“Forget About Your Inalienable Right to Work”: Deindustrialization and its Discontents at Ford, 1950–1953

International Labor and Working-Class History

Volumn 48, Issue , 1995, Pages 112-130

  Sugrue, Thomas J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84972202630     PISSN: 01475479     EISSN: 14716445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0147547900005378     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. For an overview, see “Deindustrialization: A Panel Discussion,” Pennsylvania History 58 (1991): 181 – 211.
2. An important first foray into the topic is John T. Cumbler, A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989).
3. See also Irwin Marcus, “The Deindustrialization of Homestead: A Case Study, 1959—1984,” Pennsylvania History 52 (1985).
4. Two suggestive but brief discussions of deindustrialization in the 1940s and the 1950s are Ronald Schatz, The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923–1960 (Urbana, 1983), 232-36;
5. Gary Gerstle, Working Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914–1960 (Cambridge, 1989), 320–28.
6. See especially Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment, and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York, 1982);
7. see John Hoerr, And the Wolf Finally Came: The Decline of the American Steel Industry (Pittsburgh, 1988). For figures on industrial job loss since 1953.
8. see John Kasarda, “Structural Factors Affecting the Location and Timing of Urban Underclass Growth,” Urban Geography 11 (1990): 242;
9. William Julius Wilson and Loic J.D. Wacquant, “The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 501 (January 1989):26-47.
10. For a general overview of a voluminous literature on industrial development and urbanization, see Thomas J. Sugrue, “The Structures of Urban Poverty: The Reorganization of Space and Work in Three Periods of American History,” in The “Underclass” Debate: Views from History, ed. Michael B. Katz (Princeton, 1993), 85-117;
11. Leonard Wallock, “Work and Workplace in the City: Toward a Synthesis of the ‘New’ Labor and Urban History,” in American Urbanism: A Historiographical Overview, ed. Howard Gillette, Jr. and Zane Miller (Westport, Conn., 1987), 73–89.
12. For a discussion of these processes, see Eva Mueller, Arnold Wilken, and Margaret Wood, Location Decisions and Industrial Mobility in Michigan, 1961 (Ann Arbor, 1961), 5–6.
13. For an overview, see Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development and the Transformation of the South, 1938 – 1980 (New York, 1991).
14. See also Ann Markusen, Peter Hall, Scott Campbell, and Sabina Deitrick, The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York, 1991);
15. Roger Lotchin, Fortress California 1910 - 1961 : From Warfare to Welfare (New York, 1992); and The Martial Metropolis: U.S. Cities in Peace and War, ed. Roger Lotchin (New York, 1984).
16. G. T. Bloomfield, “Shaping the Character of a City: The Automobile Industry and Detroit, 1900 - 1920,” Michigan Quarterly 25 (1986): 167–81.
17. Douglas Reynolds, “Engines of Struggle: Technology, Skill, and Unionization at General Motors, 1930 - 1940,”Michigan Historical Review 15 (1989): 79-81, 91–92.
18. Detroit Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Commission, “Location of Industrial Plants,” 16, Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) Collection, Box 9, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit (ALUA).
19. On plant deconcentration in the 1940s and 1950s, see Detroit Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Commission, “Location of Automotive Plants,” Michigan P-1 (G) Project Completion Report, 1955–56, 18, SEMCOG Collection, Box 9, ALUA. For a general survey of Detroit's industrial patterns.
20. see Robert Sinclair, The Face of Detroit: A Spatial Synthesis (Detroit, 1972), 36–41.
21. Untitled memo with list of auto plants constructed since 1949, in UAW Research Department Collection, Box 76, Folder 5, ALUA; Detroit Area Regional Planning Commission, “Location of Automotive Plants,” 17, SEMCOG Collection, Box 9, ALUA. For a discussion of similar patterns in the 1970s and 1980s.
22. see Bluestone and Harrison, Deindustrialization of America, 166–68, 170–78.
23. Mueller, et al., Location Decisions, 53.
24. See for example, Paul Peterson, “Introduction: Technology, Race, and Urban Policy,” in The New Urban Reality, ed. Paul Peterson (Washington, D.C., 1986), 1–29.
25. A powerful rejoinder is David F. Noble, Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation (New York, 1984).
26. See statement of D. J. Davis, Vice President, Manufacturing, Ford Motor Company. U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization, Hearings on Automation and Technological Change, 84th Cong., 1st Session, October 1955 (Washington, D.C., 1955), 53 (hereafter Automation Hearings). On the roots of automation.
