Mike Beattie of Bay City, Michigan
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009Dunlop Pontiac has stood on Washington Ave in downtown Bay City, MI, for 85 years. When the dealership opened its doors in 1924, the “Oakland”–the Pontiac’s predecessor–was a popular American car. 
The Pontiac was introduced two years later, in 1926, making Dunlop Pontiac one of the oldest Pontiac dealers in the country.
Mike Beattie’s dad started in the parts department at Dunlop in 1941. He served in WWII, then returned to the dealership and eventually partnered with Mr. Dunlop the owner in 1950.
“It is totally devastating,” said Mike, now the General Manager of Dunlop. “Our dealership will be closing after 85 years of serving the community.”
Now that the Pontiac’s been eliminated, Dunlop’s 27 jobs will be lost.
“Twenty seven families will be losing their providers,” Mike said.
As for Mike, “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
Marty Williams of Justice, Illinois
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009Marty Williams, who is also known by his nickname “Mongo”, was a decorator at Chicago’s McCormick Place for 33 years before he retired in 2006. This week, he is a volunteer on board the Alliance of American Manufacturing and the United Steelworkers’ “Keep It Made in America” bus #3 in Indiana and Ohio.
For years, Williams worked to prep the exhibits at the Chicago Auto Show.
“It was getting bigger and bigger,” he says, but the past year was different.
“Usually, the show business is continuous all year. This year, January, people were running out on their unemployment because they hadn’t worked since like, September because all the shows were so down.”
Williams was able to retire under “Rule of 85″ under the Steelworkers’ agreement that provides for early retirement when an employee’s age and years of service add up to 85. Now he lives in Justice, Illinois, where he stays active with the union through SOAR, the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees, and is also working to urge the village of Justice to pass a resolution to buy all American products.
By joining AAM’s bus caravan through Indiana and Ohio this week, Williams is also working to spread the message of how severe the problems could get if more American jobs are lost. During the bus tour’s first stop and rally outside the Radisson Hotel in Merrillville, Indiana, Monday, Williams collected 11 pages of signatures, nearly 150 signatures, on the petition for Auto Supply Chain jobs.
“We lose the people who make the parts, then we lose the people who make the tires, right on down the line, and I’m volunteering to educate the common person on this, that we have to help out our auto workers and our auto parts manufacturers.”
Tanya Humphrey in Fenton, MO
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009Tanya Humphrey, 45, worked for 14-years at the Chrysler Plant in Fenton, MO, making mini-vans. When the plant closed in November 2008 she was laid off.
Humphrey thought she had found a new start when she was hired at the Chrysler truck plant in Fenton, but her job there only lasted two weeks before she was laid off again. 
The mother of three children, two in high-school and the youngest just nine, Humphrey gets nervous when she thinks about how she is going to pay the bills. And while she hopes that the layoff at the truck plant might be temporary, she’s not sure. Between now and June 30th Chrysler will go through a re-structuring and Humphrey hopes that after that time she might be called back to the plant to work.
But that job would soon disappear; it would only be to help Chrysler prepare to shut down that plant too in October 2009.
Humphrey doesn’t know what else to do. She holds out hope that at least in the near future she’ll get a few more weeks of work at the Chrysler truck plant.
But after that? Who knows?
Verna Wilson and Robert Cuthrell in Michigan
Monday, May 11th, 2009
As Verna Wilson and Robert Cuthrell stood side-by-side at a rally in Pontiac, Michigan, they shared the same concern: Would their pensions be safe?
Robert Cuthrell worked at the GMC Orion plant for 32 years. He started on the assembly line and retired in 1993.Verna Wilson’s husband worked at the same plant as Cuthrell. Now a widow, Wilson relies on the pension her husband earned at the Orion plant, and she can’t afford to lose it.
“I worry about it–that I won’t be able to support myself,” says Wilson. “I don’t know where I’d go or what I’d do [if I lost it.]”
Wilson is also supporting her 24-year-old grandson who recently lost his job at a furniture store, another victim of Michigan’s sagging economy. And there are many others. Both of her next door neighbors are unemployed, and one just had his car repossessed.
As he stood at the rally, Cuthrell summed it up the problem this way: “People can’t get loans, can’t buy cars, can’t make house payments.”
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