Wheels (2 page)

)
Eventually the executive vice-president would go home-with a filled
briefcase to be dealt with by tomorrow morning.
Now, pushing his breakfast tray away and shuffling papers, he stood up.
Around him, in this personal study, were book-lined walls. Occasion
ally-though not this morning-he glanced at them with a trace of longing;
there was a time, years ago, when he had read a good deal, and widely,
and could have been a scholar if chance had directed his life
differently. But nowadays he had no time for books. Even the daily
newspaper would have to wait until he could snatch a moment to skim
through it. He picked up the paper, still folded as the housekeeper had
brought it, and stuffed it into his bag. Only later would he learn of
Emerson Vale's latest attack and privately curse him, as many others in
the auto industry would do before the day was out.
At the airport, those of the executive vice
-
president's staff who would
accompany him were already in the waiting lounge of the Ford Air
Transportation hangar. Without wasting time, he said, "Let's go
.”

The Jetstar engines started as the party of eight climbed aboard and
they were taxiing before the last people in had fastened seatbelts. Only
those who traveled by private airfleets knew how much time they saved
compared with scheduled airlines.
Yet, despite the speed, briefcases were out and opened on laps before
the aircraft reached the takeoff runway.
The executive vice-president began the discussion. "Northeast Region
results this month are unsatisfactory. You know the figures as well as
I do. I want to know why. Then I want to be told what's being done
.”

As he finished speaking, they were airborne.
The sun was halfway over the horizon; a dull red, brightening, amid
scudding gray clouds.
Beneath the climbing Jetstar, in the early light, the vast sprawling
city and environs were becoming visible: downtown Detroit, a square mile
oasis like a miniature Manhattan; immediately beyond, leagues of drab
streets, buildings, factories, housing, freeways-mostly dirt encrusted:
an Augean work town without petty cash for cleanliness. To the west,
cleaner, greene
r Dearborn, abutting the giant
f
actory complex of the
Rouge; in contrast, in the eastern extremity, the Grosse Pointes,
tree-studded, manicured, havens of the rich; industrial, smoky Wyandotte
to the south; Belle Isle, hulking in the Detroit River like a laden
gray-green barge. On the Canadian side, across the river, grimy Windsor,
matching in ugliness the worst of its U.S. senior partner.
Around and through them all, revealed by daylight, traffic swirled. In
tens of thousands, like armies of ants (or lemmings, depending on a
watcher's point of view) shift workers, clerks, executives, and others
headed for a new day's production in countless factories, large and
small.
The nation's output of automobiles for the day-controlled and
masterminded in Detroit
had already begun, the tempo of production re
v
ealed in a monster Goodyear signboard at the car-jammed confluence of
Edsel Ford and Walter Chrysler Freeways. In figures five feet high, and
reading like a giant odometer, the current year's car production was
recorded minute by minute, with remarkable accuracy, through a
nationwide reporting system. The total grew as completed cars came off
assembly lines across the country.
Twenty-nine plants in the Eastern time zone were operating now, their
data feeding in. Soon, the figures would whirl faster as thirteen
assembly plants in the Midwest swung into operation, followed by six
more in California. Local motorists checked the Goodyear sign the way
a physician read blood pressure or a stockbroker the Dow Jones. Riders
in car pools made bets each day on the morning or the evening tallies.
The car production sources closest to the sign were those of
Chrysler-the Dodge and Plymouth plants in Hamtramck, a mile or so away,
where more than a hundred cars an hour began flowing off assembly lines
at 6 A.M.
There was a time when the incumbent chairman of the board of Chrysler
might have dropped in to watch a production start-up and personally
check out a finished product. Nowadays, though, he did that rarely, and
this morning was still at home, browsing through The Wall Street Journal
and sipping coffee which his wife had brought before leaving, herself,
for an early Art Guild meeting downtown.
In those earlier days the Chrysler chief executive (he was president
then, newly appointed) had been an eager-beaver around the plants,
partly because the declining, dispirited corporation
needed one, and partly because he was determined to shed the "bookkeeper"
tag which clung to any man who rose by the financial route instead of
through sales or engineering. Chrysler, under his direction, had gone both
up and down. One long six-year cycle had generated investor confidence;
the next rang financial alarm bells; then, once more, with sweat, drastic
economies and effort, the alarm had lessened, so there were those who said
that the company functioned best under leanness or adversity. Either way,
no one seriously believed any more that Chrysler's slim-pointed Pentastar
would fail to stay in orbit-a reasonable achievement on its own, prompting
the chairman of the board to hurry less nowadays, think more, and read
what he wanted to.
At this moment he was reading Emerson Vale's latest outpouring, which
The Wall Street Journal carried, though less flamboyantly than the
Detroit Free Press. But Vale bored him. The Chrysler chairman found the
auto critic's remarks repetitive and unoriginal, and after a moment
turned to the real estate news which was decidedly more cogent. Not
everyone knew it yet, but within the past few years Chrysler had been
building a real estate empire which, as well as diversifying the
company, might a few decades hence (or so the dream went), make the
present "number three" as big or bigger than General Motors.
Meanwhile, as the chairman was comfortably aware, automobiles continued
to flow from the Chrysler plants at Hamtramck and elsewhere. Thus, the Big Three-as on any other morning-were striving to remain that
way, while smaller American Motors, through its factory to the north in
Wisconsin, was adding a lesser tributary of Ambassadors, Hornets,
Javelins, Gremlins, and their kin.

