"This Is The Motor City. This Is What We Do."
Chrysler’s extended Super Bowl ad for its 200 sedan is making waves in the American auto business, for “bringing back the pride” in America’s automakers and the city that hosts them. But, as with most things Detroitean, there’s a cruel irony lurking just below the veneer of pride reborn. The Detroit News reports
Three workers from Chrysler Group LLC’s Jefferson North plant were arrested recently for alleged drug use during their lunch break after police were tipped off by the automaker.
The workers were arrested on Jan. 24 but have not been formally charged, said Det. Lt. Robert Honey, of the Michigan State Police’s County of Macomb Enforcement Team.
This is the second time in the last six months that workers at Chrysler’s Jefferson North plant have been caught indulging in overly celebratory lunch breaks. Despite all the feel-good Chrysler advertisements about Detroit Pride and quality craftsmanship, workers assembling the new much-lauded Grand Cherokee can’t seem to build the thing while sober. But there’s more to this than sheer irony: we don’t have details on the latest round of arrests, but a Chrysler-employed TTAC commenter has told us that the previous round of arrests came after second-tier workers turned in union brothers out of apparent resentment of the fact that their colleagues were making twice their second-tier wage while drinking and smoking their way through the work day. Which raises an interesting question: if Chrysler didn’t have a two-tier wage system, would Jefferson North’s 24 hour party people have been caught? Is it possible that the shop-floor tensions brought on by two-tier wages actually help curb UAW worker excesses?
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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I find it interesting that Chrysler called the police to arrest these employees rather than simply fire them when they learned of the lunch time partaaay. I'm assuming that is because they would have had a real hard time firing them just because a supervisor and presumably at elast one other employee reported what was going on during lunch. Apparently, the easiest route was to have the employees arrested then suspend without pay pending a trial for the felony arrest or possibly terminate. I can't imagien that Chrysler wants this kind of press; therefore, I'm guessing that they felt it was worth the chance of bad press just to have an opportunity to fire these employees.
biggest drug bust I ever had the pleasure of seeing (only one actually) was in a factory building passenger jets. that explains why tools, lunch box, coffee thermos, cups foods were rattling inside wings or places where sun dont shine.
Reckless drug abuse from factory-working schulbs: indicative of union excesses. Disband the unions and put the American worker back in his place. Reckless drug abuse and prostitution ring patronage at Wall Street investment houses, where the most sophisticated compleat incompetents needed $2 trillion of taxpayer monies to keep their personal charade alive: give them a smaller bonus for a year or two, hold a cursory hearing or two, then everything's back to normal. Glad to see our priorities are in order.
Just do the "bunny hop" at lunch amid copious giggles and make your cohorts just believe you are stoned. All the fun without the threat of ramifications from imbibing. Wheeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!