Friday, December 29, 2006

Ford Motor Co. had offered him and its 75,000 other U.S. hourly workers a
choice of buyout packages. One option: A $100,000 lump-sum payment to walk
away forever. No job and no health care. For hourly workers at Ford, making
a decision on the buyout offers required a combination of economic
calculations and soul searching. For Swiercz, 40, who has two ex-wives and
pays $157.50 each week in child support for his 14-year-old son, taking the
buyout would be the equivalent of a third divorce. The math just didn't
work: The cheapest health insurance he found cost $450 a month. With child
support, he'd pay $1,080 each month before he paid rent or put gas in the
car. He chose to stay on the production line at Ford's Woodhaven Stamping
Plant. The decision feels "100 percent" like a gamble, he said. He's
gambling that the plant will stay open. He's gambling that, if it does,
enough workers will take buyouts so Ford can avoid layoffs there. He's
gambling that a worker from a closing plant who has more seniority won't
bump him off the job. "A lot of people I talk to say, 'It's just like craps:
It's a roll of the dice,' " he said. Some 38,000 Ford workers -- roughly
half of Ford's U.S. hourly work force -- said they would take one of Ford's
eight buyout packages.
The last will be gone by fall. Workers who are staying are every bit as
nervous as those starting over. The Woodhaven plant still runs three shifts.
Workers there got good news the Friday before Christmas that it will stay
open. The buyout and the future have been the dominant topic of conversation
there for six months, Swiercz said. "You talk to 25 people a day, that's
what 10 people are talking about," he said. "Not, 'How are your kids?' or
'What are you doing for Christmas?' (It's) 'You taking the buyout?'
"Everybody's worried about everything now," Swiercz said. Auto workers, who
can make $60,000 a year without overtime, and more than $100,000 with it,
"know they're never going to make this kind of money again," said Denise
Brooks, who has worked for 131/2 years at the Brownstown Ford plant. Cynthia
Allison was a single mother raising a daughter, Donielle, and getting
welfare before she got a job at Ford's Dearborn Truck plant. Nothing had
prepared her for how physically punishing it would be. Her first day, "I
kept saying, 'The money, Cindy, the money. A future for you and for Donny.'
When I got off that 4 a.m. shift, each step I took, my head said, 'Boom.
Boom. Boom.' " Allison is taking the $100,000 buyout and planning a future
without her $27 an hour salary. She's moved from a $1,200-a month apartment
in suburban Southfield to a $700 apartment in Detroit. She has no home
phone, no cable, she's stopped shopping for everything but necessities, she
no longer eats at restaurants and she's bartending nights. She's not bitter,
saying: "Thank you. Thank you, Ford, for helping me raise my daughters,
making it possible as a single parent. I don't want them to think I didn't
appreciate the time. Without them, I couldn't have done a lot of the things
I did for my daughters, or my family."