Michigan workers must now build a new mind-set

May 31, 2009

Michigan workers must now build a new mind-set

BY STEPHEN HENDERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

http://www.freep.com/article/20090531/COL33/905310442/Michigan+needs+new+view

MACKINAC ISLAND -- Get a good job. Work hard. Be loyal to the company ... and you're set for life.

Of all the casualties that will be tallied Monday when General Motors files for bankruptcy, the most poignant may be the end of this pathway that has been followed by hundreds of thousands of people.

Certainly, it's the one that will hurt most here in Michigan, where a job at GM, the state's largest company and No. 4 on the Fortune 500, has been the gold standard for about five generations of blue- and white-collar workers.

Dead now is the idea of a Great Lakes birthright to a good-paying job with great benefits, a livable pension, easy credit and discount cars. Gone, officially, are the days when an advanced education or a specialized skill set were luxuries, maybe even considered frivolities, in an economy that churned on muscle, manufacturing and union-won guarantees of income, health care and security.

This isn't just the failure of yet another American automobile company. It's the death blow for a way of life, a culture that defined this state for much of the last century and kept it among the most prosperous places in the world.

GM, more than any other company or institution, created the contours of that prosperity and culture, its name synonymous with good fortune and security.

On paper, this bankruptcy is about creating a new GM that is more competitive and sustainable in a global economy that has passed by the old GM. But it's more -- the brightest marker yet that so many of our assumptions in this state, the foundations we've come to count on, are going away.

That cultural shift was a running theme last week at the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual policy conference on Mackinac Island.

Panels were organized around the nuts and bolts of the new world we face -- green technology, growth and innovation, entrepreneurial diversification. But the undercurrent all week was the accompanying need to say good-bye to the world we've known.

John Rakolta, chairman and CEO of Detroit's Walbridge Aldinger construction company, flatly called it a culture of entitlement -- a judgment we've all heard before. But that may be too harsh and too broad an appraisal right now.

It's hard to say that the folks hurt most by GM's decline -- the thousands who have lost their jobs and the thousands more who will -- did anything wrong. They bought into a system that rewarded work with "golden handcuffs."

And let's be frank, their work and pay also built a lot of what has sustained Michigan -- and so many other places across the country -- for a long time.

It's not their fault that the very same system squashed much of the individual drive for innovation and entrepreneurship. It killed the incentive to want a "better" life for the next generation. Who needed better when the status quo was so good and easy to get?

It's not their fault that their individual efforts weren't matched with leadership that understood the need to invest in something different -- education, technology, innovation -- for the future.

But they'll pay dearly now. They'll lose their jobs and benefits as thousands more people lose the opportunities their parents or grandparents had to live a comfortable middle-class life.

Maybe it won't be you, but surely we all have friends, neighbors or family who will be affected.

Attorney General Mike Cox told me this week that while his own family is stocked with Ford employees, safe for now because of that company's more favorable financials, he has three friends who recently have lost work. No one will be untouched.

If there's any solace, it may be found in another aspect of the Michigan culture: toughness.

We're a hardy lot. We'll struggle and survive and find our way to a better future.

And we will be better off for having done so. For as great as the "caretaker culture" has been, it pales in comparison to the opportunities to be found in self-reliance, innovation and enterprise.

The way of life for the "next Michigan"? Get a good education. Work hard. Never stop learning. Set yourself up for life.

It's going to be different. It can be better. And it starts for Michigan on Monday morning.

STEPHEN HENDERSON is editorial page editor of the Free Press. Contact him at shenderson600@freepress.com, or at 313-222-6659.

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