Disruption in Detroit

Autoworkers and the Elusive Postwar Boom

Daniel J. Clark

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780252083709
  9780252042010
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252050756
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It is a bedrock American belief: the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers. Flush with high wages and enjoying the benefits of generous union contracts, these workers became the backbone of a thriving blue-collar middle class. It is also a myth. Daniel J. Clark began by interviewing dozens of former autoworkers in the Detroit area and found a different story--one of economic insecurity caused by frequent layoffs, unrealized contract provisions, and indispensable second jobs. Disruption in Detroit is a vivid portrait of workers and an industry that experienced anything but stable prosperity. As Clark reveals, the myths--whether of rising incomes or hard-nosed union bargaining success--came later. In the 1950s, ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, and auto company executives recognized that although jobs in their industry paid high wages, they were far from steady and often impossible to find.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Shortages and Strikes, 1945–1948
• 2 The Era of “The Treaty of Detroit,” 1949–1950
• 3 No Longer the Arsenal of Democracy, 1951–1952
• 4 A Post–Korean War Boom, 1953
• 5 A “Painfully Inconvenient” Recession, 1954
• 6 “The Fifties” in One Year, 1955
• 7 “A Severe and Prolonged Hangover,” 1956–1957
• 8 The Nadir, 1958
• 9 “What IS happening? Which way ARE we headed?” 1959–1960 166
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index