GM’s Lordstown car plant (New York Times photo).

Tuesday’s New York Times story about labor peace at a once-militant Ohio factory points up one of the silver linings of this recession: the promise of better days for survivors.

The story (read it here) covers the compromises union workers have made in the past two years at a General Motors car plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Once a morass of labor strife and poor workmanship, the plant west of Youngstown is now among the few left standing after GM’s harsh two-year round of closings and layoffs. Lordstown’s 3,000 employees are now preparing to build the Chevrolet Cruze, a linchpin in GM’s strategy for the next decade.

Survival is always good. But when this the worst downturn since the Depression finally ends, any organization left standing will by necessity have become leaner and stronger, likely on the strength of drastic adjustments it had not been forced to consider when times were good. It will have fewer competitors.

This will be as true of small businesses and non-profits as it will for General Motors, Boeing, Citi and other behemoths that appear to be turning the corner.

But if the experience recounted by the Times in Ohio is any guide, the road to survival will not have been easy.  Employees at the Lordstown plant took sharp pay cuts. They voted to relax work rules that stood for decades – the ones that survived the last round of harsh compromises in the early 1980s. They changed their attitudes.

“When General Motors had such a big percentage of the market, our fears weren’t there,” unionist Ben Strickland tells the Times. “There wasn’t a trump card that we didn’t pull. Now you’ve got to be careful about pulling those trump cards out because it could be your last. We want G.M. to be successful. We want the U.A.W. to be successful. Making that happen on both sides, that creates security.”

The economic and attitude adjustments that have made Lordstown a survivor provide good insight for any organization pursuing that same promise.