Chapter

T
wo At a car assembly plant north of the Fisher Freeway, Matt Zaleski,
assistant plant manager and a graying veteran of the auto industry, was
glad that today was Wednesday.
Not that the day would be free from urgent problems and exercises in
survival-no day ever was. Tonight, like any night, he would go homeward
wearily, feeling older than his fifty-three years and convinced he had
spent another day of his life inside a pressure cooker. Matt Zaleski
sometimes wished he could summon back the energy be had bad as a young
man, either when he was new to auto production or as an Air Force
bombardier in World War 11. He also thought sometimes, looking back,
that the years of war
even though he was in Europe in the thick of
things, with an impressive combat record-were less crisis-filled than
his civil occupation now.
Already, in the few minutes he had been in his glass-paneled office on
a mezzanine above the assembly plant floor, even while removing his
coat, be had skimmed through a red-tabbed memo on the desk-a union
grievance which he realized immediately could cause a plant-wide walkout
if it wasn't dealt with properly and promptly. There was undoubtedly
still more to worry about in an adjoining pile of papers-other
headaches, including critical material shortages (there were always
some, each day), or quality control demands, or machinery failures, or
some new conundrum which no one had thought of before, any or all of
which could halt the assembly line and stop production.
Zaleski threw his stocky figure into the chair at his gray metal desk,
moving in short, jerky
I movements, as he always had. He heard the chair protest-a reminder of his
growing overweight and the big belly he carried around nowadays. He
thought ashamedly: he could never squeeze it now into the cramped nose
dome of a B-17. He wished that worry would take off pounds; instead, it
seemed to put them on, especially since Freda died and loneliness at night
drove him to the refrigerator, nibbling, for lack of something else to do.
But at least today was Wednesday.
First things first. He hit the intercom switch for the general office;
his secretary wasn't in yet. A timekeeper answered.
"I want Parkland and the union committeeman," the assistant plant
manager commanded. "Get them in here fast
.”

Parkland was a foreman. And outside they would be well aware which union
committeeman he meant because they would know about the red-tabbed memo
on his desk. In a plant, bad news traveled like burning gasoline.
The pile of papers-still untouched, though he would have to get to them
soon-reminded Zaleski he had been thinking gloomily of the many causes
which could halt an assembly line.
Halting the line, stopping production for whatever reason, was like a
sword in the side to Matt Zaleski. The function of his job, his personal
raison d'ftre, was to keep the line moving, with finished cars being
driven off the end at the rate of one car a minute, no matter how the
trick was done or if, at times, he felt like a juggler with fifteen
balls in the air at once. Senior management wasn't interested in the
juggling act, or excuses either. Result
s
were what counted: quotas, daily
production, manufacturing costs. But if the line stopped he heard about
it soon enough. Each single minute of lost time meant that an entire
car didn't get produced, and the loss would never be made up. Thus, even
a two
or three-minute stoppage cost thousands of dollars because, while
an assembly line stood still, wages and other costs went rollicking on.
But at least today was Wednesday.
The intercom clicked. "They're on their way, Mr. Zaleski
.”

He acknowledged curtly.
The reason Matt Zaleski liked Wednesday was simple. Wednesday was two
days removed from Monday, and Friday was two more days away.
Mondays and Fridays in auto plants were management's most harrowing days
because of absenteeism. Each Monday, more hourly paid employees failed
to report for work than on any other normal weekday; Friday ran a close
second. It happened because after paychecks were handed out, usually on
Thursday, many workers began a long boozy or drugged weekend, and
afterward, Monday was a day for catching up on sleep or nursing
hangovers.
Thus, on Mondays and Fridays, other problems were eclipsed by one
enormous problem of keeping production going despite a critical shortage
of people. Men were moved around like marbles in a game of Chinese
checkers. Some were removed from tasks they were accustomed to and given
jobs they had never done before. A worker who normally tightened wheel
nuts might find himself fitting front fenders, often with the briefest
of instruction or sometimes none at all. Others, pulled in hastily from
labor pools or less skilled duties-such as loading trucks or sweeping
would be put to work wherever gaps remained. Sometimes they caught on
quickly in their temporary roles; at other times they might spend an
entire shift installing heater hose clamps, or something similar-upside
down. The result was inevitable. Many of Monday's and Friday's cars were
shoddily put together, with built-in legacies of trouble for their
owners, and those in the know avoided them like contaminated meat. A few
big city dealers, aware of the problem and with influence at factories
because of volume sales, insisted that cars for more valued customers
be built on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, and customers who knew the
ropes sometimes went to big dealers with this objective. Cars for
company executives and their friends were invariably scheduled for one
of the midweek days.
The door of the assistant plant manager's office flung open abruptly.
The foreman he had sent for, Parkland, strode in, not bothering to
knock.
Parkland was a broad-shouldered, big-boned man in bi s late thirties,
about fifteen years younger than Matt Zaleski. He might have been a
football fullback if he had gone to college, and, unlike many foremen
nowadays, looked as if he could handle authority. He also looked, at the
moment, as if he expected trouble and was prepared to meet it. The
foreman's face was glowering. There was a darkening bruise, Zaleski
noted, beneath his right cheekbone.
Ignoring the mode of entry, Zaleski motioned him to a chair. "Take the
weight off your feet, then simmer down
.”