Boletin @Vitro

The Men of Glass

The Monterrey newspaper “El Norte” publishes a report “The Men of Glass” which interviews workers at Vidriera Monterrey where they express their feelings about what it feels like to form part of the First Centennial of Vitro.
Here we present a summary of the article written by Daniel de la Fuente and published on March 15 in Profiles and History in the “Life” section of the paper.

Jaime Sierra Ramos, one of the oldest bottle technicians at Vidriera. Photo: El Norte / Daniel de la Fuente

“You are now at work” they told Jaime Sierra Ramos on May 8, 1958, as for the first time he walked into Vidriera Monterrey. He was about 30 years old then. Now he is 80 and retired.

His life, as so many others, has walked hand in hand with this factory, now a Century old, located on Zaragoza and Magallanes.

“The low roofs were made of laminates and enclosed the heat inside as the machines were heating glass to 1,000 degrees. It was tormenting” he says about Vidriera, the glass manufacturer that he stumbled across where a million glass containers were manufactured daily for liquids, perfumes and medicines

They made him Head of 800 workers and overseeing 32 machines. With time they would promote him to bottle technician and he would travel throughout México and Central America for Vidriera as it opened affiliates, in the transition from a mechanic to an electrician, for which he trained people recruited in small towns to avoid having to deal with unions.

“They were small lot farmers so it was necessary to teach them the very basics: even what a nut and bolt were”, he laughed.

As workers often missed work for any small pretext, on one occasion, he alone had to run two machines for two shifts of eight hours straight.

“We formed part of the gears of the factory”, he proudly exclaimed.

During the 80´s the production level grew to 4 million containers per day. Jaime, father of seven children, talks about machines with triple cavities, higher velocity and greater precision.

“We had productivity nailed into our minds and hearts”.

Training in other factories led him to places like Egypt, Japan, Europe and the United States.

A heart attack, however, gave him a warning signal to slow down. He later planned a high level training area within Vidriera that, due to economic constraints, was shelved indefinitely.

“There is no material more noble and superior to glass”, he thinks and reminisces from a distance the factory that in history and in this City is almost mythical.

Thanks to people like Jaime, Vidriera grew and became what it is today: the heart of the Vitro Multinational.

Founded on December 6, 1909 for the manufacture of beer bottles, what began with one furnace and two machines transformed itself, by the 20th Century, into a huge enterprise that produces not only glass containers but glass products for automobiles and buildings as well.

Its factories in various parts of México and the world have led Vitro to amass significant influence and considerable fortunes. It is impossible to contemplate the history of Monterrey without it, nor Cemex, Alfa or Cerveceria.

Its impressive growth came under the guidance of Adrián Sada Treviño, who recently passed away, and his two sons, Adrián and Federico.

The faces of the people who spent their working lives in the name of glass will soon be able to be appreciated in an exposition and commemorative book to be announced shortly by the Monterrey Company.

To read the entire article, please click the following link:

http://www.elnorte.com/vida/articulo/480/958770

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