"The Last Truck" documents more than just the demise of a GM assembly plant

HBO has been airing a documentary about a GM truck plant closing in Ohio. It centers on the people who are counting down the final days until they are unemployed. It's not so much about why the plant is closing as it is the sense of personal loss.

"The Last Truck" is about assembly line workers, male and female, but it could be about any occupation in any town, blue or white collar. In under an hour, the film accurately captures what it is like to lose a job that you felt connected to in some way other than just by a paycheck. It gets into many of the human aspects of working along side people for years, and what it is like when those good and bad times cease. Of course, it also touches on the financial hardships that are inevitable with any layoff. Businesses in town that relied on workers from the plant pumping dollars into the local economy were also impacted by GM's decision to close the plant.

The down-to-earth folks in this film will make you tear up, particularly if you've ever experienced a profound job loss. You will realize that we in the middle class all have a lot in common regardless of where we live or whether we work behind a computer or with our hands and backs. Anger at top management for abuses that got GM into financial trouble was evident. Fear of the future came through loud and clear. Frustration with the direction this country is going as our dependency on foreign manufacturing continues was another theme. Some mentioned the billions spent on war and aid to foreign nations while we do less and less for our own people.

These folks talked a lot about pride in a job well done and friendships, too. And while their jobs have been difficult, losing them has been far worse. Some will undoubtedly land on their feet, and may even get better jobs, but most folks probably won't. A 10-minute followup segment that provided updates on these plant workers' eight months after the plant closing indicated that not one person featured in the film had found a new job. Several of the people in the documentary were over 45 years old and with limited options.

I felt for these people. But I also knew they'd have each other, at least for a while. They were all leaving their jobs together as soon as the last truck was completed. Many lived on the same streets in town. None of these GM workers would be alone if they didn't want to be. There was no sense of failing or being cast out as individuals. They went to work together every morning and they left the plant together on the final day, consoling each other in the parking lot and the nearby pubs. There were no secret layoffs where two or three people disappeared in middle of the day.

Many of the sentiments expressed by the plant workers showed classic Midwestern values and sensibilities. They spoke in ways that Harvard professors and Washington politicians can't relate to anymore. And that's part of the problem with the way this country is going. The middle class is disappearing. The elites continue to thrive. CEOs still get bonuses, not for being smart or honest, but for being ruthless and shortsighted. We're rewarding and empowering all the wrong people.

It's beginning to feel as though we need some form of a revolution to right the ship and to restore some basic and time-tested values.

Like many HBO documentaries, "The Last Truck" is very well done and told mostly through the words of real people, not ego-driven TV journalists who like to hog camera time. I wish there was a way to get more people to watch shows like this. Not only does it raise the cultural bar a bit, it might just help turn things around with how this country is run. Corporate America and do-nothing politicians had their shot in the driver's seat and drove us into a brick wall. It's time for a new approach. Maybe it's time to go back to the future. I end with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."