Rivethead - Ben Hamper [112]
Just as discouraging as smashed bones and slit throats was the sudden decision by management to remove Gino from his supervisor's role on the Rivet Line. It made no sense whatsoever. No other foreman in the entire corporate dog pen could possess Gino's knack for overseeing the daily traumas on the Rivet Line. The sacred Quality meter bore this out. For all of the horseplay and hijinks that went along with the area, the Rivet Line always remained near the top of the Quality ratings. Why would they want to tamper with a working marriage?
The explanation we were given was that Gino had become “too close to his work force.” GM often employs this screwy logic whenever a supervisor and his crew develop a bond that won't allow for proper amounts of hostility and mistrust. They're quick to fill you up with all their newfangled bluster about “team concept” and “consensus decision making” while, at the same time, they insist on elevating the most inept suck-butts they can dredge up to ensure that everything proceeds at a level of useless antagonism.
The Rivet Line was far from perfect. We all had our share of shortcuts and bits of petty disobedience. Gino was aware of it all and drew us a bottom line. Build good trucks. Hit good rivets. Cover your damn job and we'll cover each other's backs. Just give me a good job. If you hang, you'll hang yourself. The way it should be. We were gonna miss old Gino.
Enter the new boss, a self-proclaimed “troubleshooter.” He had been enlisted to groom the Rivet Line into a more docile outpost. As he told Schobel and me on his first night on the job: “I float from plant to plant. Whenever GM has a specific problem spot, they call me in to clean up.”
With a tight grip on the whip, the new bossman started riding the crew. No music. No Rivet Hockey. No horseplay. No drinking. No card playing. No working up the line. No leaving the department. No doubling-up. No this, no that. No questions asked.
No way. After three nights of this imported bullyism, the boys had had their fill. Frames began sliding down the line minus parts. Rivets became cross-eyed. Guns mysteriously broke down. The repairmen began shipping the majority of the defects, unable to keep up with the repair load.
Sabotage was rather drastic; however it was an effective way of getting the point across. We simply had no other recourse. Sometimes these power-gods had to be reminded that it was we, the workers, who kept the place runnin’. If you started reamin’ your men at every turn, sooner or later it was all gonna come back to you. There would be a bigger honcho than you, with a larnyx twice as loud, just waiting to chew your ass to ribbons as the forty greasy serfs you thought you had conquered would be lined up for last call with grins on their kissers and shrugs on their shoulders.
This new guy was nobody's dummy. He could see it all slippin’ away, his goon tactics workin’ against him. He pulled us all aside and suggested that we return to our old methods. The guy was no troubleshooter. He was a scared little lapdog whose hand had been called. Very quickly, the big boys moved him out to try his hired-gun charade in some other corner of the works.We had won this particular go-round, but we all knew the big boys would be returning to the drawing board.
Our next supervisor was selected from our very midst, a popular ploy. GM would promote a boot-licker whose allegiance could be twisted by power and money, clear his rap sheet and send him back to his home base as a kind of in-house spy. The rationale was that this creepin’ Judas would have an inside track on all the systems and schemes of his former linemates.
The scab they promoted was a veteran co-worker of ours named Calvin Moza. Within hours of his appointment, Moza had put Schobel and me on notice for doubling-up, Doug and Terry on notice for kickin’ rivets and three other workers on notice for bench banging. (The banging of the benches was a ritual performed right before break or the end of the shift, a tribal celebration that