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From the Wilmington Delaware News Journal
Capitalize on auto plants' brain power
By PHILLIP BANNOWSKY
COMMUNITY VIEW

Reeling from news that Chrysler, now owned by the private equity firm Cerberus, would close its auto assembly plant in Newark, the state is in shock that the General Motors Boxwood Road plant might also close.

While capitalism must have its winners and losers to feed the efficiencies of the market, closing two major auto assembly plants in one small state is a stupendous waste.

Is this the capitalism of production -- of William Durant, Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler -- or the capitalism of moneychangers -- of Enron, private equity and side bets? They can make bucks, but not trucks.

This is capitalism whereby Dieter Zetsche can unload Chrysler Motors worth $30 billion less than when Daimler got it and not get fired, while tomorrow's Chrysler workers -- what's left of them -- will get half the pay and zilch in benefits.

While I have written before on how manufacture can be alienating and brutal (see "Autoplant," Broken Turtle Books, 2007), the auto plants in Delaware have become modern miracles of technology and organization. In my early days at Chrysler, many managers were skilled in little more than intimidation, compelling subordinates and line workers to churn out their 424 units per shift.

But in recent decades they evolved into engineers and M.B.A.'s -- systems people who collaborate with a community of experienced workers in both skilled trades and production to keep the big wheels turning.

Having worked in academia, I have known some sharp minds with deep learning. An auto plant's skilled trades workers -- millwrights, pipe fitters, electricians, tool repairers -- apply technical knowledge, giving life to the machines, processes and tools in their hands.

And while production workers still submit to the numbing repetitiveness of the line, they have joined the mental side of labor in production teams -- writing procedures, continually improving, and solving the myriad human and technical problems that production entails. With the trades, they constitute the collective mental capital that not only knows the properties of metal, but the delicate balance of torque and compression that guarantees the bolt that holds your safety belt will neither shake loose nor shear.

I was always a body shop man, a metal worker. The faint smell of hydraulic oil and burnt steel is home cooking to me. While it might look like a cold, hard panel or chunk, steel is always fluid from forge, mill and press to the clamps, welds, hinges, screws and other accoutrements.

Because its malleability today is never the same as it was yesterday, it requires a robust response from every worker's hand to make it come out right and ready, with that perfect dog leg gap between rear door and quarter panel, that satisfying thump of a closed latch.

In return for this collaborative rather than class-struggle orientation, we workers were promised job security.

Now not only do closures decompose the living flesh of machinery and accumulated brainpower, they destroy social capital too. The men and women I worked with are the salt of the earth. They came without the advantages of wealth and college degrees. They came from rural communities and towns erased by factory farms and big box stores. Their communities sometimes totter one lost job from the abyss.

They've worked hard and spent good pay to enrich their neighbors. They support their families and send their kids to college. They have a stake in the system. They participate in the democratic discourse. They have put their lives into these auto plants.

Where is the vision and leadership to keep these plants open?

Here we are on the cusp of a new age of energy and transportation. Instead of transferring the knowledge of managers, engineers, tradesmen and assembly technicians to manufacture wind turbines, buses and rails, we bulldoze it all.

It's time for Gov. Minner, Sens. Joseph Biden and Thomas Carper, and Congressman Michael N. Castle to get those bankers and corporate types who backed them all these years to show if they know how to make anything but money.
Phillip Bannowsky is a member of The News Journal Community Advisory Board.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080113/OPINION08/801130305/1109/OPINION