A Diverse Experience: My Internship at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources
Loading...
Authors
Albright, Brooke
Issue Date
2002
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
After securing an internship at General Motors in the Human Resources
Department, I was under the impression that my job description was going to be a lot
different then what it turned out to be. I thought that I would be working forty-hour
weeks in the Renaissance Building in downtown Detroit. After doing a little research on
the Internet I found some information that I thought pertained to my internship, but I did
not realize that the information was just a tiny sector of what was really going on. I
thought that there was a need for interns in this department because Daimler Chrysler
Corporation, General Motors Cooperation and the International Union (UAW) joined
forces with America Online. To my knowledge, through Workscape Inc, the leading
provider of online human resource applications, employees would be able to tap
employee portals from work or home offering a broad array of comprehensive corporate
information and personalized human resource tools. Daimler Chrysler and General
Motors were also partnering up with HUGHES to offer hourly and salaried employees
HUGHES cutting edge direct TV interactive television services with Phillips Electronics
to provide leading edge technology. The UAW lobbied for this and is proud to provide
its members with a low cost access to the latest in e-communications. Sun Microsystems
is providing the network -computing program that will be the power behind this joint
venture. As an intern in the human resources department, I thought I would be helping to
organize this venture and to make sure that everything is running properly. Once the
system is a go, I thought the department would then focus on educating the employees on
how to properly use the new programs. I wanted to begin my project by researching the history of General Motors and the
UAW and discussing how the relationship between the automaker and the labor union has
developed throughout the years. I wanted to begin the SIP with a discussion on the rise
of the labor organization from the growth of industry in the twenties and the devastating
of the great depression in the thirties. Then I planned to lead into discussion of the
organization of the UAW in 1935 and how when and why the UAW and GM joined
forces and some of the projects that their relationship have begot. I then intend to begin
to talk about the relationship between the UAW, GM employees and how the human
resource department is the mediator. This in turn will lead into the last section of the
paper, which will include a lengthy description of the current joint venture. I will also
include my personal evaluation of the internship, a professional evaluation of the program
and company, why the Human Resource Department is important in any business and
how the department specifically functions at General Motors. In actuality I was off base
with my first thoughts. The UAW -GM joint venture is much larger and much more
complex than what I had first perceived.
Description
ii, 108 p.
Citation
Publisher
License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.