"Everything I had counted on went away" By John Tarleton WEST MIFFLIN, Penn.--When Jeff Hall came to work at the General Motors Pittsburgh plant on Feb. 27, he faced a series of tasks that would have once been unimaginable. The veteran pipefitter helped drain a water tank that held 50,000 gallons and turned off the 28 fire sprinkler systems inside a silent factory that used to be filled with the deafening roar of the assembly line. He also shut down the main municipal water line that supplied the factory and made sure treatment tanks that held hazardous materials were cleaned—the accumulated sludge and oil was hauled away. As he exited the plant, electricians turned off the power. For Hall and the 21 other workers who were present, saying goodbye to the metal stamping factory they had given much of their lives to was a bittersweet moment. They were the last remnants of a workforce that numbered more than 1,700 when Hall went to work at the plant in 1980. “We were standing in the parking lot. Nobody wanted to go home,” he recalled. “It's a hard thing to see. You turn back and look at the big, empty plant and see the lights going out when we were going out the door. There were people crying. It was hard, really hard.” Uncertain Future Opened in 1950, the Pittsburgh plant helped anchor this working class suburb while providing secure, good-paying jobs for several generations of workers. When GM announced in 2005 it would close the plant, the lives of its unionized workers were turned upside down as they faced taking early retirement packages or transferring to other GM plants out of state. Since then, GM has declared bankruptcy and shed tens of thousands more jobs while the nation entered its worst economic crisis since the 1930s, leaving Hall and other longtime members of UAW Local 544 deeply uneasy about their future. Hall has seen his monthly income drop by more than half to $2,850 per month . Next fall his full pension is scheduled to kick in at $3,140 per month. “I just pray and I have been praying that our pension will last, and I'm hoping that GM is going to come out of this and survive, and that the good GM is going to be a part of my pension,” said Hall, 56, who serves as Local 544's financial secretary. “Hopefully I can get to 62 and get onto Social Security.” Dave Yianichko, 53, went to work for GM in 1997. He considered transferring to a GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, but decided he didn't want to uproot his high-school age children for the opportunity to make $5 per hour less than he had at the Pittsburgh plant. He took an early retirement that pays a little under $1,300 per month or $100 for each year he worked at GM. Yianichko, who is studying to become a real estate appraiser, hopes that his retirement pay will provide some cushion as he goes forward with his life. He notes that retiree health care benefits no longer cover vision or dental. Doctor visits are not covered either, only hospitalization. “It seems like everything I had counted on since I started working went away,” he said. Kathy Kling, Local 544's recording secretary, followed her father, grandfather and great-uncle into the GM factory when she was 19 and became the first female tool and dye worker at the Pittsburgh plant. She retired with her full 30 years in 2007 and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer this June. Living on a fixed income, she suddenly found herself having to pay for doctor visits and medications. “It's hard to come up with $500-600 in a week to see a bunch of doctors,” she said. “We don't have the kind of healthcare that people think we do.” Kling says the official unemployment rate of 9.7 percent overlooks workers like her who would still be working if their jobs hadn't disappeared. “Who would retire from a good job at 49?” She asked. Steve Granus, 53, worked alongside Kling in the tool-and-dye department. He said he had hoped to work until his late 50s but took an early retirement two years ago. Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, his medical bills are also piling up. He said he is satisfied that the UAW negotiated the best possible deal under the circumstances to preserve retiree pensions and healthcare benefits, but realizes nothing can be taken for granted. “I'm not nearly as secure as I was a few years ago,” Granus said. “I thought my future was set in stone and now I'm not feeling so certain.” Blaming the Victim The Local 544 union hall sits quietly in a small strip mall several minutes from the old factory. Rick Mismas, former chair of Local 544's bargaining committee, says the hall will likely close in the next few months. Like his co-workers, he blames corporate-friendly trade policies for the dismantling of the domestic auto industry and much of the rest of the U.S. manufacturing base.   “This is a problem created by the government,” Mismas said. Under the UAW's revised contract, new hires at the Big Three auto companies will make as little as $14 per hour, or half of what they would have previously earned.  Hall expects this to drive down wages for non-unionized auto workers as well. Reflecting on the criticism that has been directed at auto workers for being lazy and overpaid, Hall sighs and shakes his head. Most of his colleagues left the factory with damaged hearing. Many of them also experienced hand and arm injuries from years of grueling, repetitive work.   “People think you are on the gravy train when you go in there, but you are not. It's risky every day,” Hall said. “How many people did we have that lost fingers and hands? I remember when they scraped someone's hand out of a dye. These are the things that go on that people don't understand. When they want to blame us for the trouble in this country, they are looking in the wrong direction.   “Maybe things have to get so bad people are scratching on the ground before they realize that we [organized labor] are the good guys,” he continued. “I don't know what it's going to take. Unions won't make a comeback until the people want them to.” Pictured left to right: Dave Granus, Kathy Kling and Jeff Hall outside their old job site.