Spring Hill

 

There is a town near where i live that i haven't been able to stop thinking about the past few days. It's a nice town, with new, beautiful neighborhoods and lots of pastures and trees. I've driven through there a few times and have always been amazed at how a town can grow in the mist of a cow pasture....but nevertheless, it was a sort of up and coming little town that seemed to be the place to live.

This town, called Spring Hill (don't you just love the name?!) is more or less built around a GM plant. New businesses have started from having a GM plant. This particular GM plant employees 2900 folks. Two thousand nine hundred folks with families, homes, lives. A few years back, GM invested over a million dollars in this plant...and the plant was currently building the Traverse car.

This GM plant is now in and "idle" state for the next month while GM (or the president) decides if a new, smaller car will be built there or in a town in Michigan. Most folks that i've spoken to feel that Michigan is a slam dunk as it
is a mostly democratic state. I like to think (in my rosy-colored world...) that politics doesn't come into play on decisions such as this...but it is foolish to think that.

I'm not going to go into the bailout issues, the president's part, how i feel about unions and their part in this, GM's part in all of this, or the pros and cons of the bailout and subsequent bankruptcy of GM. I could debate these things all day long as could many others who has opinions that are different than mine. But what i can not stop thinking about is the 2900 folks who work in this plant. Who have families and children. Who have homes in Spring Hill. Who, for the next month, will be sitting there as GM decides their fate. I imagine that most of these families depend on their paychecks from GM. And i imagine the horror that some of these employees of this plant must have at the thought of loosing their jobs at a time when the economy is less than inviting when you're looking for a new job. Homes in Spring Hill may not have the same value as GM may not be there so selling your house may not be the easiest thing to do.

A few days ago, the Nashville Tennessean had an article about the employees at the Spring Hill plant. How some felt "too old to look for another job" or "weren't sure of what in the world they would do". In this article, there was a photo of a woman who worked at the Spring Hill plant who had a daughter with MS....who was worried about her daughter's future, her daughter's health, and not being able to provide for her. I've not stopped thinking about this woman's face, her features showing her fear.

Through my husband, i've learned a lot about running a business~more than i wanted to know on some days. How you have to be proactive to protect not only your company, but those who work for you. How it's really about the bottom line and how hard it is to remember that when you care so much about your employees. How bad decisions can do you in quickly. How the economy can (and will) hurt you. How you have to run a lean company at times and how you have to not run so lean at times. But the one thing that i've learned from my husband is how valuable the folks are who work for you and how it's your duty as a business owner to protect them and their families. And i wonder if GM did these things....

...but mostly, now, i think about the woman in the photo with fear written in her face. I pray that her and her daughter as well as the other 2900 employees of this GM plant will be okay. That they will all survive this, and so will the others who have been touched by the GM thing. Praying right now seems to be the only thing i can think of to do...and so i do it.

I do the prayer thing a lot lately...