FoMoCo Highland Park, Michigan

My first real job just out of college was at Ford Motor Company in 1965 in Highland Park, Michigan.

By real, I mean 9 to 5, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and (TGIF) Friday. During high school and college I worked part time on weekends; first, at my Uncle's bakery, then at a butcher shop. Butcher ... Baker ...

At Ford I started on the assembly line in Transmission Quality Control. Stood there and waiting for instructions to put a metal stamp on the case for "Pass", or a tag for "Fail" with note describing defect.

The test console operator was most likely protecting his job, and not teaching me a damned thing about how it worked. Either that, or him training me wasn't in his job description. And, those union guys never did nothing that wasn't in the job description. Maybe some did take time to train, but this guy didn't. He would just tell me to stamp it if it passed, or what to write on the tag if it failed. A lot of failures. Most common problem: "O-rings." The test console showed hydraulic pressures under load within the transmission; so if there was low pressure it was a leak somewhere with an O-ring. If you know from O-rings you know they are little tiny things, and to get at the faulty one you'd have to take apart the whole tranny. Ford was not that good at making tractors then.

I worked there after getting my undergraduate degree thinking it would be a no sweat job while going for an MBA. It was the most tiring job I ever had; standing there like a dumb-ass all day long.

Years of black greasy grim on all the walls on the assembly line floor (tractors were assembled then), still bare light bulbs for illumination. Story goes that HF-I was such a boss, he would enter your stall in the toilet to see if you were really making something.

A little insight on how come unions came to be.

I was asked to become a Foreman. I knew from my business classes that the Foreman job can be a nightmare. You're between Management and Labor. The one pressing for more output/productivity; read, speed up. Labor, of course, always feeling pressed upon by the higher-ups, and trying to keep from being exploited. Just one of the many dualities I would encounter in my work years.

I jumped at an opportunity to work as a lab tech in the quality control section at the tractor plant. We did all kinds of chemical and physical testing on parts. Corrosion resistance in a salt spray chamber. Metallurgy, drilling shavings of various parts for testing spec'd metal content.

I was on the chemical test side of the lab. One of my tasks was to monitor the transmission gear plating process. I'd ride a bike through the dark and dirty production floor and place a metal test plate for the plating bath. Later I would fetch that sample and take a small amount of the plating bath solution to validate the effectiveness of the plating and the concentration in the bath . Remember, this is production. Based on what showed up in the lab test, I would go back to the factory floor and instruct the operator to add a shovel of this, a shovel of that into the bath. Precision in the lab, but down on the production floor, best guess.

I also remembering how once a month on a Thursday it was Hot Dog day. We'd take turns bringing in the franks and fixings and cook them up in a large beaker on the lab stove. We made the best of it.