picked up their signs and began forming a line on the street just outside company property.

  “As you can see,” Ron said, smiling, “our union brothers and sisters are behind us. We plan to strike until we have our jobs back and the company brings enough business back into this trim plant to keep our workforce employed.” A confident grin. “We won’t accept any less.”

  Khan, standing behind her uncle, saw Thyme’s car pull out. She gestured to Ron. The newspeople had moved to talk to workers on the line.

  “Don’t blame her,” Ron told Khan. “This was out of her hands. Sending these jobs to Mexico was an executive decision.”

  “You’re telling me she’s not to blame at all?”

  “No, not for the outsourcing. I know she did what little she could.”

  “I don’t get it, Uncle Ron. I thought you said that Thyme must have withheld the information? Where does Thyme stand, then?”

  “I’m saying that she had no say about the outsourcing.”

  “But how do you know?” Khan insisted.

  “I have my ways.”

  “Elaine?”

  “Let’s not get into that, shall we? For the record, yes, it was Elaine who told me. As Thyme’s secretary, she is privy to some useful information at times.” His voice was serious. “Thyme is in as bad a position as we are. Here comes Louis with the picket signs.” He placed a caring arm on her shoulder. “You ready?”

  “Yeah. I’m ready.” Khan tried to sound tough, but out of fear her words sounded like a whisper, and more confused than ever.

  Louis handed her a dozen signs that read in bold letters: UAW, AFL-CIO; UNITED AUTO WORKERS AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS, LOCAL 1099 ON STRIKE. Ron held others voicing the issues: STOP OUTSOURCING! JOB SECURITY! BETTER PLANT SECURITY! UNFAIR LABOR!

  Khan checked her watch. It was fifty minutes past midnight. Tires screeched to a halt as hundreds of Champion employees arrived by the car loads. As if preparing for an all-out war, workers gathered and rationed out picket signs like ammunition.

  As more and more workers joined in the unified effort, Khan felt proud to be a union worker. Among the crowd, there was a sense that they were waiting for something.

  After an hour, Ron and Khan broke from the line to grab a cup of coffee provided by the strike committee.

  Someone handed Ron a fax. As he read it, he frowned.

  “Uncle Ron, what happened?”

  “I see why Champion doesn’t have that much motivation to settle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This fax states that the company has hired scab workers to sew the new seats. They’re coming in tonight. The union won’t stand for this.”

  “What? Scab workers?” Khan knew this meant one thing: a fight.

  “I didn’t realize how much I depended on Ida until now.”

  Khan hugged her uncle and said, “Don’t worry, Uncle Ron. Everything will work out.”

  “Don’t let on to anyone what I just told you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Khan said as her uncle drifted away from her.

  A third of the workers were armed with picket signs, and the others banged on the chain-link fence that surrounded the entire Champion complex.

  Khan cringed inwardly. She felt an odd tension in the back of her neck that spread out along her shoulders. A part of her wanted to turn around and run back to the safety of her car. Standing on her tiptoes, she tried to find her uncle. Somehow, in all the shuffling, she’d lost him.

  The first person she recognized in the darkness was Daddy Cool. “Hey, baby girl. Come on over here by me.”

  Khan stood again on her tiptoes, trying to see. “Have you seen my uncle Ron, Daddy Cool?”

  “He’s down there.” Daddy Cool pointed toward the guard shack at the east employee entrance.

  That scared her. She could barely spot her uncle’s thick body as he talked with two of the security guards. “But he knows that he’s not supposed to be on company property. What’s he doing?”

  Khan fought her way through the pickets and down the ramp to the security-guard station. From behind her she could hear Daddy Cool warning her to stay back.

  A few seconds later, she stood behind Ron and listened to him arguing with the security guards.

  “Look, Ron. We don’t want any trouble. You have to move back. You know the rules of the contract.”

  “Are we supposed to abide by the rules when the company is bringing scabs in here to do our work?”

  “Ron,” the security guard said, “you can do what you want in the streets, but this is private property. Don’t make me have to physically remove you.”

  As the scabs began to file in, ten more guards exited the station and formed a protective line for the scabs into the plant. A line of vans had just come into view.