27. see Stephen Meyer, “The Persistence of Fordism: Workers and Technology in the American Automobile Industry,” in On the Line: Essays in the History of Autowork, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein and Stephen Meyer (Urbana, 1989), esp. 86–93.
28. Quoted in James C. Keebler, “Working Automation,” Automation 3 (January 1957):29.
29. Harder quoted in Floyd G. Lawrence, “Union Belabors Automation,” Automation 2 (May 1955):22.
30. James C. Keebler, “Another Milestone Passed,” Automation 5 (February 1959):26.
31. Floyd G. Lawrence, “Progress With Ideas,” Automation 2 (July 1955):23. For a discussion of automation and workers’ control in other industries, see Noble, Forces of Production.
32. John Barnard, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Workers (Boston, 1983), 154. In Barnard's version, Reuther offered the acerbic response: “And not one of them buys new Ford cars either.”
33. See also Nelson Lichtenstein, “Life at the Rouge: A Cycle of Workers’ Control,” in Life and Labor: Dimensions of American Working-Class History, ed. Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher (Albany, N.Y., 1986), 251–53.
34. Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 1933 – 1962 (New York, 1963), 340 - 341
35. Stephen Amberg, The Union Inspiration in American Politics: The Autoworkers and the Making of a Liberal Industrial Order (Philadelphia, 1994), 190.
36. Ford stated that these new plants “will not replace any existing facilities” but merely “add to our present engine capacity.” Nevins and Hill, Ford: Decline and Rebirth, 340, 364-65; Lichtenstein, “Life at the Rouge,” 252.
37. James C. Keebler, “More Automatic Operation,” Automation 6 (February 1960):44.
38. John Bugas to Carl Stellato, June 7, 1950, and Manton Cummins to Carl Stellato, July 18, 1950, copies in UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 249, Folder 249–319, ALUA.
39. Keebler, “More Automatic Operation,” 46.
40. Detroit Free Press, April 29, 1955.
41. Martin Halpern, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era (Albany, N.Y., 1988), 257–59.
42. Ford Facts, February 18, 1950.
43. Letter from John Bebenhoff, Stanley Adamczyk, Allen Baker, and Earl Filban, in Ford Facts, April 22, 1950.
44. On wildcats between 1950 and 1954, see “Study on Work Stoppages,”
45. George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (Urbana, 1994), 229–52.
46. “Decentralization Means Economic Ruin,” Ford Facts, September 15, 1951.
47. see David R. Roediger and Philip S. Foner, Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (West-port, Conn., 1989), esp. 261 - 71;
48. Benjamin Kline Hunnicut, Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (Philadelphia, 1988).
49. Copy of Dearborn Resolution in UAW President—Walter P. Reuther Collection, Box 97, Folder 97–4, ALUA; Ford Facts, September 15, 1951; November 17, 1951.
50. See Staughton Lynd, The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closings (San Pedro, Calif., 1983), 141–48, 160–89.
51. See also James Atleson, Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law (Amherst, Mass., 1983), esp. 111–35.
52. Lawrence Friedman, A History of American Law, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985), 514.
53. Carl Stellato to Walter P. Reuther, November 12, 1951; Ford Facts, November 3, 1951.
54. see also William D. Andrew, “Factionalism and Anti-Communism: Ford Local 600,” Labor History 20 (1979):227-55.
55. Highland Park, Lincoln, Mound Road, and Dearborn Engineering plants. Workers laid off from any of these five Detroit-area plants “will be rehired into one of the others, if work is available, before any new employees are hired.” Ford Facts, February 24, 1951.
56. See “Ford Motor Company-UAW Membership,” UAW Research Department Collection, Box 76, Folder 5, ALUA.
57. Detroit City Plan Commission, Industrial Study: A Survey of Existing Conditions and Attitudes of Detroits Industry (Master Plan Technical Report, 2nd ser.), July 1956, 46; Detroit Times, June 2, 1957.
58. Harold L. Sheppard, Louis Ferman and Seymour Faber, “Too Old to Work—Too Young to Retire: A Case Study of a Permanent Plant Shutdown,” Report to United States Senate.
59. See Sugrue, “Structures of Urban Poverty,” 109. For a comparison.
60. see Wilson and Wacquant, “Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion,” 8–25.
61. Nelson Lichtenstein, “Auto Worker Militancy and the Structure of Factory Life, 1937 - 1955,” Journal of American History 67 (1980): 335-53;
62. See Steve Rosswurm, “An Overview and Assessment of the CIO's Expelled Unions,” in The CIO's Left-Led Unions, ed. Steve Rosswurm (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992), 13, 15–16.