Blue Collar Blues (13 page)

“Sure I do,” Khan said nervously, taking a seat across from his desk. In her head, she calculated her small amount of savings but her weak smile didn’t betray her.

“You know there is bound to be a strike soon.”

“I thought you said we weren’t going to strike, Uncle Ron,” she said. “We can’t afford to strike.”

“Mexico’s stealing our jobs, and the company is letting them do it.”

“Mexico? How could they compete with American workers?”

“Blue collar workers hired by Champion in the fifties were able to buy new homes, put money in the bank, and even send their children to college. Now the company is hiring our brothers and sisters at six dollars per hour.” Khan knew this was way below union scale.

She kept silent.

“The wage in Mexico is even smaller, so now some of our union sisters and brothers who have been laid off are working at small plants where unions have no power. They sign up at ten dollars an hour and less.” That was ten dollars less than they would make if they worked for the Big Four, Khan calculated.

“So you think we should worry about the contract in September?”

“We have a little time, but Mexico’s automobile production has more than doubled over the past five years. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Khan?”

She jerked her head up and said, “I’m not sure.”

“I’ll give you an easy example. I think Champion’s going to offer us a buyout. Eight years ago Champion pulled this same stunt. We had young workers with families waiving their recall rights and accepting fifty-thousand dollars in severance settlements. One man in particular took a job at a small welding factory for eleven dollars an hour after he took his settlement and left. This was eight dollars less than he made at Champion. Just over a year later, he was laid off from that job. The fifty grand was gone, and his wife filed for a divorce.”

“You’re scaring me, Uncle Ron.” She was finally beginning to pay attention.

“What’s happening is that we’re losing thousands of jobs to Mexican labor. I’m not just speaking about our black brothers and sisters. I’m talking about the UAW. Color doesn’t matter. It’s been increasing steadily for ten years. Sure, Champion tries to deny it, as do the other automobile companies. But they’re lying. Our president claims that increased trade with Mexico will create jobs on both sides of the border. He believes that, in thirty years, America will benefit from expansion into Mexico. Meanwhile, thousands of families employed by the automobile companies, especially in the state of Michigan, will be the first casualties of that free trade.”

“Where’d you hear this, Uncle Ron?”

“Read the papers, Khan. And not just the society section. Over the past seven years alone, the Big Four Detroit-based automakers, Champion, General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford, have reduced their production in Michigan to one-point-six million cars from two-point-eight million. Obviously, they’re reducing workforce as well. You don’t hear too much about it because we’re not laying off people. The company is reducing the head count through attrition, death, retirements, and firing. Now where do you think that leaves you and me in a few years?

“Champion just eliminated six hundred salary workers in their Flat Rock Operations. An unspecified number of hourly workers is expected to follow. No. Our company’s not playing fair. They’re not telling us the truth about how they’re doing business, what their picks are. Just lately, I learned that in this plant all the small parts are grouped together now under Plastic Products and Trim Products Division and Allied Products Organization. Champion plans on grouping everything together now and eliminating more jobs. I’ve been trying to find out just how many more jobs they’re going to eliminate. You better stop spending every dollar you get your hands on and stop taking this overtime for granted.”

“Do they really only make ten dollars a day in Mexico?”

“They make less and they feel like Rockefellers,” Ron said, shaking his head. “Soon everyone will start feeling the pinch. The blue collar jobs will be the first to go, but they won’t be the last. The suburbanites are not immune, and neither are the bankers. Everyone in Michigan is tied somehow to the automobile industry.”

“Are you talking about Thyme?” Khan knew Thyme and Ron had a complicated working relationship.

“For sure. But she and her white husband don’t got a damn thing to worry about: they know what’s going on at the top, so they’re probably planning their escape. But people like you and me, we will cease to matter if the American manufacturers run their business the way they feel is most cost effective.”

“My goodness, Uncle Ron. I never thought about it that way.”
How in the hell am I going to pay my mortgage if we strike? Fuck the car, they can take that shit back. But I can’t sleep on the streets. Damn!

