Since Jennifer L. Gigliotti was in elementary school, the 70-acre Ford Motor Company plant here in northwestern Ohio has been a constant in her life. Her mother and father have worked the production line at the Maumee Stamping Plant for almost 60 years combined, making bumpers and body panels for generations of Ford vehicles.
When Ms. Gigliotti graduated from high school, she chose a different route. She received a certificate in child care and took a job at a day-care center that she enjoyed, but that did not pay well. So seven years ago when her father’s name came up in a plant lottery allowing him to nominate her for a job, she applied and landed a production position that paid $21 an hour.
“It was one of those no-brainers,” she says. “Do you want to keep making $7 an hour or do you want to work for Ford?”
Last September, at age 37, Ms. Gigliotti found herself facing another life-altering decision. Ford announced that it would be closing the Maumee Stamping Plant in 2008. Employees had two months to decide if they wanted to take a buyout package or try to transfer to another plant.
The decision was not an easy one for Ms. Gigliotti, but at the end of last month she took the buyout, one of 38,000 Ford workers nationwide to do so. The move came on the heels of a similar package taken by some 34,000 General Motors employees in July.
Combined, the two buyouts have left one-third of workers in American automotive plants out of work. While many just retired, thousands of the well-paid blue-collar workers in their 30s and 40s will still need to work for at least two decades. They face trying to replace their $60,000-a-year manufacturing jobs in a global high-tech economy where know-how trumps muscle.
To politicians, corporate executives, and college officials, the solution to the situation here and in dozens of other factory towns nationwide seems simple: have the workers go back to school, learn different skills, and get a new job. Plug real people into that scenario, and the easy fix suddenly becomes more complicated: There are mortgages to pay, children to care for, and nagging concerns that even for those with a college degree, there are not enough well-paying jobs left in these old manufacturing towns.
But perhaps the biggest hurdle for the higher-education institutions trying to enroll displaced workers is that many of them, including Ms. Gigliotti, have little interest in going to college.
“The challenge for colleges is to really work hard in finding the right program for people who have been out of school for a very long time,” says A.R. Sullivan, chancellor of the Sullivan University System Inc., a for-profit institution based in Louisville, Ky., home to two plants where Ford is cutting jobs. “They can’t afford to fail.”
Where Have They Gone?
In some ways, the auto companies have not made it easy for colleges to attract the displaced workers to their campuses. Both Ford and GM have been reluctant to share any information about who left the assembly lines. For example, the companies have not said how many employees who took the buyout package opted for early retirement. But Ford has said that more than half of those who took the buyout chose a cash payment or educational assistance, which will cover up to $15,000 a year in college tuition. Without knowing who their potential students are, college officials say they are having a hard time reaching the people who may need training.
In northeast Ohio, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan says he persuaded GM officials to give colleges in his district, including Youngstown State University and Kent State University-Trumbull, information on how many of the 3,200 workers who left a nearby plant agreed to retire and how many took a different buyout option. The colleges, however, are still hoping to get the contact information for those former employees. A spokesman for GM says the company is not releasing that information because of privacy concerns.
Both Daniel J. Flores, the GM spokesman, and a Ford spokeswoman say their companies have held information sessions and career fairs, which colleges were invited to attend, to try to help workers make the transition to a new job. “Educational offerings were an important component of our buyout offerings,” says Marcey L. Evans, the Ford spokeswoman. “We wanted to design programs that would be appealing and that would really help them go on in their life after Ford.”
In Janesville, Wis., Marylee Kishel, coordinator of adult-student services at the University of Wisconsin Colleges Rock County campus, had an easier time reaching GM employees because the institution had offered courses at the Janesville plant for years. So in the months leading up to the July buyout deadline, she pushed hard to recruit workers who were considering leaving their jobs.
But when it came time to finally make a decision, few people were interested in trading in a timecard for a notebook.
In July and August, Ms. Kishel met with about 15 workers who had taken the buyout — a $75,000 or $145,000 lump-sum payment, depending on years of service — and were planning to continue working. Nearly all of them, she says, wanted to know if college-level training would get them back into the work force quickly at the salary they were earning at GM.
“The answer, in most cases, was no,” Ms. Kishel says.
To her knowledge, none of the employees she talked to have enrolled. Most, she says, were “rather vague” about what they planned to do.
Migdalia McClendon, diversity coordinator in the office of undergraduate admissions at Youngstown State University, says that she too had limited interest from GM employees who took the buyout. Ms. McClendon serves as the primary recruiter for adult students.
“We need to be able to show these individuals that a degree is attainable,” she says. “You can have all the programs for them to benefit from, but if they’re not motivated, it’s not worth a thing.”
‘Not A Lot of Options’
At a career and training fair held at the Ford plant in Maumee in early November, Ms. Gigliotti filled a plastic bag with brochures from prospective employers and colleges, but was not sold on anything.
“This guy was trying to talk me into doing a nursing program in the Caribbean,” says the mother of three. “Oh yeah, just load everybody up in a plane.”
Ms. Gigliotti talked to a representative from the International University of Nursing in St. Kitts, one of about a half-dozen colleges and universities with booths at the plant that day. All had a decent number of visitors, but the most sustained conversations were those between the recruiters themselves.
At the end of the day, Ms. Gigliotti was torn: She did not want to go back to college, but she knew her future was precarious if she stayed with Ford. “There really weren’t a lot of options for me” at the fair, she said. “It’s all these decisions to make. I wish the end of the month would come so I know what I’m doing.”
