Midnight in Vehicle City : General Motors, Flint and the strike that created the middle class
Publication Information
Boston, Massachusetts : Beacon Press, [2021]
Physical Description
221 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm
Summary
"The story of the forty-four-day Flint Sit Down Strike of 1936-37, which led to the recognition of the United Auto Workers, the union whose wages and benefits set the standard for the 20th Century American middle class"--
The Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. McClelland tells the gripping story of how workingmen defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. The causes for which the strikers sat down-- collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages-- enjoyed a half century of success. Now the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since the New Deal. McClelland describes the takeovers of GM plants; Michigan governor Frank Murphy's activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women's Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins. -- adapted from jacket
Contents
- Introduction: Vehicle City
- A stranger in town
- The Perkins boys
- "This is where the fight begins"
- The siege
- The battle of the running bulls
- The Women's Emergency Brigade
- "General Motors has double crossed us"
- Miss Perkins and Mr. Sloan
- Chevy four
- Murphy's law
- Evacuation day
- Epilogue.