Upvoted. I lived in Detroit and remember the news articles even from the early 2000’s with workers clocking in, then leaving and spending their shift drinking at strip clubs. Naturally the unions protected them.
I remember the UAW contract then where existing new hires kept their equivalent to $50/hr total comp and all new hires after that got $16/hr. The union more than willing to throw new workers under the bus to keep the older workers happy. Worker solidarity be damned - “fuck you I got mine”
American auto companies deserved to die. It was an absolute pit of rot and sloth. And I fully blame management too - they went along with it because it was the easy thing to do and ignoring union problems still let them meet their targets.
North Carolina is in a tie with South Carolina for lowest unionization in the US. The textile mills promised workers if they didn't unionize they would be OK. They didn't, yet the textile mills closed up and left the country any how. After years of low pat they are now low skilled workers with little savings in a town without industry.
In Detroit, workers like Larry Page's grandfather battled during 1930s strike and wound up making a good living. He sent his son to college, and his son founded Google, holding aloft the improvised weapon his grandfather made in the 1930s UAW strike.
The difference is when Detroit was a union town, it produced grandsons like Larry Page. Burlington, North Carolina was never a union town and it was working class then and nowadays over one third of those under 18 are under the property line.
Also Detroit was in a union state when one-income families with the breadwinner working 40 hours a week owned a home, had a car (or two) working in a factory. Now Detroit is not in a union state, it is in a so-called right-to-work state.