“You have to realize how much Detroit has declined since nineteen sixty-eight. Its population has slipped below a million for the first time since the early nineteen hundreds. There’s nothing but liquor stores on every corner, and vacant premises. Detroit has yet to recover from the riots of the nineteen sixties. We’re in trouble here, babe.”

“Well it sounds like a strike is inevitable.”

Ron looked pensive. “I can’t say what the union’s planning. A lot of changes are being made. Membership is way way down, just like I predicted.”

The merger of the top three unions that was announced in 1995 by the Big Four was close to being implemented. The steel workers, the automobile workers, and the machinists would soon be under one umbrella union. The result would be a two-million-member behemoth. As the transition had occurred, many workers had lost a sense of their own voices being heard and had begun dropping out of the union altogether.

No one had thought it would happen so soon—no one except hard-line union officials like Ron. Ron had reiterated over and over again that the unions would merge. He had been right on target.

Although it was the unions who won the wage gains of the 1960s and 1970s and led American blue collar workers into the middle class, those same workers were now losing ground to inflation, cuts in benefits, and the attrition of manufacturing industries. They had begun to lose their foothold in the middle class.

“I think if you’re smart you’ll start putting away some cash,” Ron said, slicking down her blond hair. “And I must admit, your hair
is
real pretty.”

Khan blushed. “Stop, Uncle Ron.” Few of the other workers knew she was Ron’s niece. It was better that no one knew she was related to a union manager. If people knew that Ron was her uncle, some of the assholes would jump to conclusions and think she was getting an extra hour of overtime.

“Like I said, you’re smart. Smart people have money in the bank.”

Khan plastered a wide smile on her face. Her Visa as well as her MasterCard were over the limit, and Nieman’s had confiscated her card the last time she shopped there. I’m as broke as a sick, limp-dicked dog, but ain’t nobody but the bill collectors got to know, Khan thought to herself. R.C. had always told her that money was made to be spent. She just wished she wasn’t such an expert. Hell, she thought, who could afford to save money these days?

Maybe only those at the top. Like Cy and Thyme.

__________

“Wow! That’s hot!” Luella said, blowing the smoke off the mug of coffee her husband, Omar, had just handed her. She popped a Dexatrim into her mouth and downed half the scalding coffee.

It was four in the morning and at least seventy-five degrees outside on this late May morning. Despite the temperature, Omar, the same man who wouldn’t dream of leaving his bed when there were ten inches of snow outside, had insisted on warming up the car for her.

“The air’s working fine, sugar.” He went through the motions of checking the oil, gas gauge, and tires.

Like I didn’t know that already, fool.
She got into her car, sat her mug in the holder, and slammed the door shut. She turned on the headlights, put the car in reverse, then let the window down.

“Omar, make sure that the trash is taken out.” She could see from her rearview mirror that her neighbor’s was already on the curb. “Today’s Friday, you know.”

Their three-bedroom ranch was situated on Six Mile Road near Hubbell. Omar drove eighteen-wheeler refrigerated semis for a living and was gone twenty days out of the month. The least he could do, she figured, when he was home, was take out the damn trash.

“I won’t forget, sugar.”

As soon as she pressed down on the gas pedal, she could see him giving her his familiar puppy-dog look. “What is it?” she asked, poking her head out the window and frowning.

By any woman’s measure, Omar was a good-looking man. His skin was the color of rich mahogany. His irises were black and unreadable; a woman could see herself in the depths of them. Of average height and build, Omar’s sexiness was his nonchalant attitude toward his all-American-boy good looks. At forty-five years old, his hair was still so thick he cut it himself twice a week. All combined, he possessed the attributes that made women want to follow him to the ends of the earth.

“Will you be home by three? I’ve got to get my rig loaded—”

Luella looked bored. “Look, Omar, I know you’re going to California. And I know you’ll be gone for a week.”
Thank God.
“Now what is it? You need to get loaded up on pussy before you leave?” She forced a smile. Stupid bastard. You would think after twenty-two years of marriage, he would have figured out by now why she ever married him in the first place.

