Lansing, Michigan - Four generations and 127 years. That's Kurt Surato's direct bloodline to General Motors Corp., starting with his great-grandfather, who swept floors in 1912 for auto pioneer Ransom Olds, to Kurt's current job of fastening front ends to SUVs, 50 every hour.

United Auto Workers family members Mike Green, Rollin Green and Richard Green. (Photo: Carlos Osorio / AP)

    The Surato family's factory lives mirror the soaring arc of the domestic auto industry, spanning the birth of the Oldsmobile, the creation of the speedometer, automatic transmission and front-wheel drive - and now, in its downward trajectory, the demise of General Motors as we know it.

    The end of the line jobwise, at least for the Surato family, is near.

    "It used to be people drove what we built," said the 41-year-old Kurt, not hiding his disappointment.

    It's just one of many "used to be's" in the staggering domestic auto industry, which is on its knees to Washington, begging for another payment of life-saving billions-after $17.4 billion in loans in December, most of which went to GM-and warning of financial collapse if the money doesn't come.

    As GM, once the world's mightiest automaker, selectively jettisons plants, shifts and workers in a bid to halt unprecedented losses and satisfy skeptical lawmakers, an Old World, all-in-the-family way of life on the assembly line is going away. Surato and his wife, Linda, a slight woman whose job includes installing shock absorbers, brake lines and windshield-wiper motors on SUVs, will be laid off indefinitely next month, along with 1,200 other GM workers at a Lansing plant that builds vehicles people aren't buying.

    The Surato story reflects the rising and falling fortunes-economic and political-of the American autoworker. The assembly line was the ticket to a solid and remarkably secure middle-class life for multiple generations of many thousands of families.

    In old Midwestern auto-producing cities like Detroit, Dearborn, Pontiac, Flint, Dayton, Ft. Wayne and Lansing, about 80 percent of the autoworkers are the sons and daughters of parents and grandparents who built cars and trucks, said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research. Flint families, sometimes called Flintstones, lived and breathed Buick. In Dearborn it was Ford. And in Lansing, the Surato family was all about Oldsmobile-the Olds 98, Delta 88, Cutlass, Calais and the Toronado.

    If you drove a car in Lansing, it was an Olds. And if you weren't going to college and wanted a good job, you went to Olds, which in the 1960s employed more than 20,000 people.

    "I had no college education. I was a kid off the street who worked hard," said Tom Surato, Kurt's father, who in 1960 followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who spent a combined 82 years in Oldsmobile plants in Lansing.

    Two of Tom's brothers worked for Oldsmobile. Kurt's stepfather was one of seven men in his family who worked at Olds. Linda got her job at the plant through the recommendation of her autoworker brother-in-law. His father was also an autoworker.

    Countless numbers of mothers have, over the years, urged their sons not to enter the plants, not to engage in the dull, monotonous and sometimes dehumanizing work of the assembly line. Tom Surato tried farming, but he couldn't make a living at it. The money at Oldsmobile was good, and he went for it, putting car parts into boxes as a stopwatch ticked away.

    "There was no relief time," he recalled. But he stuck it out and worked his way into supervisory positions. He wears the diamond-studded ring that his father was given by Oldsmobile, commemorating 25 years of service at the automaker. They don't do that anymore, because of the cost.

    Surato, a big man with a neatly combed thatch of white hair, retired from Oldsmobile in 1998 and today sports a smile that suggests no small degree of satisfaction that he made it to retirement. Tom Surato knows he has it better than his son. He got out before GM and the domestic industry started to unravel.

    It is the reward of a lifetime of work that is now used against the domestic auto industry and its 240,000 active workers and 540,000 retirees. Their pay and benefits are better than those of the average manufacturing worker, and their compensation contributes to an estimated $20- to $25-per-hour wage gap compared with people working for foreign automakers in the U.S.

    Political resentment toward the industry exploded in November when top executives of the Big Three automakers flew in private jets to Washington to ask for a bailout. A December poll from CNN/Opinion Research Corp. said that, if automakers returned in 2009 seeking additional assistance, 70 percent of those polled preferred bankruptcy over giving them more federal dollars. Pressure is building for cuts in salaries and benefits, for workers and retirees, as automakers prepare to deliver their plans to lawmakers later this month.

    Kurt Surato hears the complaints often on talk radio, as he uses a hydraulic gun-"Push, pull, click," is how he describes his job-to perform the repetitive work of attaching front ends to Saturn, GMC and Buick SUV models.

    "People call in to say how lazy we are, how worthless we are. They think we're just sittin' around," said Surato, an intense man who bristles with resentment at the negative public perception of autoworkers. "We work hard and we know we got it good. But we work hard."

    The assembly line was not the chosen career for Kurt Surato. "I'd seen what that plant did to my father and stepfather, and I wasn't going to do it," said Surato, who enlisted in the Army and went to college. "I was going to be a suit, a business executive.

    "But I couldn't do it," he said, and after bouncing around in mechanics-related work, he landed a job with Oldsmobile in 1996, with the recommendation of his dad. "I was hesitant to go in there. I struggled with it, but it was a good job."

    Kurt met Linda working one day in the paint shop. They fell in love and got married. Surato said he remembers Linda's first paycheck. The withholding was more than what she earned from two paychecks at previous jobs, at a gas station and a small manufacturing shop.

    March 20 is the last day of work for Kurt and Linda. Kurt said he hopes to be back on the job in seven or eight months. Linda said it might be a year or two. Anticipating the cutback, they have saved money from months of overtime work and will reap generous jobless benefits from the union contract. They have no children.

    "We'll be OK," Kurt said.

    GM did away with the Oldsmobile brand several years ago. New hires in the auto industry are paid $14 an hour, not the $28 that veterans like the Suratos make. And Congress may take a whack out of their salary and benefits.

    No matter what happens with the bailout package, the way of life that nurtured four generations of Suratos is almost certainly gone.

    "You'll see kids working here to save money for college," Tom Surato said. "But GM is not a career anymore."

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