College-educated autoworkers

One of Michigan’s major handicaps has been the profound ignorance most families have about the vital importance of higher education to their children‘s future.

Fortunately, a solution may finally be in sight.

But now as for decades, the prevailing culture scandalously disrespects learning. The single most depressing statistic I’ve seen was in a Detroit News statewide poll last year. That survey found that only 27 percent of Michigan families believed post-high school education and training was vital to the success of their children.

That means nearly three-quarters of adults in this state families feel getting a high school diploma sets their kids up for life!

That might have been true forty years ago, when they could hope to catch on with, as the workers put it, “Ford’s” or, “Generous Motors.” But nobody who knows anything about today’s financially interconnected flat world believes this any more.

The sad fact that so many Michigan families still think that way shows the continuing power of our “assembly-line culture,” that had endured for generation upon generation. In that world, a brawn-based job on the line is the fastest and swiftest route to financial security. But that world is as gone as the tail fin. So what’s going to change this deeply rooted, deeply dangerous habit of thought? It won’t be speeches, sermons, even newspaper columns like this one.

It will take something that affects directly thousands and thousands of Michigan families. Fortunately, there’s something on the horizon that can do that. It’s shown in an important study prepared by the Center for Automotive Research and sponsored by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The bottom line: After a decade of downsizing, the auto companies are going to start hiring again.

The big question: What kinds of skills will they require?

Let’s peer into the future:

Over the next eight years, Detroit automakers plan to hire 77,000 new workers in the U.S., 46,000 of those in Michigan. Within the next four years, the automakers should hire around 36,000 workers in Michigan, 24,000 for hourly production jobs; the rest salaried.

This hiring will come on the heels of continued massive job losses in the auto industry. The auto industry, which already has downsized by hundreds of thousands, will cut more than 14,000 jobs over the next four years and around 20,000 jobs through 2016.

Then why are they hiring new workers? Simple. Their new contract with the United Auto Workers union makes it worthwhile. New non-assembly jobs will pay $14 per hour, about half what they used to pay, and won’t include retiree health care or pension benefits.

Result: It’s plainly in the companies’ interest to get rid of expensive older workers and hire less expensive new labor. The Detroit car companies are expected to hire around 19,000 hourly workers in Michigan next year. That’s enormous – a number equivalent to one-sixth of the expected total graduation class from Michigan high schools.

The crucial question is this: What kind of education level and work experience will the auto companies require? If they demand education credentials and skills well beyond just a high school diploma, they’ll be making a direct attack on Michigan’s long-established and backward cultural disrespect for learning.

A small precedent already has been established: Chrysler’s successful engine plant in Dundee, which is a joint venture with Mitsubishi and Hyundai. Workers there must have at least an Associate’s Degree from a community college to get a job. Unfortunately, the plant only employs around 500, not enough to affect attitudes in thousands of Michigan families.

However, if the automakers do collectively hire some 19,000 people in this state next year, that is a number big enough to achieve critical mass in changing public attitudes.

What Michigan needs to realize is that the auto industry has transformed its manufacturing basis from a brawn-based to a brain-based model. It’s no longer enough for a new hire to get to work more or less on time and not get into fights with his or her foreman.

Today, auto workers need high levels of literacy, math, computer and communications skills.

They’ll need to be able to learn on the job, to change as the technology changes. And they’ll have to have an open attitude toward learning to survive. All this offers Michigan a terrific chance to attack our long-standing cultural bias against learning after high school.

The auto companies themselves would find it in their interest to launch an initiative with the high schools and community colleges to urge young people to keep learning. Mike Flanagan, Michigan’s smart and sensible Superintendent of Schools, should convene a top-level meeting with human resource leaders to send the message to Michigan families. In turn, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MECD), Governor Jennifer Granholm and the leaders in the legislature should reach out to the media and advertising industries to promote the necessity of lifelong learning.

We’ve got a terrific opportunity staring us in the face, right now, to start changing the generations-long, harmful attitudes that have helped to cripple our state. So let’s grab it!

Editor’s Note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics, and a former president of the Michigan chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a centrist think-and-do tank. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. Power welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.