Godfrey, 36, spent 14 years working for automaker Ford in the US. His wife Angela had a job at the same factory, in Wayne, a small town south-west of Detroit, Michigan. Two weeks ago they were both made redundant.

 
For the Godfreys, as for many Michigan families, the American automobile industry feels like the heart of the state. Working for Ford is a family business. “I was 22 years old when I went to work at the factory after my mother suggested it. She was a secretary there,” Godfrey explains. He wanted to earn money to pay for his studies. “I enjoyed the work. At 12 dollars an hour I had a decent salary as well as other advantages,” he says. “So I decided to stay.”

“I met my wife at the factory”

Employed in parts assembly, he worked 10 hours a day.  “It was hard but I only missed three days in 14 years,” he recalls. Working was his whole life.  “I even met my wife there, in 1996,” he adds.

Like many other industry workers made redundant by the ‘Big Three’ – (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler), Godfrey holds no bitterness towards his former employer. “It wasn’t a surprise when I found out,” he explains.  “We have known  that people would be laid off, since November 2006. A month before it happened, we knew it would be us.”

Godfrey believes Ford is a victim of the global economic crisis. Although, he adds,  the company never really managed to get back on track either after problems with Firestone, the tyre company. In 2001 Ford had to recall 13 million tyres, a costly decision that lost the company at least 2.1 billion dollars.

But Godfrey also puts a hefty part of the blame on Americans who haven’t, he says, supported the economy enough.  “If every one of us had bought an American car, we wouldn’t be here now, we wouldn’t be losing our houses and the Big Three’s share prices wouldn’t be plummeting,” he says. “Japanese cars cost less at the time but now it’s going to cost us all much more.”

“The Big Three have refused to question themselves”

Japanese models such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan have been the main market competitors for Americans since the 1970s. Following the 1973 fuel crisis, Asian manufacturers began making large inroads into the new emerging market, which demanded fuel-efficiency and more economic car models. Toyota was particularly successful.

“American manufacturers have taken decades to catch up because auto industry bosses didn’t want to question their brand,” explains Joel Stone, curator at Detroit’s History Museum.

No unions for Japanese carmakers

But even if American cars are finally matching Asian ones in terms of quality, they still cost companies too much to make. A Ford car costs at least 2,000 dollars more than a Japanese one, due to health insurance and pension costs imposed by the UAW, the automobile sector’s powerful union.

With his “UAW” cap perched on his head, Godfrey explains that in Michigan “you have to be a union member to work for the Big Three.” However, in Japan, carmakers don’t take on employees belonging to a union because they cost more.

The UAW offers several means of protection, including a retirement fund, social security (VIBA) and a system of unemployment insurance (‘job bank’) which entitles employees to 100 per cent of their salary during slack periods.

This spending, entirely financed by the manufacturers themselves, has been a major contributor to the losses suffered by GM, Ford and Chrysler. At the beginning of December the union said it would be willing to make concessions and renegotiate the assets of Big Three employees to help their companies recover.

(But It's not only US auto makers who are suffering.)

Hopes for a bailout

According to Godfrey, the solution would be for the federal government to take charge of social security. “Detroit manufacturers would save 12,000 dollars per employee a year,” he says.

Thanks to UAW, the couple can claim 95% of each of their salaries in unemployment subsidy for a total of 39 weeks. A luxury in the current climate, particularly in Michigan, which has the highest unemployment rate in the US, at 9.6%.

“Car industry job losses have a ripple effect on other sectors, such as restaurants and shops,” says Kristin Seefeldt, research investigator at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and assistant director at the National Poverty Center. But, she explains, employees in these sectors are not as well protected.

Godfrey hopes that a 34 billion dollar loan sought by the Big Three will be agreed to - but he is only half-optimistic. “If Washington doesn’t help the Big Three, it will be devastating for the country, especially for Michigan,” he says. In the meantime, he will to continue to write, as a volunteer, for the union’s newsletter.

“If I’m still unemployed next month, I’ll probably look for another job elsewhere,” he says, opening the door of his Mustang. “But I’ll never move out of Michigan.  I’m born here, I’m going to stay here.”