Opinion: A ‘golden age’? Factory work in the 60s was tedious, dangerous and soul-crushing.
To the editor: In the fall of 1967, I worked in “the pit” at a Chrysler assembly plant in Michigan. Every 45 seconds a car rolled on tracks overhead while our three-man team inspected several essential items. (“Populists want to bring back the blue-collar Golden Age. But was it really so golden?” Opinion, June 15)
Clearance from floor to car underside was 5 feet, 7 inches. I’m taller than that, so for nine hours a day (the fall shifts were longer) I crouched down with my arms over my head. It took 30 minutes to adjust my neck after work.
My next job was making wheels for cars, which included painting, pressing, hole punching, weld stripping and sheet metal cutting. A friend lost his thumbs to a 100-ton press. Flakes of metal embedded in my eyes, I breathed paint and fumes, and my hearing was damaged because of continuous mechanical thunder. I eventually quit and went to college.
A “golden age?” Baloney. No sane worker wants a job like this; necessity forces him into it. We sold our health, our minds and part of our souls for the assurance of another meal and another day. When people in the Trump administration call this era a golden age, they show they have no experience, no idea and no empathy.
Chuck Almdale, North Hills
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