General Motors: Life Inside The Factory

About the Book

This book portrays life inside a General Motors factory in the 1970’s. Have you ever wondered why or how ‘the lazy hourly workers’ came to be that way? This myth is debunked throughout the book. Anyone who has ever worked hourly for General Motors, the big three, or any large manufacturing company will enjoy the experiences provided in this book. They will find themselves reminiscing in the past about their own work experiences. Anyone who has had a close relative that worked in a factory will want to read this book to get a feel of what their loved ones went through while earning a living. The book comes to the stunning conclusion that General Motor’s top executives wasted a tremendous amount of human resources over the years. They looked down upon the factory workers and treated them as if they were ‘disposable employees.’ They never attempted to tap into the vast and almost incalculable amount of brainpower available because they simply dismissed their classification ‘hourly worker’ as useless. They treated them as if they were the source of all of their problems. They never even considered that with four hundred thousand hourly employees they might have had the resources right in front of them to help in solving the vast and complex problems that exist in the every day world of work. In today’s competitive manufacturing environment Lean Manufacturing has stepped into the forefront for improvement. One of the two pillars of Lean manufacturing is respect for the worker. If you’re an executive leader, manager or a student of lean you’ll want to read this book to see how not to do it. One theory of management says that if you don’t like what you see around you go look in a mirror first because your workforce is a reflection of your thinking and actions.

About the Author

Richard Gall comes from a working class family and was raised in Flint, Michigan. He grew up in the late 1960’s, which was a period of both civil and social unrest in America. He barely met the requirements for graduation from high school in 1970. Shortly after commencement he entered the United States Marine Corps. He excelled during this time and earned the rank of Sergeant meritoriously. Upon completion of his three-year enlistment he returned home and attempted to begin earning his college degree. After a short time he dropped out of school and found himself working as an hourly employee of General Motors. Thus began a thirty-five year career that saw him move up the ranks within the company. He completed an apprenticeship and earned a journeymen’s card in Machine Repair. He made permanent supervisor, after completing his bachelor’s degree in 1984. In 1997 he was promoted to Maintenance Superintendent where he managed eight salaried and one hundred and thirty hourly employees. During this assignment he led his plant through a successful QS-9000 implementation and also began a team concept process throughout the facility for which he won a prestigious Chairman’s Honors award. He accepted an early retirement in November 2008 as General Motors was on the brink of total collapse. Richard never forgot his roots of being from a working class family and being hourly for his first eleven years. During his last days he witnessed a total reversal of the cultural changes that he helped bring about. Here he was leaving and the philosophy of how the hourly were managed was no different than the day he first entered into the company. He felt compelled to write down his experiences and tell the world what it was like working in the factory.