"Let's Make Detroit a Union Town": The History of Labor and the Working Class in the Motor City

Abstract

For most of the twentieth century Detroit was considered one of America's premier labor towns, if not the labor movement's capital city. Historic strikes were staged in the Motor City, landmark contracts were negotiated with metropolitan employers, and Detroit-based labor leaders rose to national prominence. Organized labor has made a considerable impact on the economic, political, and social structures of the city, as well as state and federal politics. Indeed, the labor movement's triumphs and failures are woven into the fabric of daily life in modern Detroit. In 2001 there are still more than 350,000 union members in metropolitan Detroit. Simply stated, the labor movement has had a tremendous effect on the development of modem Detroit. Beyond the institutions of organized labor, Detroit has been a haven for the working class since its founding in 1701. During its first one hundred years, the village on the narrows of the Detroit River was home to farmers, trappers, fur traders, voyageurs, and soldiers. Detroit began the nineteenth century as a frontier outpost and finished it as one of America's industrial powerhouses. By 1890 it was a city with a diverse economy, famous for producing cast-iron stoves, railroad cars, cigars, ships, and pharmaceuticals? industries that employed thousands of men and women. During the next twenty-five years Detroit transformed itself into the automobile capital of the world, the undisputed Motor City, a city with hundreds of thousands of automotive jobs, both skilled and unskilled Moreover, millions of working class immigrants from around the wodd and migrants from within the United States have made Detroit their destination, a place where ambitious, hardworking people could find work and pursue the American dream. Organized labor has existed in Detroit since the formation of craft unions for typographers and cordwainers in the 1830s, but until the Great Depression of the 1930s the city's labor movement had low membership and limited strength. Until then, Detroit was considered an open-shop town. By 1935 the dismal economic situation, mass unemployment, and increasing worker unrest became catalysts for federal