Vol 1 No 1 Spring 2017

Collateral Damage

The drastic decline of the US auto industry over the last half-century, which has ravaged the city of Detroit and other former production centers in the southern Michigan region, is typically explained as the result of union contracts that escalated the cost of labor to levels that required US automakers to move jobs to other countries. In this essay, we disprove the “greedy union” narrative. Relying on an analytic history of the rise and decline of the Detroit production culture, we demonstrate that the decline of the Detroit region resulted from management’s decision to reorganize production to prevent the workers from using their structural leverage to gain a share of control over production processes. This strategy for gaining the upper hand in the class struggle, however, also undermined the flexible production system pioneered in Detroit. This reduced the rate of product innovation and undermined their ability to compete on the basis of production efficiency, leaving outsourcing jobs in order cut labor costs as the only viable option.

In this essay, we disprove the “greedy union” narrative. Relying on an analytic history of the rise and decline of the Detroit production culture, we demonstrate that the decline of the Detroit region resulted from management’s decision to reorganize production to prevent the workers from using their structural leverage to gain a share of control over production processes.

Sorry, but this article is available to subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.

ESC

Catalyst