The Case for Making It in the USA

Do factory workers have a future in the U.S.? David Laws thinks so. The muscular, tattooed South Carolinian has a prized job with General Electric's (GE) Greenville Airfoils Facility in Piedmont, S.C. One of his tasks is to use a computer-controlled machine tool to burn tiny cooling holes electrically in 3-inch-long turbine blades for aircraft jet engines. The 300 holes in each blade, most of them thinner than a human hair, are engineered to spread a coat of cool air over the spinning blades so they aren't melted by 3,000F exhaust gases.

The pay is good—$31 an hour—but what Laws really likes is the sense of empowerment at the non-union plant. Hourly team members like Laws are responsible for choosing new colleagues. Before deciding who gets hired, they interview job candidates and observe them in a game that involves cooperatively building a toy helicopter from LEGO blocks. Teams can adjust the line operation as they see fit to remove bottlenecks and maximize productivity. Recently, two teams came up with different ways to speed up the washing of turbine blades. The plant leader, rather than picking one way as the winner, approved buying equipment for each team to wash the blades its own way.