Sweat, diesel fuel and tedious repetitious work. Those were the major components of my summer after freshman year. I worked in a fuel-injector remanufacturing plant while paying dues to the local UAW. It certainly was not easy or fun in a pleasurable sense but I might dare say that I learned more than I have in some terms here at Dartmouth.
First, I learned that you can take any group of human beings whether they be blue collar or white collar, city-dwellers or country folk and find all shades of personalities and natures. Honesty, integrity and decency are not the product of an income level or profession. Nor are their opposites. Mixed among my co-workers were people with wonderful characters and others who left much to be desired. At the same time, my co-workers shared the same hopes and dreams as my family and I. Daisy Bates was one of these. She constantly shared with me the hopes of sending her son to college. She worked many an overtime hour to make ends meet.
Secondly, I learned of the amazing perseverance of the human spirit. Two of my closest friends on the factory floor were Vietnamese immigrants. One was a Buddhist and the other Catholic. Despite this they shared the same hope and joy, smiling and laughing throughout the day. This came despite the very real horrors they had suffered in their lives. One had spent several years in a communist concentration camp. The other had made a harrowing escape by boat. Both worked long hours, always smiling, so as to give their families better lives. My complaints and gripes became severely insignificant against this backdrop.
At the same time there were some less heartening aspects of the world about which I learned during my summer. We are the puppets of forces - mainly economic - which are much larger and stronger than we can ever hope to be. One disheartening example was my friend Bob Johnson. Bob had worked for one company for close to 25 or 30 years. And just like that it shut down. At 60 years of age he was forced to begin anew. His benefits and vacation time were all lost. The newcomers to my company received only a week of vacation with the option of "buying" another week. I also observed that each of us was in a sense a human "machine" taught to do his particular job, having only a most miniscule part in the process of building new fuel injectors. Though in our personal interactions, our bosses did not look upon us as objects, as workers on the floor we became pawns to be used where they deemed fit in order to speed along the process of manufacturing.
All of this was complicated by acrimonious relations between the union and management. Unions do serve an important and proper function but human failings often cause them to twist that purpose and cause unnecessary conflict. For instance, after our shift foreman had helped box up fuel injectors over several days a complaint was leveled against him; it was argued that another job should have been created. I wonder if all the implications of that action had been thought out. Another worker might have helped in the crunches but would have also been an added and unnecessary expense for the more prevalent down times causing lower profits and thus negatively affecting the workers.
Why do I share these observations? In part it is because of a recurring dejection and depression over the system we live in. By accident of birth I happened to be one who only worked in the hot and dirty conditions for one summer. My friends back on the floor will spend their whole lives there. How do we change a system that so often treats humans as components and objects to be used as deemed necessary? This is one question that is not easy. Or possibly it is not even answerable. In my distrust of systemic answers and statist solutions and my belief in original sin, I think one of the large answers is that these problems will be with us until the end of time. But that sort of answer can soon become an excuse for complacency and doing nothing. Changing hearts must be the starting point. A realization that in this interconnected world some of our simplest actions can have the profoundest effects must also come into being. Many of us will end up in positions of power, shuffling money, arguing cases, and healing patients. With power comes responsibility. Actions must be weighed not only in light of what they do for one's personal good but also in light of the common good. And I think it all begins with treating the people next to us as subjects with dignity; in realizing the profound dignity of the people next to us we will be part of the way of recognizing the dignity of those on the factory floor.
