Getting nowhere fast: one workers experience

An assembly line worker in his early 30s, James forces himself to commute 50 km twice a week to literacy classes run by the London Board of Education because there are none at his auto plant. As he tells Peter Calamai, James senses that without help, his inability to write will leave him stalled on a long road to oblivion.

I've been at Ford 18 years and for the first eight years, it was a challenge to learn the job. It is a semi-skilled job and my goal was to reach the top of that skill. I think I've achieved that.

But I realized I was going nowhere fast and I had to evaluate myself fairly. I felt that I had speaking skills but there were no education skills. I never passed a grade in my life. I was always put up, goofed off, got out of school as soon as I could, at 15. I spent two years at an occupational class at high school and then out I went.

Materialistically, I've done very well, I own a nice home, two vehicles. I have a nice wife, two kids who are highly motivated.

I'm a highly motivated person, I like to achieve. And my hands are wearing out—15 years on that line—it's time to use my brains. And in order to capitalize on it, I've got to learn to spell.

It was hard to sit down and realize that you can't write, that these skills are holding you back. That was very difficult. The next difficult thing was to do something about it. So you make a few phone calls, you find out what can be done and then . . . it's getting to the point where you had to humble yourself. I've been here a year now.

I got off work this morning at four o'clock. I got back up at quarter to eight to come to class and drove here from Aylmer. I'll go home now and I'll go to work at three o'clock and I'll work to twelve. It's not enough class time for me. By the time I get my Grade 12, it may be a five- to seven-year project, because of the limited amount of time I'm able to put into it, raising a family, working at a job.

So many people in our society do not reach out and grab their full potential. To do that takes motivation. It also takes a tremendous wife, tremendous kids, friends. As you go through life, everybody needs strokes. When you're illiterate, you take those strokes and you hang on to them as long as you can, because there will be a lot of bats coming at you.

It's a cage, you live in a cage and once in a while you take risks and if you get slapped down, you go back in the cage and lock that real good and tight. I realize that and I take risks and I do get burned sometimes but I have to take these risks. Because every risk I take, if I succeed, it gives me confidence to go on to another.

There are opportunities out there that are just tremendous right now. Management is changing their ways of thinking. They're getting more people involved on the line with the process of building a car. If you have anything up there (pointing to his head), they'll give you an opportunity to utilize it. But along with that opportunity, you have to have some skills. Communication skills are the future, being able to talk to people, getting people to be productive.

Once I have these writing skills, I'll sit in a room and I'll listen to this guy talk, this guy, this guy and I'll pick up every one of his interesting points. I'll jot them all down and I'll go home and I'll roll them all over in my mind. I'll come back to the next meeting and I'll give them my opinion.

The only reason that I know that most of these guys I work with can't write—most of them can read—is that I know my own skills in trying to avoid that and I watch them do the same. It's getting to the point where we can't hide it anymore.

If Ford Motor Company said to me: 'We've done a statistical study and we think that 60 per cent of the people out here are illiterate. You take your lunch hour and we'll give you another half-hour along with it to come in and get tutoring.' I'd take advantage of that.

And it matters how they do it. If they come out and say, We've got to be more productive. We're going to help you people to be more productive.' Even if the union did it on its own, just the union, that wouldn't work, that wouldn't work to the extent that the company would do it.