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By Kevin O’Kelly Correspondent
Even before the job losses of the pandemic, many American workers were facing a tough situation. In recent years, fed-up employees – from fast-food workers to university adjunct instructors – have seen little choice but to unionize. The signs of a rising new labor movement makes journalist Edward McClelland’s latest book, “Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class,” remarkably timely.
McClelland details what was arguably the most important strike in American history. On Dec. 30, 1936, a few thousand workers took over one small GM plant in Flint, Michigan, and brought the nation’s leading automaker to a standstill.
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One of the biggest victories for workers’ rights in the United States happened during one bitterly cold winter in Flint, Michigan.
“Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class,” by Edward McClelland, tells the horrific details of working conditions at a GM plant in 1936 that led line workers to occupy the factory for nearly two months, eventually winning the right to unionize.
That hard-won victory created the United Auto Workers, says McClelland. “It was a time of unprecedented inequality in America. The sit-down strike began to change all that,” he says.
The new union became one of the most powerful organizations in the country, setting a new standard for wages, creating worker benefits like medical insurance, paid time off for illness and vacation, and defining safety standards at factories.
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