The news today is dominated by the United Auto Workers strike against Ford, GM, and Stellantis. For generations, the UAW has picked one company as its target during contract negotiations, but this year the union has taken on all three companies at once. Industry apologists are horrified that the UAW would be so bold. How dare they!Battle Over Electric Vehicles Is Central to Auto Strike.
“We can’t experience the American Dream that so many autoworkers before us, like my grandfather, got to,” he said. His grandfather was able to own a house and two cars while putting his kids through college on an autoworker’s salary. By contrast, Hudson said he and his co-workers are “struggling” to do the same on their own salaries.
Madeline Janis is the executive director of Jobs to Move America, an advocacy group that works closely with the UAW and other unions. “We are at theand the way we’re going is the way we went in the last industrial revolution — a lot of profit for a few and misery and not good jobs for the many,” she said.
“If the union has taken a more militant turn and is punished for it successfully, that will intimidate workers across the board,” University of Chicago historian Gabriel Winant tells. “If they win, it will augment the message that is already circulating with greater frequency — that now is the moment that workers have leverage.”
It tells the stories of the mill owners who used their wealth and the privilege their ancestry provided to extract every ounce of effort from their workers for the absolute minimum cost. The mills were staffed by immigrants from Quebec, Krakow, and Kerry — people with no political power — who were used and abused like farm animals. The windows were kept shut to avoid imperfections in the cloth while the workers toiled in stifling conditions and breathed textile fibers that ruined their lungs.