“Sugar, we ain’t spent no time together since Easter and that was over a month ago.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she mumbled, then screeched out of the driveway. Their two sons were in their third and fourth years at Columbia University. She and Omar had worked hard for the last twenty years to save enough money for their children to go to a top college. But ever since they’d moved away, Luella no longer felt the need to keep up the pretense of being the good wife. She wanted her boys to finish school so she could retire early and have some real fun. But now she had to go to work and fight for more overtime—after all, Columbia was expensive.

When Luella arrived at work, she was disappointed to find that Valentino had been transferred out of their unit for the day. With no one to distract her, Luella finished her ten hours of production by eleven o’clock.

Just as she was leaving, dreading going home to her husband, Allister offered her two more hours of overtime, which she readily accepted. An hour later, she cruised by the new job postings listed on the bulletin board. Although she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, Luella had bid on a job for a receiving inspector in Quality Control, which would take her out of production altogether. The position paid $1.10 more an hour and there were fewer people to fight with about overtime.

After checking in the front office on the status of her application, she stopped back by Khan’s machine. It was a quarter after twelve and the noon news was on.

“Pull up a seat, Luella. There’s a story on about Oprah’s new movie,
Beloved.
”

As they listened to the female anchor reel off all of Oprah’s accomplishments, Luella squirmed with envy. Luella popped another Dexatrim, chasing it with sixteen ounces of water. She didn’t realize that Khan was watching her.

“Is that a diet pill, Luella?”

If I didn’t like you, I’d cuss your Barbie-looking little ass out. What the hell you think it is?
“No. Vitamins.” She felt her stomach bubbling and thanked God that she would soon be excreting the fig bar she’d so foolishly eaten earlier. The sound of applause from the television brought her attention back to Oprah. Luella rolled her eyes at the slim television sensation as she began to describe her new movie.

“I remember back when they were calling her Okra.”

“Stop, Luella. You know you ain’t right,” Khan chastised.

“Hell, I’m tired of them talking about that bitch like she’s the greatest thing since Johnny Carson. I remember when she wore a three-x. So now Okra’s skinny and wearing designer clothes ’cause they don’t come in alphabet sizes,” Luella huffed.

Khan turned off the TV and said to Luella, “Hey, what you doing for Memorial Day weekend? Will your boys be driving home or are they catching a plane?”

“They can’t,” Luella said sadly. Perhaps that’s why she was in such an ornery mood today. She missed her sons.

“You know how much I love to look at pictures, Luella. I ain’t seen them babies’ photos since they graduated from high school.”

Luella blushed. “They ain’t babies, child.” But Luella couldn’t resist showing them off. Khan and Luella both knew good and well that Khan had seen pictures of them at her sister’s wedding last year and had commented on how handsome they were. It was Khan’s love of family that had tied the bond of their working friendship from the very beginning.

“My, my, these are some sexy-looking dudes. Are they both still making the dean’s list?”

“Yep. Cole’s a four-point-o, majoring in pre-law, and Reese is holding steady at three-point-seven in archaeology. They both have real good jobs this summer in New York City.” Luella looked at the photos of her sons. “I don’t know how I ended up with such brilliant children.”
At least Omar was good for something.

Just as she was about to insert the photos back into her wallet, two more pictures fell out. Khan grabbed the one closest to her foot.

“Luella, what you been hiding this fine-ass man for? I ain’t never even heard you talk about him. You think some of these women gonna steal him?”

Luella quickly took the picture from Khan. “Who, Omar? Not really.”

“His name is Omar? He don’t look like an Omar. Mmm, girl . . . and I thought Valentino was handsome—Omar’s a fox.”

“Granted, he’s good-looking, but he can’t fuck worth a damn. Got an itty-bitty dick. His tongue is longer than his shit is. That’s how I ended up with his sorry ass. As usual, I was the last one in high school to find out.”

“You lying, Luella. Even so, you still got a husband. Shit, I wish I had one, especially one this damn pretty. I think I’d get an orgasm just lying in bed beside him.”