Election 2008: What’s At Stake?

Hillary Clinton got up really really early today to shake hands with workers at Chrysler’s Toledo assembly plant as part of the final push ahead of the all-important Ohio primary Tuesday.My-brother-in-law, Teddy, got up really early to go to work at an automotive castings plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.Clinton has been sparring with Democratic rival Barack Obama over how to stop outsourcing and fix faulty trade agreements that have hit the ailing manufacturing sector. Republican frontrunner John McCain has been advocating more investments in retraining for workers forced out of factory jobs.My brother-in-law is not likely to see his job as a controller on the block, but the weakness of the auto industry does cut into his quality of life.When I called last week, my sister, Jen, was getting ready to make a brief escape from the lingering Wisconsin winter with their two-and-a-half year old daughter, Lucy, to visit our grandmother in Florida. Teddy was resting up for another week at the plant.“I probably made a mistake for staying in the auto industry,” he told me.Teddy started his controller job at JL French 14 months ago. The job has him constantly evaluating the supply and demand in an extremely volatile industry for his bosses, and when he should get out of the business.At his old job, as a controller at another automotive plant in Belvidere, IL, he was working 80 hours a week. Cost cutting meant Teddy had to handle the workload of two people. My sister almost never saw her husband; their daughter often got her goodnight kiss after she was already asleep.The new job is better. Teddy works about 50, 55 hours a week. He’s home in time to make dinner and he gets weekends off. He still makes a comfortable six-figure salary that allows my sister to be a stay-at-home mom.But he just found out he, along with his coworkers at JL French, won’t be getting his regular cost-of-living raises. It’s that kind of uncertainty that makes Teddy’s head spin.Since Jen and Lucy joined him in Wisconsin in July, they’ve been living in a rental, which my sister hates. They can afford to buy a house, but they’re not sure if they’ll be here long enough to make that investment worthwhile.“I would like to be out (of the auto industry) in the next two years. That would mean we wouldn’t be here.”He keeps saying that, but the auto industry still pays well. Teddy had a chance to get out of the business when he took the job in Sheboygan. But the job offers from he had in the food and paper industries meant at least a 10 percent pay cut, or as much as $10,000 a year.“That would have meant downsizing our lifestyle – not purchasing new vehicles, putting money aside for Lucy’s college fund, things like Jen going off to Florida for four days, you’d have to curtail them back.”