Midnight in Vehicle City

November 2, 2020
Journalist McClelland (Folktales and Legends of the Middle West) delivers a detailed account of the 1936–1937 General Motors strike in Flint, Mich. During the Great Depression, General Motors cut wages, slashed jobs, and sped up the pace of work. In 1936, the newly-formed United Auto Workers of America labor union sent organizers to Flint, where a membership drive and temporary work stoppages to protest unjust firings culminated in a sit-down strike at the Fisher One auto body plant. The strike soon spread to other plants, and tempers ran so high that the National Guard was dispatched to keep the peace between strikers and Flint police. The governor of Michigan and President Franklin Roosevelt got involved, and GM and the UAWA eventually came to terms over improved working conditions, amnesty for strikers, and a collective bargaining agreement. McClelland makes excellent use of primary sources to spotlight local organizations including the Women’s Emergency Brigade, which evolved over the course of the strike from “a homemakers’ sodality to a quasi-military force,” but underdevelops his claims about the strike’s broader impact. Still, students of labor history will relish this enthusiastic chronicle of a victory for ordinary workers.

December 1, 2020
McClelland, a historian, journalist, and author of numerous books (Young Mr. Obama, 2010; Nothin' But Blue Skies, 2013), traces the story of the Flint, MI, workers who advocated for collective bargaining and for better work benefits against General Motors (GM) in the 1930s. Home to GM, one of the world's biggest corporations at the time, Flint propelled the automobile industry and was known as Vehicle City. Over time, labor concerns and strikes began to increase among auto workers who demanded better work benefits. McClelland here examines the conflicts and negotiation processes precipitated by these workers, using oral histories, memoirs, interviews, and newspapers. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in the presidential cabinet, is spotlighted in this fascinating labor struggle. Readers interested in American labor and social history will find McClelland's engagingly written, informative work a key to understanding the voices and roles of those who advocated for better working conditions for all working-class people.

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January 1, 2021

The sit-down strike that swept through General Motors plants in Flint, MI, in 1936 was one of the landmark events in the American labor movement. Journalist McClelland provides a step-by-step account of this strike and the negotiations that ultimately led to the establishment of collective bargaining rights for the United Auto Workers. Drawing from accounts of conditions in the plants before and during the strike, McClelland provides vivid depictions of the experiences of workers contrasted with a detailed look at the negotiations between the union, the company executives, and state and federal government officials. While McClelland briefly discusses labor struggles in other industries, the focus here is kept tightly on the auto industry and the Flint strike. Some of the most effective parts of the book are the portraits of key figures in the strike, including Michigan Governor Frank Murphy; Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins; and Genora Johnson, who organized the wives of striking workers. VERDICT McClelland's engaging, readable account is a solid introduction to the rise of the labor movement in the 1930s. Recommend for readers interested in labor history and especially for those looking for a reminder of the power that workers can have when they negotiate collectively.--Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2021
An account of an unprecedented 1930s strike that tested the power of factory workers. In 1908, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Cadillac, and Chevrolet merged to become General Motors, making Flint, Michigan, the nation's automobile capital. Now better known for its scandalous water crisis, Flint in the 1930s became famous as the birthplace of the United Auto Workers, which mounted a 1936 sit-down strike that ended in workers' success. Drawing on newspaper reports, memoirs, and oral histories of more than 100 strikers, McClelland uses present-tense narration to create a sense of immediacy and tension among workers locked in their plant, the Flint community in upheaval, and the protracted process of frustrating negotiations. Efforts to unionize had repeatedly failed, not least because GM "spent nearly $1 million on Pinkerton spies to infiltrate the workforce and report on union activity." The advent of the steel-body car, which led to the speedup of the assembly line, intensified workers' discontent; finally, they agreed to a sit-down strike, "more effective than walking out of a plant because if workers abandon their machinery, the bosses can hire scabs to get it running again." McClelland creates lively portraits of the many players in his well-populated history: among them, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan (later benefactor of the grant-giving Sloan Foundation and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), who was "by his own admission, a 'narrow man' with no interests whatsoever outside the business world"; Franklin Roosevelt's feisty labor secretary, Frances Perkins; and Michigan governor Frank Murphy, an advocate for a strong labor movement to rein in the profit system. A champion of unions, McClelland attributes their successes to the rise of the now-beleaguered middle class and urges a renewal of union activity. "A sit-down strike is not an obsolete tactic," he writes. "The blueprint for better working conditions, and for a revival of the middle class, is in this book." A spirited history of labor's triumph.

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