Robert P. Johnson, assistant director of work-force development for the Ohio Board of Regents, says persuading workers to make timely decisions is one of the biggest challenges for colleges and universities in retraining displaced workers.
When companies give workers minimum notice, like 30 to 60 days, to leave their jobs, the employees are often bitter, Mr. Johnson says. “So they wait until the 11th or 12th hour, and then they’re impatient,” he says.
Often, the workers miss enrollment deadlines or face yearlong waits to get into popular programs, like nursing and radiologic technology. Many also need to take remedial classes in mathematics and writing, which slows their progress.
While colleges in his state offer programs that can get adult students in and out quickly, like a nine-month industrial-maintenance program, Mr. Johnson says institutions need to do a better job of telling workers which programs could work for them. Instead of rattling off a list of deadlines and prerequisites for courses, college officials should focus more on helping adult students develop a clear plan.
“We have to quit making things sound so complicated,” he says. “We’ve got to break things down ... and we’ve got to bring people in and let them know, ‘This is nothing mystical and magical. You can do this.’”
Familiarity Helps
Lorain County Community College, in Elyria, Ohio, is trying to do just that. For starters, officials there track which of the college’s students are former auto workers — about 18, so far — so the college can follow their progress.
Over the years, the college has also maintained a constant presence at Ford’s nearby Ohio Assembly Plant, offering college courses there and even operating the plant’s fitness center. In preparation for the buyout, Maureen D. Hess, a career-development specialist at Lorain, has been teaching classes at the plant on such topics as planning for retirement.
That familiarity, many of the workers say, made them more comfortable with the idea of becoming students again. It is part of why even some of the students who plan to transfer to four-year institutions decided to start their education at the community college.
Proximity to home also helped. While tuition costs are not much of a concern for the students — since Ford covers up to $15,000 a year — transportation costs and time away from family are.
Michael D. Dempsey has five children under the age of 7. His youngest child was born two months before he took Ford up on its first buyout offer in June, which was available only to employees at Ohio Assembly and a few other plants and preceded the nationwide one in November. With only two years at the company, Mr. Dempsey figured he would be one of the first to go if the plant resorted to layoffs, so he took a buyout package.
He plans to put his 18 years in construction to use by majoring in construction-engineering technology at the University of Akron, which offers that program on the Lorain campus.
Mr. Dempsey’s current trip to college is his third: He has an associate degree in auto technology and studied chemistry and biology for a year and a half at Pennsylvania State University-Fayette.
Like Mr. Dempsey, many of the former Ford employees at Lorain have attended college before. Some graduated with associate or bachelor’s degrees, but most dropped out. Most who gathered on the campus early last month to talk to The Chronicle view the buyout as a second chance at college.
They are upbeat about the future, but say that adjusting to college life is a bit overwhelming. They are often the oldest people in their classes, where at the plant they were among the youngest. They have to learn some of the basics, especially math, all over again. And when they worked at the plant, the day was over when the whistle blew, but now their nights are spent studying.
“It’s such an adjustment, going from on the assembly line to using your brain every day, having to pay attention rather than just trying to keep your mind as far away from where you are as possible,” says Christopher Kerlin, who spent eight years at Ford and is studying nuclear medicine at Lorain.
The two educational buyout packages Ford offered workers keep them on the payroll until they finish college, but at a reduced wage, so scaling back their lifestyles has also been a challenge. In one package, Ford offered its employees four years of tuition assistance, full benefits, and 50 percent of their pay. Another offered two years of tuition assistance, full benefits, and 70 percent of pay. Both packages capped tuition assistance at $15,000 a year.
The workers must attend college full time and maintain a C average to remain eligible for the packages, which makes it difficult for them to take a job on the side, even a part-time one, to increase their incomes.
Alesia M. Mills, who is studying radiologic technology at Lorain on a four-year tuition-assistance package, went from making about $70,000 a year at Ford to receiving an annual $17,000 lump-sum payment, after taxes. “We’re going to have to sell our house and everything,” Ms. Mills says.
Economics vs. Emotion
In Ohio, Representative Ryan says members of his staff have been meeting with local and college officials over the last few months to figure out how to help the autoworkers find educational or employment opportunities.
Mr. Ryan, a Democrat, wants colleges to steer students toward careers for which there is high demand. Government officials and colleges alike also need to do more to ensure that adults can make the transition from the work force to college and back again, he says.
“A pipeline is the visual we want,” he says.
The notion of an “educational pipeline” has become something of a mantra among officials in the last decade. What is often lost in the equation, however, is that when workers pore over their options, the process is a deeply personal one.
By noon on November 27, the deadline for deciding whether to take the buyout at Ford’s Maumee plant, Ms. Gigliotti was still agonizing over what she was going to do. She was leaning toward staying at the plant and hoping she could transfer or that Ford would decide not to close the plant, but at the last minute decided to take the buyout package that would pay for two years of college. She could not stomach the 50-percent pay cut required to get four years of tuition assistance.
Ms. Gigliotti wants to become an elementary-school teacher, but she says she has no idea if she can get through the required degree program and get a teaching license in two years. (Ohio requires that teachers have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree.) If not, she supposes she will take out loans to pay for the extra years.
Ms. Gigliotti does not know what college she will attend and has not formally talked to any colleges about the requirements of her new career.
“It’s still scary,” she says. “Everything was just thrown in our faces. ... I had no desire to go back to school. I thought Ford was it for life.”