Penni Cox wakes up before dawn, taking her coffee to-go as she makes the 10-minute drive down the road from her home to the General Motors campus in Kokomo, Indiana. Until recently, its three stories stood empty; auto work in Kokomo has steadily drained, and the absence of opportunity has meant indefinite
Penni Cox wakes up before dawn, taking her coffee to-go as she makes the 10-minute drive down the road from her home to the General Motors campus in Kokomo, Indiana. She arrives at the Engineering Resource Center as the sun rises.
"You teach your children to help others. But when the time comes and you can finally do it -- when they call you and say, 'Hey, do you want to make ventilators?' It's like -- well yeah!"Her work ceased just as the virus flared, and hospitals braced for a deluge of patients and a looming ventilator shortage. As a precaution against the spread of COVID-19, the plant finally shut down.
"Right now? It's much more rewarding making a ventilator than making a car," Cox said."We're all working long hours, it gets tiring, but when you see who you're helping -- it's all worth it. I love my Chevys but I definitely feel much more sense of pride in making a ventilator.""There's a mood in there that hasn't been for a long time -- we've been shrinking for so long," UAW Local 292 President Matt Collins told ABC News.
The Kokomo plant was picked to make the ventilators because it already handled precision electronic parts -- and it had preexisting clean rooms, required for medical equipment production by the FDA.Story continues"We're pretty dedicated," Cox said."There are a lot of people putting in 10, 12 hour days. They just kept telling us, 'We don't have any work for you,' and we just kept saying, Well you've got to!' And then this came along.
Asked about the parallels to World War II's war effort -- to"Rosie the Riveter" -- Penni Cox shrugged.
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