Bantam Books by Arthur Hailey 2 страница

production, manufacturing costs. But if the line stopped he heard about

it soon enough. Each single minute of lost time meant that an entire

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car didn't get produced, and the loss would never be made up. Thus, even

a two- or three-minute stoppage cost thousands of dollars because, while

an assembly line stood still, wages and other costs went rollicking on.

But at least today was Wednesday.

The intercom clicked. "They're on their way, Mr. Zaleski."

He acknowledged curtly.

The reason Matt Zaleski liked Wednesday was simple. Wednesday was two

days removed from Monday, and Friday was two more days away.

Mondays and Fridays in auto plants were management's most harrowing days

because of absenteeism. Each Monday, more hourly paid employees failed

to report for work than on any other normal weekday; Friday ran a close

second. It happened because after paychecks were handed out, usually on

Thursday, many workers began a long boozy or drugged weekend, and

afterward, Monday was a day for catching up on sleep or nursing

hangovers.

Thus, on Mondays and Fridays, other problems were eclipsed by one

enormous problem of keeping production going despite a critical shortage

of people. Men were moved around like marbles in a game of Chinese

checkers. Some were removed from tasks they were accustomed to and given

jobs they had never done before. A worker who normally tightened wheel

nuts might find himself fitting front fenders, often with the briefest

of instruction or sometimes none at all. Others, pulled in hastily from

labor pools or less skilled duties-such as loading trucks or sweeping-

would be put to work wherever gaps remained. Sometimes they caught on

quickly in their temporary roles; at other times they might spend an

entire shift installing heater hose clamps, or something similar-upside

down.

wheels-1 3

The result was inevitable. Many of Monday's and Friday's cars were

shoddily put together, with built-in legacies of trouble for their

owners, and those in the know avoided them like contaminated meat. A few

big city dealers, aware of the problem and with influence at factories

because of volume sales, insisted that cars for more valued customers

be built on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, and customers who knew the

ropes sometimes went to big dealers with this objective. Cars for

company executives and their friends were invariably scheduled for one

of the midweek days.

The door of the assistant plant manager's office flung open abruptly.

The foreman he had sent for, Parkland, strode in, not bothering to

knock.

Parkland was a broad-shouldered, big-boned man in bi s late thirties,

about fifteen years younger than Matt Zaleski. He might have been a

football fullback if he had gone to college, and, unlike many foremen

nowadays, looked as if he could handle authority. He also looked, at the

moment, as if he expected trouble and was prepared to meet it. The

foreman's face was glowering. There was a darkening bruise, Zaleski

noted, beneath his right cheekbone.

Ignoring the mode of entry, Zaleski motioned him to a chair. "Take the

weight off your feet, then simmer down."

They faced each other across the desk.

"I'm willing to hear your version of what happened," the assistant plant

chief said, "but don't waste time because the way this reads"he fingered

the red-tabbed grievance reportyou've cooked us all a hot potato."

"The hell I cooked itl" Parkland glared at his superior; above the

bruise his face flushed red. "I fired a guy because he slugged me.

What's more, I'm gonna make it stick, and if you've got any guts or

justice you'd better back me up."

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Matt Zaleski raised his voice to the bull roar he had learned on a factory

floor. "Knock off that goddam nonsense, right now!" He had no intention

of letting this get out of hand. More reasonably, he growled, "I said

simmer down, and meant it. When the time comes I'll decide who to back and

why. And there'll be no more crap from you about guts and justice.

Understand?"

Their eyes locked together. Paxkland's dropped first.

" All right, Frank," Matt said. "Let's start over, and this time give it

to me straight, from the beginning."

He had known Frank Parkland a long time. The foreman's record was good and

he was usually fair with men who worked under him. It had taken something

exceptional to get him as riled as this.

"There was a job out of position," Parkland said. "It was steering column

bolts, and there was this kid doing it; he's new, I guess. He was crowding

the next guy. I wanted the job put back."

Zaleski nodded. It happened often enough. A worker with a specific

assignment took a few seconds longer than he should on each operation. As

successive cars moved by on the assembly line, his position gradually

changed, so that soon he was intruding on the area of the next operation.

When a foreman saw it happen he made it his business to help the worker

back to his correct, original place.

Zaleski said impatiently, "Get on with it."

Before they could continue, the office door opened again and the union

committeeman came in. He was a small, pink-faced man, with thicklensed

glasses and a fussy manner. His name was Illas and, until a union election

a few months ago, had been an assembly line worker himself.

