1. When I transferred to the Atlanta Assembly Plant in April 2000, there were a group of supervisors walking around the plant like a posse literally terrorizing employees as employees tried to do their jobs. Those supervisors dressed exactly alike everyday and wore crisp long-sleeve white dress shirts (during summer and winter months); and dark glasses. At first, I thought it was a joke; but, when I realized it was not a joke, it reminded me of Hitler’s reign over Germany and how he tried unsuccessfully to conquer the world. What these odious acting supervisors were trying to conquer still remains unclear. As a result, over 43 employees filed formal charges against the company and we also consulted personally with the late Johnny Cochran about the matter on three different occasions. At one point, management’s actions got so heinous, that the employees decided to boycott a day of work and shut the plant down due to ongoing abuses from supervisors operating in the plant. Regardless of the company’s “zero tolerance” policies, employees were systematically cursed (profanity) by management, they were systematically harassed on a daily basis (both sexually and using intimidation tactics), they were systematically placed deliberately in harms way by management which resulted in many, many permanent injuries (some employees even had to have surgery), they were systematically place on jobs that were not ergonomically suited for them to perform, etc.
2. As a result, the Atlanta Assembly Plant had a high absenteeism rate – much, much higher than other plants. Due to the high absenteeism rate, when a regular employee was not present at work to perform his/her job, he or she had to always be replaced with two or more employees – which automatically indicated that the regular employee was doing too much work. And, “replacement” or “substitute” employees could never do a job as good as the regular employee - who has the long experience and expertise of performing a particular job. As a result, the job was not done as well – potentially sending an inferior product to our consumers.
3. The jobs at the Atlanta Assembly Plant were set up so that, if an employee had time to get a sip of water from a thermos, or blow his/her nose, or take a couple of breaths, then he/she did not have enough work to do. That idiom was management’s criteria of assigning employees the right amount of work to do – a perfect example of modern-day slavery.
4. When jobs openings came up, each time I submitted an application and resume for an interview to fill those various positions, my resumes and applications ALWAYS mysteriously disappeared (thrown in the trash). This not only happened to me; but, also to other employees who were vocal about issues in the plant that the management team deliberately and successfully ignored. As a result, lesser qualified employees were given those positions instead; and those lesser qualified employees were usually the “buddies” of someone on the management team. And, the Ford Motor Company’s management team has an excellent record of retaliating against employees who dare to speak out against adverse issues within the company.
5. The medical office at the Atlanta Assembly Plant always worked overtime and dutifully against the well-being of injured employees and did the company’s “dirty-bidding” by keeping injured employees at work, instead of allowing employees on many occasions the proper time off to rehabilitate and heal.
6. The management team at the Atlanta Assembly Plant had a long history of turning a deaf ear to employee ideas to make the working environment at the plant safer and more enjoyable. Instead, they systematically walked through the plant in a posse (donned in their white shirts and dark glasses and with the area supervisors) physically intimidating employees and deliberately removing everything that made our working environments more enjoyable in which to work – such as chairs, hand-made seats, containers to store our personal items in order to keep them clean, etc. But, if oil was on the floor, or the floor was filthy with trash/dirt, or our working bins were lacking parts to assembly the engine, the management team systematically did nothing to make it safe for us to maneuver safely with in our work zones and/or was slow about supplying us with parts in order to complete our jobs properly. And, if we were lacking earplugs or work-gloves, we had to almost beg for the management team to accommodate us. And whenever there was a real safety hazard that needed immediate attention, the management team, instead, waited and waited and waited for weeks (most of the time) to resolve those problems. As a matter of fact, in our group meetings it was common to discuss the same problems/issues from year-to-year with nothing ever getting resolved.
All of the above resulted in the plant’s inability to produce a quality product to sell to our consumers. And, when the employees filed formal charges against Ford and boycotted and shut down the plant, everyone at Ford Headquarters (including Bill Ford) was informed in detailed of what was happening at the Atlanta Assembly Plant; but, did very little to help the employees to resolve those issues. The employees also never had any support from the local union officials. Instead, the union officials seemed to be in the same “bed” as the company trying to make our working environment in the plant nearly too unbearable in which to perform. As a matter of fact, neither the local union president nor the union chairman was ever seen out on the plant floor during the entire time they were in office.
Now, Bill Ford and his co-conspirators in Dearborn has decided to render a final blow to a group of employees who still, after all the abuse we suffered and endured at the Atlanta Assembly Plant, to shut the plant and place loyal workers on the street.
In any case, I, personally, have mounds of documentation to corroborate the above.
In closing, the biggest problem that Ford Motor rendered upon it’s own “head” was that the company did not believe in the idea that “a happy employee is a productive employee.” Ford Motor also seemed to never believed in the idea of producing stylish vehicles; and, would never accept it’s employees ideas on style changes that would have been extremely beneficial in competing with our competitors such as Chrysler, Honda and Toyota. As a matter of record, I personally went to the female Human Resources Manager and disclosed to her that I had an idea that I was certain would double or triple the sells of Ford’s Taurus and Sable vehicles. Instead of listening and taking my ideas up for advisement, she very tactfully told me to get lost on that particular idea; and also on other ideas that I presented to her that would have helped the company. That is the typical treatment the hourly employees received from upper-level management at the Atlanta Assembly Plant. As a result, our productivity suffered, our quality suffered and our competition (especially our foreign competitors) took over in the auto consumer market in the United States.
I truly believe that Bill Ford wants to do the right thing. After all, the Ford Motor Company is a company that his Great Grandfather founded. But, sometimes “trying” to do the right thing, comes too late. The issues that persisted at the Atlanta Assembly Plant are a perfect example of that claim. They were eventually addressed; however, they were addressed too late for the Atlanta Assembly Plant hourly employees - which could have assured them a long and productive future with the Ford Motor Company.
This is just part of the untold story from the inside.