“We’re replaceable parts to GM, not human”: Workers react to accident at Flint Truck plant

“We’re replaceable parts to GM, not human”: Workers react to accident at Flint Truck plant

Flint Assembly personnel get off do the job on April 19, 2023 [Photo: WSWS]

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The assertion issued by the GM Flint Truck Assembly Rank-and-File Committee alerting staff about the around disaster on the chassis line Monday night has been widely circulated in the plant. A young non permanent portion-time (TPT) worker scarcely escaped becoming crushed when a large piece of equipment fell from the ceiling, missing him by only a couple of inches. 

The machine, acknowledged as a prop shaft protected gun, is connected to an overhead beam and is made use of by employees to concurrently fasten a series of bolts on trucks passing on the assembly line. The full machine, which weighs in between 200-300 lbs, broke cost-free from the bolts that had been holding it and arrived crashing down.

Regardless of preceding issues by workers, absolutely nothing experienced been accomplished by administration or the UAW officials to make sure the equipment was thoroughly secured. 

In accordance to staff on the store floor, the harmed prop shaft gun was eliminated from the line shortly following the accident and later remounted throughout the lunch split the exact day. Simply because employees had been alerted to the unsafe disorders by the rank-and-file committee and experienced gathered at the scene, management determined to attach an added basic safety cable, which was not there at the time of the accident, the subsequent day.

This elementary measure would never ever have been taken if issues had been still left to UAW Neighborhood 598 officials. Still left to their individual products, the officers on the joint UAW-GM “safety committees” would have dismissed this unsafe incident and created it off as just an additional day at the office.

But staff would not make it possible for it. Nonetheless, the unsafe ailments during the plant and the car field keep on being. As a person employee instructed our committee, “On my line there are basic safety fears that have been voiced many occasions and been escalated. But they get shot down or the can just gets kicked down the street, until finally it’s overlooked.”

After listening to about the close to disaster, another GM Flint worker instructed us, “Workers have issues all the time about unsafe disorders. When we returned to function just after Christmas split, 1 of the ladies had to wander in entrance of the path of a forklift carrying a rack. She mentioned it was unsafe, and she was concerned about becoming strike. She was advised by administration, ‘Just go this way and that way.’ When she continued to query the safety of the scenario, she was explained to, ‘We’re supplying you a immediate get to comply.’ She was told by the union that all she could do when there’s a direct order to comply, is to ‘comply beneath protest.’ This is BS!”

A temporary element-time worker (TPT) who works in the Trim Section explained, “Before GM, I labored at non-union retailers. As a temp at GM, it is not much unique than non-union shops. We pay union dues, and we have no security or legal rights. I was happy to see the info about the accident in chassis. We need to know what is likely on.”