FOR NEARLY TWO YEARS, TOM ALLEN
CLOCKED INTO HIS JOB AT A DEFENSE
HARDWARE PLANT IN LANSING, MICH.,
in the afternoon to start a 12-hour shift, usually operating a metal
lathe machine. The hours were long, but the overtime pay was welcome. Still, at the end of the week, Allen said, he’d get home Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m. so tired he’d sleep until dinnertime.
“By Sunday night you felt pretty good,” Allen, 63, said in an interview. “Then it started all over again.”
But when the company, Demmer Corporation, told him he had to
work on Saturdays and Sundays as well, Allen refused. “I literally
told them, ‘I’m not going to have a heart attack and die in the traces just so you guys can make a little extra money.’”
COURTESY OF TOM ALLEN
Defense
hardware
plant worker
Tom Allen.