Quote:
Originally Posted by Wwes
What was the work schedule like, breaks, bathroom breaks, lunch, etc?
Seems like a lot of moving pieces to be choreographed just perfectly.
What happened if the vehicle wouldn't start? Did they prefill the carb bowls with gasoline?
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First shift started at 6am and ended at 2:30pm.*
The UAW was allowed a 6 minute break (paid) for every hour worked. Line 1 lunch was at 10:12 am (4.2 hours into the day) so the morning break was 25 minutes long. Lunch was ½ hour (unpaid). Afternoon break was at 1 pm and was 23 minutes. Line 2 lunch was at 10:54 am and the breaks were built around that. Second shift started at 4:30 pm, which allows time for the parking lot to clear between shifts. Typically third shift is for maintenance; there is not a third production shift unless you are building a really hot product.
Usually there was overtime, to make up for lost units (due to downtime) or to work repair. Final line might go "8.2" (eight hours and twelve minutes), with chassis, body and paint shops and other feeder lines going 9 hours to fill the system back up, including the various accumulators and body banks. Often after the line went down we would solicit volunteers to go "out back" and shuttle vehicles between the repair areas to work the backlog in the yard down. Overtime pays "time and a half", that is 1.5 times your normal rate with "double time" (double your normal rate) on Sundays or holidays.
Line 1 rate was 60 jobs/hour - that's one complete vehicle off the line every minute. Line 2 rate was 36 jobs/hour, partly because of the added complexity/content of building an SUV, partly due to market demand. Model mix on Line 2 was two Suburbans followed by one Blazer. Approximately every ninth vehicle was a GMC with the other eight being Chevrolet nameplated vehicles. Typical line rates in other plants fell somewhere between these two, with 45 an hour being a favorite for the van plants.
Lunch was unpaid, as I mentioned, but I had the discretion to pay the ½ hour as overtime if I deemed it necessary. I could pay a repairman to work the line back if we had just had a series of mistakes, or could pay my quality man to clean something up or do something out of the ordinary. I had some guys that I couldn’t get to work more than three days a week, and I had some guys that would kill a man on my behalf if I paid them that half hour overtime through lunch. It was essentially "free money" since it was 1.5 times their normal rate without adding any length to their work day.
There were two ways to do the break: “mass relief”, meaning the line shuts down and everybody goes at the same time, or “tag relief”, in which there is a team of workers trained to do every job where (“tag” – you’re it) they tap you and you go on break by yourself. When you get back they move to the next person. Naturally, there are pros and cons to each but it is primarily dicated by support staffs like the cafeteria, or number of available rest rooms, etc - or - if they need to keep that line running to support market demand. You can imagine the load on the cafeteria, water fountains, vending machines and bath rooms when 3000 people are all set free at once.
If you
really have to go
right now then either one of the relief men or the quality man can give you a quick break. If you
really really need to go right now then I could cover for a couple jobs. I could do every job in my department, sometimes two at once, and many of the line workers could do their buddy’s job and cover for them. There is a pretty rigid social structure "in the shop" and the guys police this themselves, so you do not want to abuse this relationship.
The choreography is not too big a deal, since everything is locked together and starts and stops at the same time, like teeth on a gear. Just don’t jump a tooth – that’s a problem. Building the first few vehicles at the beginning of the model year, filling the system - that's hard. The next million or so are not so hard, provided everything stays in order.
Vehicles that don’t start (“deadheads”) were pushed off to a stationary repair stall just past the end of the line. We had two small tractors (tugs, which we called “mules”) which had rubber mounted to the front so you could push the vehicles off without damage and typically without shutting the line down. Vehicles were filled with 3 gallons of gasoline, and I don’t recall that they were primed first; just crank and crank until they fire. Once we went to fuel injection in 1987 then that was a non issue. Three gallons was deemed sufficient to get the vehicle through repair, shipping and to the dealership. We did have a few vehicles that needed so much shuttling between repair stations that we ran them out of gas.
K
*I'd like to have a little chat with whomever thought that was a good idea. Admittedly it was nice to be done by early afternoon, especially in the summer, but 6am comes really early, especially in the winter.