More than half of the hourly workers at General Motors Ypsilanti Processing Center have been written up for skipping work since late October.
But they are exhausted, exasperated and speaking up.
The 125 regular hourly workers have had just a handful of days off over the last few months — most of which were holidays. That’s because GM is pushing to fix a massive, nationwide parts shortage that has left many customers vexed.
The facility has been in “emergency status.” That means mandatory seven-day workweeks until this past Sunday, the first Sunday to be voluntary. All of GM’s key parts plants in southeastern Michigan have been on emergency status since Oct. 26, the day the UAW’s nationwide strike against GM ended.
“I have hard feelings,” toward GM demanding so much overtime, said Bill Bagwell, shop chairman at the processing center in Ypsilanti.
Bagwell watched as managers, security guards and vendors got time off. Yet he and other UAW members worked a mandatory 68 hours a week. He said management even denied him time off to attend church services.
“You want me to trust a company that wouldn’t give me a Sunday off to go to church for eight weeks?” said Bagwell. “The company that has fed me every morsel of food I’ve ever eaten — I’m second generation — has shown they don’t care about me.”
Other workers at Ypsilanti echoed the sentiment, telling the Free Press that managers treat them more like “machines as opposed to humans.”
GM spokesman Jim Cain said GM is grateful for the long hours from the workers. He confirmed the Ypsilanti processing center is now on mandatory six-day weeks, running two, 10-hour shifts each day. Sunday shifts are now voluntary. As soon as GM’s parts supply is restored, he said, GM will end the emergency status.
Customers wait and wait
Cain declined to comment on the disciplinary actions the automaker has taken against any workers. He said GM does not discuss personnel issues.
It’s been nearly eleven weeks since the UAW’s 40-day nationwide strike ended. In the days that followed, GM frantically started restoring the parts distribution system to its dealers.
The company understands the workers’ plight, said Cain, but he said, “We all have an enormous obligation to our customers, especially the people who can’t get to work or school or the doctor while they wait for parts. That’s why we have to clear the order backlogs as soon as possible.”
And the UAW contract with GM allows GM to require overtime to recover from certain events, including strikes.
GM’s parts distributors, suppliers, dealers and Customer Care & Aftersales team members, have been working hard to get operations back to normal as quickly as possible, said Cain. He said GM has made “huge progress” in reducing the parts backlog.
“Dealers tell us the difference between where we were last fall and where we are today is like night and day,” said Cain.
The strike had the biggest impact on parts to repair collisions because those have to be stamped at the plants.
GM customer Jesse Borden said he has waited more than six weeks for a repair part to his 2019 Chevrolet Silverado pickup, which was hit by a driver in November. Borden, a Maryland resident, owned the truck a mere 10 days when it happened.
“All GM could tell me is there was no ETA on the parts,” said Borden. As of Jan. 7, he said, GM said the parts are in transit.
Borden has owned five GM vehicles since 2013, two of them new, but this may be his last. When it’s fixed, he might trade it in, he said.
“I don’t know if something is going to break on it and if GM will support me in terms of parts or not?” said Borden. “I’ve read online other people are waiting for transmissions. So if there is a mechanical breakdown on it, I’ll be in the same position then, as I am now.”
Work trumps church
Just before Christmas, GM said it had reduced the backlog of customer orders by nearly half as it continually ran its parts facilities in emergency status.
GM’s processing center in Ypsilanti was one of those facilities. The Ypsilanti facility does not make parts; it receives them from suppliers. The workers then repackage the parts for shipment to dealers. It handles grilles and fascias, the front and rear bumpers, said Bagwell.
During the strike, Bagwell said the facilities’ managers crossed the picket line and worked the hourly workers’ jobs to keep the parts supply going. Bagwell said he and the union members tolerated it.
“I knew they were going to do our work, I didn’t know they’d bring supervisors from other plants and I consider them to be scabs,” said Bagwell. “But we didn’t stop anyone from crossing our picket line.”
The facility is receiving more parts, but there remains a shortfall, said Bagwell. Meanwhile, the hourly employees have worked tirelessly either the 5 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift or the 3:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift at the center every single day.
“We didn’t have one Sunday off to go to church from the time we came back from the strike until the 22nd of December,” said Bagwell. “As the shop chairman, I tried to negotiate that with management, but their position was, ‘We need every hour that’s available to us.’ “
GM’s Cain said GM is “grateful to everyone for the long hours they have put in, including the team in Ypsi, because everyone’s livelihood depends on our customers’ loyalty to GM, and the burden on some of them has been real.”
Cain added that each day GM gets closer to “where we need to be, and we don’t plan to stay on emergency status one day longer than necessary.”
More: GM customers rage as automaker struggles with strike-related parts delay
More: GM-UAW strike is making it hard for dealers to find parts for repairs
Act of God away …
But to worker Nolan Kerr, GM’s promise rings hollow. The Ypsilanti facility, he said, is always “an act of God away” from emergency status.
“If bad weather hits our facility, we’re behind automatically,” said Kerr, who has worked at the Ypsilanti center for 13 years. “If we have a couple of bad storms, we’ll be in the same situation again with mandatory overtime and people not being able to take time off. People need time off mentally as well as physically.”
Kerr has been leaving his house at 4:30 every morning to get to work by 5 for most of the last 10 weeks. He broke up a couple of his 68-hour work weeks by taking two unapproved days off. One he took because he was so tired. The other was to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Kerr got two disciplinary write-ups and if he takes one more unapproved day off, he will lose a full week’s pay, he said.
“It’s a very, very stressful time,” said Kerr. “Numerous people have told me, as they’re driving to work they’re still sleeping because they’re so exhausted. But you have to come to work or you get disciplined.”
More than half of the hourly staff have at least one disciplinary write-up for taking an unapproved day off because they needed to rest or attend a family event, said Bagwell.
Meanwhile, Bagwell said his workers do want to fix the supply chain as soon as possible to keep customers loyal to the automaker.
“Every single employee in this building feels very sympathetic to our customers who are without a car and waiting for a part,” said Bagwell. “It wasn’t something we can control. Our people are working their butts off to take care of the customer. We understand, if the customer doesn’t buy a General Motors car, we don’t have a job.”
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.
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