  “I’m telling you to get back, Ron. Otherwise, I will call the police and have you arrested. I hope that won’t be necessary.”

  Khan was feeling what her uncle felt now. Seeing the scab workers file out of vans, workers who had probably practiced her sewing job for the past two weeks somewhere while she was separating the jewelry she planned on selling to cover her bills, made her mind trip to the insanity level. “Fuck that shit!” she yelled, then stepped beside Ron. “Uncle Ron, who are these people? These people have no rights here.”

  “I’m sorry to say, Khan, but we could be those people unless we get this contract settled. These are our jobs and we’re going to fight to keep them. These are our people—laid-off union workers—out of work trying to feed their families too. I feel sorry for them, but they can’t have our jobs.”

  Ron pulled her small body back behind him and said, “Shhhush” under his breath so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself. By that time one more van had stopped in the lot, and two more joined in, waiting.

  Three committeemen whose role was to keep the union members in order came up beside them.

  “Trouble, Ron?” one asked.

  “No,” he said, backing up. He smiled viciously at the guards. “We’re going to do as the guard says. We’re going to get off company property.”

  But Khan could tell by the sound of his voice that he had something planned. All five backed up the ramp slowly, all the while watching the guards and the van. The jeers from the union workers became louder.

  Sweat trickled down Khan’s face, and when Ron grabbed her hand she could feel the sweat on his hands intermingling with hers. The other committeemen were breathing hard and sweating profusely as well. She clutched her uncle’s hand more tightly and began to pray.

  Something was about to explode.

  As doors of the fifth and last van opened, spawning more scabs, the union workers were propelled into action.

  “Here they come!” a union worker shouted. “Scabs! Scabs! Assholes trying to take our jobs! Get out of here!”

  32

  __________

  The calls began coming in for R.C., first from his business manager, then from his bookie. They all wanted money. Tomiko was nothing short of astounded at how much debt R.C. had incurred. She’d been able to convince him to give up the alcohol, but she wasn’t so sure of how much headway she’d made on his gambling habits.

  Tomiko and Bonnie were in the kitchen feeding Kip milk from a bottle since he was too
young to feed himself. “When the casinos are open next year in Detroit, I don’t know what will become of R.C. I hope he realizes he can’t beat the casinos before he loses the shirt off his back. Every day you read in the papers about people losing their homes, cars, jewelry, because of gambling,” Tomiko said in exasperation.

  “Here,” Bonnie said, taking the kitten from Tomiko, “let me do that. You have to have a little faith, Tomiko. Mr. R.C.’s been in worse shape than this and pulled through. He’s a survivor. I know he appears to be down and out, but don’t give up on him. You’re good for him. I found the eight hundred number for Gamblers Anonymous in his pants pocket. At least he’s trying to do better.”

  When the phone rang, Bonnie answered and then reluctantly handed it to Tomiko.

  “Hello,” said Tomiko. “May I help you? This is Mrs. Richardson.”

  “This is Alexander. Tell your husband that he can’t keep avoiding us.” Alexander was one of R.C.’s bookies.

  “Excuse me? Who is this?”

  “His payment’s overdue. He’s got ten days or we’ll get him good. He knows that.” The line went dead in her ear. For the first time, Tomiko feared for her husband’s life.

  Tomiko calculated the days until October 1. She had just over three weeks. If only she could get R.C. to the ranch, maybe he would confide in her.

  Things had been going so well between them. R.C. had even met her grandparents and told her afterward how meeting them actually made him feel closer to her. In the past weeks, Tomiko had renewed faith and hope for their marriage. She was determined not to let his gambling get in the way of this hope.

  That evening, when R.C. came home, he handed Tomiko a check for twenty thousand dollars. She hid her disappointment that he was gambling for such high stakes; did he think he could hide from her that bookies were after him?

  She told him about her plans to drive to Kentucky on Thursday. Trying to sound upbeat, she claimed that she needed to put some highway miles on her new car. She didn’t mention the phone call from the bookie.

  “No. Not alone. Kentucky’s at least seven, seven and a half hours away. You’ve never driven that far alone.”