"Good morning," the union man said to Za- wheels- 15

leski- He nodded curtly to Parkland, without speaking.

MattZaleski waved the newcomer to a chair. "We're just getting to the

meat."

"You could save a lot of time," Illas said, "if you read the grievance

report."

"I've read it. But sometimes I like to hear the other side " Zaleski

motioned Parkland to go on.

"All I did," the foreman said, "was call another guy over and say, 'Help

me get this man's job back in position.'"

"And I say you're a liarl" The union man hunched forward accusingly; now

he swung toward Zaleski. 'What he really said was 'get this boy's job

back.' And it so happened that the person he was speaking of, and calling

'boy,' was one of our black brothers to whom that word is a very offensive

term."

"Ohl for God's sakel" Parkland's voice combined anger with disgust. "Dyou

think I don't know that? D'you think I haven't been around here long

enough to know better than to use that word that way?-

"But you did use it, didn't you?"

"Maybe, just maybe, I did. I'm not saying yes, because I don't remember,

and that's the truth. But if it happened, there was nothing meant. It was

a slip, that's all."

The union man shrugged. 'That's your story now."

.It's no story, you son-of-a-bitchl"

Illas stood up. "Mr. Zaleski, I'm here officially, representing the United

Auto Workers. If that's the kind of language..."

'There'll be no more of it," the assistant plant manager said. "Sit down,

please, and while we're on the subject, I suggest you be less free

yourself with the word 'har.'-

Parkland slammed a beefy fist in frustration

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on the desk top. "I said it was no story, and it isn't. What's more, the

guy I was talking about didn't even give a thought to what I said, at

least before all the fuss was made."

"That's not the way he tells it," Illas said.

"Maybe not now." Parkland appealed to Zaleski. "Listen, Matt, the guy

who was out of position is just a kid. A black kid, maybe seventeen.

I've got nothing against him; he's slow, but he was doing his job. I've

got a kid brother his age. I go home, I say, Where's the boy?' Nobody

thinks twice about it. That's the way it was with this thing until this

other guy, Newkirk, cut in."

Illas persisted, "But you're admitting you used the word 'boy.'"

Matt Zaleski said wearily, "Okay, okay, he used it. Let's all concede

that."

Zaleski was holding himself in, as he always had to do when racial

issues erupted in the plant. His own prejudices were deep-rooted and

largely anti-black, and he had learned them in the heavily Polish suburb

of Wyandotte where he was born. There, the families of Polish origin

looked on Negroes with contempt, as shiftless and troublemakers. In

return, the black people hated Poles, and even nowadays, throughout

Detroit, the ancient enmities persisted. Zaleski, through necessity, had

learned to curb his instincts; you couldn't run a plant with as much

black labor as this one and let your prejudices show, at least not

often. just now, after the last remark of Illas, Matt Zaleski had been

tempted to inject: So what if he did call him "boy"? What the hell

difference does it make? When a foreman tells him to, let the bastard

get back to work. But Zaleski knew it would be repeated and maybe cause

more trouble than before. Instead, he growled, "What matters is what

came after."

'Well," Parkland said, "I thought we'd never

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get to that. We almost had the job back in place, then this heavyweight,

Newkirk, showed up."

"He's another black brother," Illas said.

"Newkirk'd been working down the line. He didn't even hear what happened;

somebody else told him. He came up, called me a racist pig, and slugged

me." The foreman fingered his bruised face which had swollen even more

since he came in.

Zaleski asked sharply, "Did you hit him back?"

"No."

"I'm glad you showed a little sense."

I had sense, all right," Parkland said. I fired Newkirk. On the spot.

Nobody slugs a foreman around here and gets away with it."

"We'll see about that," Illas said. "A lot depends on circumstances and

provocation."

Matt Zaleski thrust a hand through his hair; there were days when he

marveled that there was any left. This whole stinking situation was some-

thing which McKernon, the plant manager, should handle, but McKernon

wasn't here. He was ten miles away at staff headquarters, attending a con-

ference about the new Orion, a super-secret car the plant would be

producing soon. Sometimes it seemed to Matt Zaleski as if McKernon had al-

ready begun his retirement, officially six months away.

Matt Zaleski was holding the baby now, as he had before, and it was a

lousy deal. Zaleski wasn't even going to succeed McKernon, and he knew it.

He'd already been called in and shown the official assessment of himself,

the assessment which appeared in a loose-leaf, leather-bound book which

sat permanently on the desk of the Vice-president, Manufacturing. The book

was there so that the vice-president could turn its pages whenever new

appointments or promotions were

1 8-wheels

considered. The entry for Matt Zaleski, along with his photo and other

details, read: "This individual is well placed at his present level of

management."

