I started to work at Central Foundry in September 1949. I was a checker. All I had to do was record parts produced, who produced them, and record downtime. When production stopped, I recorded how long and why. I'm going to say that downtime was estimated to cost $320 a minute then. Our biggest products were Oldsmobile engine blocks and cylinder heads. We also made truck engine blocks and truck parts. Times were wonderful. The political scene was good. The economy was good. General Motors was one big success story.

The plant employed about 2,000 people, and the plans were already in place to duplicate the original plant. That did in fact happen and the employment went to 4,000 people.

You could see progress before your very eyes. In 1949 it took 8 molding people to make Oldsmobile heads in the foundry department. Within 2 years, it took 4 people to produce twice as many heads. I went to the Army in 1952. When I came back in 1954, it took 0 people to produce increased head production. It was completely automated.

The union was particularly picky, and arrogant. When I was a foreman, a Mexican accused me of saying, "Mexicans are not for this world." First, I didn't say it, and second, it was an intimidation of foreman and management tactic. The management position was: "If they want the front door; give it to them".

Before I became a foreman, I went to training classes. The classes were based on a Utopia, where management loved workers and vice versa. When I went on the job, my trainer was in charge. One of the workers complained that he urgently needed to use the restroom. My trainer's reply, " You son of a ____, don't bother me, can't you see I've got more important things to do?" So much for Utopia.

I performed almost every manufacturing job in the plant in my training. In one department I had a job that kept you working at top speed. I have friends that have done the same job, and talk about it to this day. In the foundry department, I physically picked up 60 pound pig iron from a bin and threw it in the cupola as fast as I could possibly go. We used pneumatic chisels in the finishing department. They probably weighed about 15 pounds, but after continuously chipping away non stop for an hour, you would feel like it was impossible to hang onto the chisel anymore. After several hours of hanging on, it felt like the chisel had attached itself to your body.

We had young people that worked in what was called "shake out". They worked 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off. They would "hook" a red hot casting, like an engine block, in the mold that it was poured in. They hoisted it out and hooked it onto a conveyor. As the sand, water, and sea coal were disturbed by the release of the red hot casting from the mold, a cloud of steam, smoke, and dust was emitted. One of these people died at the age of 29 years old.

There are some dangers in foundries. When molten iron covers a floor, there is an explosion.

Let me tell you what a cupola is. This is just for explanation purposes. It is an iron pipe about 100 feet tall, 12 feet in diameter, with two swinging doors that close the bottom. The swinging doors are about twenty feet above the floor level. There's an opening at the top to "charge" the material to be melted, and there a several tyers, or air pipes, near the bottom around the outside. The air is forced in at the bottom with a force nearly equal to the force of a jet airplane engine. Coke is charged with the iron and the burning coke causes the iron to melt. Torches are used to get the coke burning through openings that can be closed at the bottom. The inside of the cupola is lined with fire brick, and lasts for 16 hours. The molten iron collects at the bottom of the pipe and is tapped through a tap hole. When the iron has been tapped, the hole is plugged with "mud". The molten iron is approximately 2500 degrees.

At the end of the day, a siren blows, the swinging doors drop open, and the contents inside the cupola drop out.

I was near a cupola when that happened. There was molten iron left inside the cupola, which is not normal, and it covered the floor. There was an explosion. There was molten iron flying in the air like a fireworks display. I couldn't see anything, but I had an image in my mind of the area that I was in. I headed toward a safe area and escaped.

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- submitted by WolfWolfman