The Detroit Automobile Industry Boom To Bust 1903-2010

In 1904 Henry Ford founded Ford Motor Company, this led to the automobile craze of the early 20th century.  Rivals such as; W.C. Durant, Louis Chevrolet, Henry Leland,  David Dunbar Buil were quick to follow.

1950's

In the 1950's the City of Detroit had a population of 1,849,568. Detroit was the 5th largest city during this decade. The population was very diverse with large minority groups from southern europe.  Detroit was an industrial society.  A majority of the jobs in Detroit were manufacturing based.  The solid foundation of Detroit's manufacturing base was the automobile industry. Well-paying, unionized jobs were the norm in Detroit.  Detroit in large part had a large/skilled/ yet uneducated workforce that was led by strong union ties.

http://www.uaw.org/node/271

Union History

1960's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1Ejoe-Dedk

 This decade was the beginning of the end, of the glory days for the city of 313. Civil rights issue, politics, and the famous riots led to the quick demise to the city know as "The Paris of the midwest".

1967 Detroit riot, how the economy impacted the riot.
Direct info./source from http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/d_events.htm

Economic Inequality/Relative Deprivation

 Internationally recognized as a center of the automobile production, Detroit seemed to fare a little better economically than other American industrial cities in the immediate post-war era. But beginning in the 1950s, the big car manufacturers, Ford, Chrysler and GM began to automate their assembly lines and outsource parts production to subcontractors located in other municipalities and foreign countries. (Sugrue 1996:128) Detroit, like other cities, was deindustrializing and black workers, who had less seniority and lower job grades than white workers “felt the brunt” of this change. Young black men were particularly hard hit by the combination of deindustrialization with historical job discrimination in the automobile industry. According to historian Thomas Sugrue, young workers, especially those who had no post-secondary education, found that entry-level operative jobs that had been open to their fathers or older siblings in the 1940s and early 1950s were gone. “By the end of the 1950s, more and more black job seekers, reported by the Urban League, were demoralized, ‘developing patterns of boredom and hopelessness with the present state of affairs’ The anger and despair that prevailed among the young, at a time of national promise and prosperity, would explode on Detroit’s streets in the 1960s. (Sugrue 1996:147) Yet black Detroiters had higher incomes, lower unemployment rates and higher levels of education relative to their peers in other cities. Nonetheless these measures paled in comparison with the gaps in income, employment, and education in Detroit among whites and blacks. According to one long-time community activist, blacks in Detroit did not compare themselves to blacks in other cities. Rather, they compared themselves to whites in Detroit. Relative deprivation helped give rise to black militancy in Detroit.

Notes:

Walter Philip Reuther 

George Meany

• -Employment  at The Big Three rose from 700,000 in 1961 to 1,000,000 by 1966.
•  Besides high hourly wage rates and paid vacations, Reuther negotiated these benefits for his union: employer-funded pensions (beginning in 1950 at Chrysler), medical insurance (beginning at GM in 1950), and supplementary unemployment benefits (beginning at Ford in 1955). Reuther tried to negotiate lower automobile prices for the consumer with each contract, with limited success (The Brothers Reuther, P. 249)
• Reuther-  was president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from 1946 until his death in 1970. Under his leadership, the UAW grew to more than 1.5 million members.
• Meany modernized and expanded the national AFL-CIO, making the organization a powerful voice in the nation's political and legislative arena. Under his leadership, the American labor movement won unprecedented gains for ordinary working Americans
• In July 1968, The UAW decided to disaffiliate from the AFL-CIO
• During the 1960's the UAW continued to press for higher wages and other monetary returns, but improvements in working conditions received more emphasis. 
• History of strikes in Detroit in the 60's 
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