Your Grandpa's 1950's Auto Industry

In his book Disruption in Detroit: Autoworkers and the Elusive Postwar Boom, author Daniel Clark draws on oral interviews with retired UAW members and archives of regional newspapers to show that the mythology surrounding autoworkers during the postwar years was far removed from the lives these men and women actually lived.
It is a bedrock American belief: the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers. Flush with high wages and enjoying the benefits of generous union contracts, these workers became the backbone of a thriving blue-collar middle class.
It is also a myth. Daniel J. Clark began by interviewing dozens of former autoworkers in the Detroit area and found a different story--one of economic insecurity marked by frequent layoffs, unrealized contract provisions, and indispensable second jobs. Disruption in Detroit is a vivid portrait of workers and an industry that experienced anything but stable prosperity. As Clark reveals, the myths--whether of rising incomes or hard-nosed union bargaining success--came later. In the 1950s, ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, and auto company executives recognized that although jobs in their industry paid high wages, they were far from steady and often impossible to find.
To obtain a copy of Professor Daniel Clark's book Disruption in Detroit: Autoworkers and the Elusive Postwar Boom, visit Illinois University Press: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34xdq6sx9780252042010.html
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