Everybody in the company who mattered knew that the formal, unctious

statement was a "kiss off." What it really meant was: This man has gone

as high as he's going. He will probably serve his time out in his

present spot, but will receive no more promotions.

The rules said that whoever received that deadly summation on his docket

had to be told; he was entitled to that much, and it was the reason Matt

Zaleski had known for the past several months that he would never rise

beyond his present role of assistant manager. Initially the news had

been a bitter disappointment, but now that he had grown used to the

idea, he also knew why: He was old shoe, the hind end of a disappearing

breed which management and boards of directors didn't want any more in

the top critical posts. Zaleski had risen by a route which few senior

plant people followed nowadays -factory worker, inspector, foreman,

superintendent, assistant plant manager. He hadn't had an engineering

degree to start, having been a high school dropout before World War 11.

But after the war he had armed himself with a degree, using night school

and GI credits, and after that had started climbing, being ambitious,

as most of his generation were who had survived Festung Europa and other

perils. But, as Zaleski recognized later, he had lost too much time; his

real start came too late. The strong comers, the top echelon material

of the auto companies-then as now-were the bright youngsters who arrived

fresh and eager through the direct college-to-front office route.

But that was no reason why McKernon, who was still plant boss, should

sidestep this entire

wheels-1 9

situation, even if unintentionally. The assistant manager hesitated. He

would be within his rights to send for McKernon and could do it here and now

by picking up a phone.

Two things stopped him. One, he admitted to himself, was pride; Zaleski

knew he could handle this as well as McKernon, if not better. The other:

His instinct told him there simply wasn't time.

Abruptly, Zaleski asked Illas, 'What's the union asking?"

"Well, I've talked with the president of our local..."

"Let's save all that," Zaleski said. "We both know we have to start

somewhere, so what is it you want?"

"Very well," the committeeman said. 'We insist on three things. First,

immediate reinstatement of Brother Newkirk, with compensation for time

lost. Second, an apology to both men involved. Third, Parkland to be

removed from his post as foreman."

Parkland, who had slumped back in his chair, shot upright. "By Christl You

don't want much." He inquired sarcastically, "As a matter of interest, am

I supposed to apologize before I'm fired, or after?"

"The apology would be an official one from the company," Illas answered.

-Whether you had the decency to add your own would be up to you."

"I'll say it'd be up to me. Just don't anyone hold their breath waiting."

Matt Zaleski snapped, "If you'd held your own breath a little longer, we

wouldn't be in this mess."

"Are you trying to tell me you'll go along with all that?" The foreman

motioned angrily to Illas.

"I'm not telling anybody anything yet. I'm trying to think, and I need

more information than has come from you two." Zaleski reached behind

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him for a telephone. Interposing his body between the phone and the other

two, he dialed a number and waited.

When the man he wanted answered, Zaleski asked simply, "How are things

down there?"

The voice at the other end spoke softly. "Matt?"

Yeah."

In the background behind the other's guarded response, Zaleski could

hear a cacophony of noise from the factory floor. He always marveled how

men could live with that noise every day of their working lives. Even

in the years he had worked on an assembly line himself, before removal

to an office shielded him from most of the din, he had never grown used

to it.

His informant said, "The situation's real bad, Matt."

"How bad?"

The hopheads are in the saddle. Don't quote me."

"I never do," the assistant plant manager said. -You know that."

He had swung partially around and was aware of the other two in the

office watching his face. They might guess, but couldn't know, that he

was speaking to a black foreman, Stan Lathruppe, one of the half dozen

men in the plant whom Matt Zaleski respected most. It was a strange,

even paradoxical, relationship because, away from the plant, Lathruppe

was an active militant who had once been a follower of Malcohn X. But

here he took his responsibility seriously, believing that in the auto

world he could achieve more for his race through reason than by anarchy.

It was this second attitude which Zaleski -originally hostile to

Lathruppe-had eventually come to respect.

Unfortunately for the company, ba the pres- wheals-21

ent state of race relations, it had comparatively few black foremen or

managers. There ought to be more, many more, and everybody knew it, but

right now many of the black workers didn't want responsibility, or were

afraid of it because of young militants in their ranks, or simply weren't

ready. Sometimes Matt Zaleski, in his less prejudiced moments, thought

that if the industry's top brass had looked ahead a few years, the way se-

nior executives were supposed to do, and had launched a meaningful

training program for black workers in the 1940s and '50s, there would be

more Stan Lathruppes now. It was everybody's loss that there were not.

