Shifting gears: with Detroit's 'Big Three' carmakers struggling, what are the prospects for the U.S. auto industry and its workers?

• Author: Hakim, Danny
• Position: NATIONAL - Industry overview

Once upon a time, America and its autos reigned supreme. In the decades after World War II, the car industry boomed, and steady, high-paying, unionized jobs at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, known as Detroit's "Big Three," helped millions of American workers, in the Midwest and beyond, move into the middle class. Indeed, in better times for the auto industry it was often said, "As GM goes, so goes the nation." (See p. 12.)

But all that is changing. GM announced last year that it will cut 30,000 jobs, and that five assembly plants will be closed. The company also reported an $8.6 billion loss for 2005. And in January, Ford announced that it would close as many as 14 factories and cut up to 30,000 jobs over the next six years.

Including cuts that took place at DaimlerChrysler (Chrysler merged with Daimler-Benz, the German carmaker, in 1998), the Big Three, once symbols of America's industrial might, have eliminated, or planned to eliminate, approximately 140,000 jobs since 2000. Those jobs represent close to one third of their payrolls in North America.

"This may not be the end, but it is certainly the beginning of the end of the automobile industry as we knew it," says Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Other manufacturing jobs at the Big Three's suppliers are bound to disappear as Detroit's carmakers fight to survive intense global competition. Higher gas prices have added to their woes, causing the popularity of Ford's and GM's low-mileage sport-utility vehicles to sag.

LIFE BEFORE TOYOTA

What do all these changes mean for auto workers? When Jerry Roy was hired by General Motors in 1977, at about age 21, his salary more than doubled from his job at a local supermarket. He traded in his five-year-old Buick for a new Chevy and since then, he has done well enough to buy a pleasant house on a lake near Flint, Mich.

Roy represents the fourth generation of his family to rely on GM for its prosperity. For more than 70 years, the company's wages have bought the Roys homes, cars, and once unimaginable comforts, while GM's medical and pension benefits have kept them secure in their retirements.

"General Motors, when I got in there, it was like I'd died and went to heaven," says Roy, who works on an assembly line at a plant operated by Delphi, the now-bankrupt parts unit that was spun off from GM in 1999.

Now, Roy faces the prospect of either losing his job or accepting a pay cut. And for those coming after him, he says, "it's just sad that it's ending, that it looks like this ... all these places that used to be factories are now just parking lots."

Those were the factories that sustained four generations of Roys. Jerry Roy's great-grandfather, John Westley Roy, came to Michigan from Missouri in 1931, and worked at GM's AC Delco division for a decade. Roy's grandfather, Edward, worked at the Delco plant during World War II, when it was converted into a machine-gun plant. Roy's father, Gerald, started at GM in 1951; Gerald's sister, uncle, and wife, Delores, also worked for GM.

In the 1950s, GM was the world's largest corporation: It had 46 percent of the American auto market, versus about 26 percent in 2005. At its peak, the company employed more than 600,000 Americans. For Gerald Roy, now...