By Andy Kroll (UWIRE)
Amanda Emery, a junior at the University of Michigan-Flint, was born and raised in a General Motors family.
Her parents both logged more than 30 years on the job for the automotive giant — her mother, Cathy, as a skilled welder in a Flint truck plant and her father, Gary, as a company electrician and supervisor.
Her uncle worked on the assembly line in a GM plant in Flint, and a cousin works on the assembly line at the same Flint factory.
Now retired from GM, Emery’s parents live off their company retirement packages, which include thousands of dollars in monthly income and health insurance for them and their children, among other benefits.
“Basically, you’re talking about people that are assured that they’re getting their retirement money,” she said. “They’ve worked for it for 30 years; they’re thinking their money is safe.”
But with GM burning through its cash reserves and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the Emery family is facing the possibility that GM veterans Cathy and Gary could soon lose most of their income.
That would leave 29-year-old Amanda, a journalism and photography double major at the University of Michigan, with the responsibility of helping support her family, assisting her mother to make payments for not only her own house but Amanda’s grandfather’s home in Kentucky and providing some form of health care for Amanda’s aging parents. Her father would be able to pick up work somewhere, but her mother would not.
“Somebody would have to pick up the slack, and I’d have to figure something out,” she said. “I would have to drop down from [studying] full-time to part-time because I’d have to work more — for sure.”
With executives from the Big Three automakers rebuffed in their attempt to obtain critical rescue loans from the federal government, the crisis engulfing the American auto industry has deepened, and its effects can be felt throughout Michigan as more plants shut down and workers lose their jobs.
But hardly mentioned so far has been the impact on students. For them, the future looks increasingly uncertain with parents subject to layoffs, tuition assistance and scholarship programs getting cut and an already weakened workforce set to lose even more jobs should the auto industry falter even more.
More than a half-dozen students whose parents work for one of the Big Three said they feared for their parents’ jobs as automakers continue to trim jobs to stay afloat.
For Dmitry Vodopyanov, 21, a senior at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, each week means another chance his father, a Chrysler engineer, could lose his job without any warning.
And what makes the situation even more uncertain, Vodopyanov added, is that his father relies almost entirely on the media to hear of the latest updates on Chrysler’s future.
“He’s always worried about it,” Vodopyanov said. “And if he’s stressed, then I’m stressed.”
Looking to cut costs, the Big Three have thrown numerous company benefits on the chopping block this year. Among them are tuition assistance programs, which provide employees with money for continuing education classes and degrees.
At the end of October, Chrysler suspended its Tuition Assistance Program for active and laid-off unionized employees. General Motors announced around the same time that it was cancelling a similar program for salaried workers as of Jan. 1. And in June, Ford Motor Company announced that it was suspending its own tuition assistance program for salaried workers.
Each of the Big Three has also said it will suspended dependent scholarship programs, in which dependents of employees received scholarships to help pay tuition costs.
Jerry Glasco, the director of financial service and budget at UM-Flint, said just over 200 students at the university currently use GM scholarships to pay tuition and fees costs.
But with the GM suspending the program at the first of the year, Glasco said those students who rely on the scholarships to cover most, if not all, of their college expenses, could have trouble staying in school because they can’t pay their tuition.
“If that program goes away it’s certainly more difficult for those students to pursue their degrees.”
And for students finishing up their degrees and aiming for a career in auto industry, they must contend with a drastically reduced workforce that could suffer further losses should any or all of the Big Three file for bankruptcy.
According to a recent report from the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., nearly three million auto industry-related jobs could be lost in a single year if the Big Three companies stopped all operations.
Jake Obradovich, 21, a senior at Kettering University in Flint, a science and technology school where students alternate between taking classes and working full-time jobs related to their degree, said that about a year ago, he was still considering the Big Three companies when he thinking about finding a job after graduation.
“Obviously, with the way things have gone in the past six to eight months, my desire to get a job with one of the Big Three has now really decreased,” he said.
Ultimately, it’s the day-to-day uncertainty, the mounting stress, that seems to weigh most on students — and especially those like Amanda Emery, who come from families with lifelong connections to the American auto industry.
Her cousin recently purchased a house, Emery said. But now, with the threat that he could lose his job for good, Emery said she’s concerned for him having to make payments on the new house.
“It hits me directly with, you know, my mom and my dad and my family,” she said. “I worry about the future. But even then, it’s still, ‘What am I going to change?’”