Zaleski asked, "What's being planned?"

"I think, a walkout."

"When?"

"Probably at break time. It could be before, but I don't believe so."

The black foreman's voice was so low Zaleski bad to strain to hear. He

knew the other man's problem, added to by the fact that the telephone

he was using was alongside the assembly line where others were working.

Lathruppe was already labeled a "white nigger" by some fellow blacks who

resented even their own race when in authority, and it made no

difference that the charge was untrue. Except for a couple more

questions, Zaleski had no intention of making Stan Lathruppe's life more

difficult.

He asked, "Is there any reason for the delay?"

-Yes. The hopheads want to take the whole plant out."

"Is word going around?"

"So fast you'd think we still used jungle drums.-

"Has anyone pointed out the whole thing's illegal?"

22-wheels

"You got any more jokes like that?" Lathruppe said.

"No." Zaleski sighed. "But thanks." He hung up.

So his first instinct had been right. There wasn't any time to spare,

and hadn't been from the beginning, because a racial labor dispute al-

ways burned with a short fuse. Now, if a walkout happened, it could take

days to settle and get everybody back at work; and even if only black

workers became involved, and maybe not all of them, the effect would

still be enough to halt production. Matt Zaleski's job was to keep

production going.

As if Parkland had read his thoughts, the foreman urged, "Matt, don't

let them push youl So a few may walk off the job, and well have trouble.

But a principle's worth standing up for, sometimes, isn't it?"

"Sometimes," Zaleski said. "Me trick is to know which principle, and

when."

"Being fair is a good way to start," Parkland said, "and fairness works

two ways-up and down." He leaned forward over the desk, speaking

earnestly to Matt Zaleski, glancing now and then to the union

committeeman, Illas. -Okay, I've been tough with guys on the line

because I've had to be. A foreman's in the middle, catching crap from

all directions. From up here, Matt, you and your people are on our necks

every day for production, production, more production; and if it isn't

you it's Quality Control who say, build 'em better, even though you're

building faster. Then there are those who are working, doing the

jobs-including some like Newkirk, and others-and a foreman has to cope

with them, along with the union as well if he puts a foot wrong, and

sometimes when he doesn't. So it's a tough business, and I've been

tough; it's the way to survive. But I've been fair, too. I've never

treated a guy who worked for me

wheels-23

differently because be was black, and I'm no plantation overseer with a

whip. As for what we're talking about now, all I did-so I'm told-is call a

black man 'boy.' I didn't ask him to pick cotton, or ride Jim Crow, or shine

shoes, or any other thing that's supposed to go with that word. What I did

was help him with his job. And I'll say another thing: if I did call him

'boy-so help me, by a slipl-I'll say I'm sorry for that, because I am. But

not to Newkirk. Brother Newkirk stays fired. Because if he doesn't, if he

gets away with slugging a foreman without reason, you can stuff a surrender

flag up your ass and wave goodbye to any discipline around this place from

this day on. That's what I mean when I say be fair."

"You've got a point or two there," Zaleski said. Ironically, he thought,

Frank Parkland had been fair with black workers, maybe fairer than a good

many others around the plant. He asked Mas, "How do you feel about all

that?"

The union man looked blandly through his thick-lensed glasses. "I've

already stated the union's position, Mr. Zaleski."

"So if I tum you down, if I decide to back up Frank the way he just said

I should, what then?"

Illas said stiffly, "We'd be obliged to go through further grievance

procedure."

"Okay."The assistant plant manager nodded. -1bat's your privilege. Except,

if we go through a full grievance drill it can mean thirty days or more.

In the meantime, does everybody keep working?"

"Naturally. The collective bargaining agreement specifies..."

Zaleski flared, "I don't need you to tell me what the agreement sayst It

says everybody stays on the job while we negotiate. But right now a good

many of your men are getting ready to walk off their jobs in violation of

the contract."

24-wheels

For the first time, Illas looked uneasy. "The UAW does not condone

illegal strikes."

"Goddamit, thenl Stop this onel"

"If what you say is true, I'll talk to some of our people."

"Talking won't do any good. You know it, and I know it." Zaleski eyed

the union committeeman whose pink face had paled slightly; obviously

Illas didn't relish the thought of arguing with some of the black

militants in their present mood.

The union-as Matt Zaleski was shrewdly aware-was in a tight dilemma in

situations of this kind. If the union failed to support its black

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