by Justin | Dec 28, 2020 | General Motors, Labor History, Organizing, UAW History
84 years ago today, the 1936-37 Flint sit down-strike began at General Motors. It was a defining moment for the UAW that would end up improving the lives of millions of workers across the country. Jeremy Brecher’s account of the great sit-down strike in the...
by Justin | Oct 30, 2020 | Administration Caucus, UAW History
Let’s start with collective bargaining. In Richman’s telling, much of how we behave at the bargaining table today can be traced back to the Treaty of Detroit, the landmark 1950 contract between the Auto Workers (UAW) and the Big Three automakers. Five years earlier,...
by Justin | Oct 27, 2020 | Ford, Labor History, UAW History
The Ford Hunger March — also known as the Ford Massacre — served as a turning point in the story of organized labor in Detroit and across the U.S. The incident helped catalyze the creation of the United Auto Workers. But it was scarcely memorialized locally. For...
by Justin | Oct 7, 2020 | General Motors, Labor History, UAW History
To earn worker trust and the right to speak for them, the upstart union had to confront and defeat GM, the industrial colossus that controlled almost 45 percent of domestic auto sales and employed 240,000 workers in 69 plants. In 1936, GM’s net profits approached $284...
by Justin | Sep 6, 2020 | Labor History, Social Issues, UAW History
Since the near-lynching of Jacob Blake by police, the city of Kenosha, Wis., population 100,000, has become a focus of the Black Lives Matter upsurge. Up to that point, Kenosha was just a dot on the map to most people. However, the city’s United Auto Workers (UAW)...
by Justin | Aug 30, 2020 | Labor History, UAW History
A strong believer in democratic participation, Roy Reuther ran voter registration drives and UAW-related political campaigns. In 1960, he was appointed head of the Kennedy National Voter’s Registration Committee, where he helped increase voter participation in...
