The Last Shift

The portrait of an American worker

Every manager in America should meet George Beeler. He's the kind of worker an Inc. reader would die for; at the moment he also happens to be locked in a struggle for his livelihood, as his company tries to adapt to a whole new competitive environment. Ordinarily Inc. writes about business from the point of view of top management. Here's an opportunity to show our readers what the new American economy -- the world of global competition and technological change -- looks like from the shop floor. -- J.H.

George Beeler knows exactly where he'll be when the inspectors come around to shut down the plant and terminate his job. He'll be working his day shift on the screw machine, just as he has most days for the past 30 years. Maybe he'll be picking the tools, maybe cutting and tapering the steel bars that will eventually move to the loading dock for the trip to the Ford plant down the road.

He has played out the scene a thousand times. Each time, a young man from General Motors or Ford stands up in the middle of the factory floor and announces that Gel Inc. has failed the new quality test and will be dropped as a supplier. Of course, the results might be much happier, but Beeler has been around long enough to know not to count on it. Long enough to remember when Detroit defined the physical laws of the auto universe, and long enough to watch as its hegemony exploded like a supernova. No union could help him now.

Maybe that's how it should be; the carmakers are trying to foster more Japanese-style supplier relationships. That means fewer suppliers, longer-term contracts, closer partnerships. All of which sounds fine -- except if you happen to be George Beeler or one of his neighbors or his son. "All of this," Beeler says, "might mean getting rid of people like me."

If Gel doesn't make the grade, all 145 employees will suffer. The owner will have to sell or write off the assets. The executives and managers will add a line to their résumés and head for brighter prospects in Phoenix, maybe, or Atlanta. But Beeler is different. He is one of many who will have nowhere to go. These days, people tell him 30 years on a screw machine qualifies you to work at McDonald's. "I don't know what will happen," he says. "I'm just fighting for my way of life.

"I'm not scared of changing," he adds in a hoarse voice. "I just want the opportunity to survive."

When George Beeler was growing up on the southwest side of Detroit, the automakers didn't just provide jobs. Oh, sure, everybody worked in the car industry. But the Big Three really provided a common bond, a focal point for people's lives. At quiet dinners on Saturday nights, or Sunday afternoon barbecues, "cars were always the topic of conversation," Beeler says.

Most of Beeler's neighbors were Catholics of Polish descent, and all lived in new houses on almost identical square lots. The fathers of all his friends worked in the car industry. Clifton's dad was a draftsman at Ford. Ray's worked on the assembly line. Beeler's own father toiled at a shop owned by Chrysler, setting dies for making hoods, doors, and trunks. Grandfathers, fathers, sons, they all built cars.

Just four blocks from Beeler's house, behind a steel fence, stood the Ford family's private property, which Beeler and his buddies treated as a campground. Sneaking through the breaks in the barbed wire, they would build a fire and cook up a can of pork and beans. If they weren't roaming around the Fords' property, they would tag along on a tour of the Ford plant, watching as workers stamped out roofs, attached hoods, or soldered door handles. Beeler would take dates to the Ford Rotunda, where the company displayed its latest models on pedestals.

As far back as he can remember, Beeler worked at small jobs: delivering the Polish Gazette, caddying, setting up bowling pins, and bagging groceries. He wanted to save at least $100 to buy a car when he turned 16. Not just any car, either. As a matter of pride, it had to be a Ford.

Beeler bought a 1949 Ford sedan in 1954. In the fashion of the day, he ripped off every bit of chrome, including the door handles. Then he lowered the chassis until it was about three inches from the ground.

Like his friends, Beeler thought he knew exactly what route his life would take. After a stint in the army, he'd line up a job at one of the Big Three, where he was sure he could earn "a secure, good living." Jobs were so plentiful that his friends, for a joke, would land two of them in the same afternoon -- one on an assembly line, say, and another in a glass plant. But an army injury changed Beeler's life. In Korea he slipped and fell, breaking a disk in his spine. He returned to Detroit with a weak back and a debilitating medical history. "Nobody wanted to insure me once they saw those scars," he says. Eventually he landed a job at a small company, where he learned to operate hand-screw machines.

He got along fine for years, using skills he picked up here and there, never getting much formal training. Then one morning in 1967 a giant, hand-lettered sign posted in the factory stopped him cold: Moving. Denton, Tex. Ninety days. "That day, I went home, and I bawled for the only time in my life," he says. He had a wife and two small kids and no way of supporting them. During those 90 days, he trudged from place to place, with no prospects. "I decided that I would learn a skill that would give me a chance of getting work no matter how the economy was," he says.

Beeler discovered a company that ran automatic screw machines. It looked like a fairly secure job. After all, when would you not have a need for small metal parts for cars, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, hydraulic valves, and more? The United States "was and always would be a manufacturing nation," he was certain. "The people in our shops are damn good." Confident the job would be secure, he took it. These machines may never make you rich, his new boss said, but you'll never be out of work, either.

If there were truer words, Beeler hadn't heard them. Mastering the new machines made him more marketable than he'd ever dreamed. He shifted from job shop to job shop, starting at $2.05 an hour, leaving at $4.00, reaching $4.50 at another job. He worked for one family three different times, twice at shops owned by the father and once at the son's shop. "I could drop two dimes in the phone and find a job," he says.