2018: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, General Motors workers in the U.S. and Canada learned of the company's announcement that it would be idling five plants and cutting around 14,000 jobs. In this urgent, multi-episode series, we will be talking to workers at plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. In Part II, we talk to Lilly and Sean, Tier 2 and Tier 3 workers at the GM plant in Hamtramck, and we talk to Beau, a salaried worker at the GM Metal Center in Pontiac, about the announced closure of the historic Hamtramck plant and the ripple effects this announcement is having for workers across Michigan.
Additional links/info below...
- Neal E. Boudette, New York Times, "G.M. to Idle Plants and Cut Thousands of Jobs as Sales Slow"
- CBS News, "GM Layoff Announcement Sparks Outrage - and Stock Increase"
- Norb Franz, Macomb Daily, "GM to Shutter Warren Transmission and Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plants, Cut 14,700 Jobs"
- John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, "GM Hamtramck Plant Closing Reopens Old Controversy in Detroit"
- Detroit News, "The GM Strike that Changed the U.S. Workplace"
- Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City
- Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
- Daniel J. Clark, Disruption in Detroit: Autoworkers and the Elusive Postwar Boom
- Leslie Barrett, WFMJ, "'Drive It Home' Campaign Continuing to Help Save GM Lordstown Plant"
- Good Jobs Nation website
- #Shame Campaign website
Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)
- Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
- Evie Sands, "Shine for Me"
- Great White Buffalo, "Detroit"
- The Tall Pines, "Fire in my Bones"