Anxiety Comes to the Auto Capital

DETROIT LETTER

In the Spring number of DISSENT Lewis Coser wrote:

“Granted that we are not soon likely to repeat the catastrophe of the 1930’s. Yet what matters for an understanding of the mood of the nation is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, cannot be sure that they will be working next month; that many more can be sure they will not be working full weeks; that slowly the prospect of pink slips and grey faces seems real again. No one wants it; everyone dreads it; but… there is a strong feeling in the air that once again we are being shaped by those mysterious forces of capitalist society which can bring misery or sometimes plenty, but never a sense of human autonomy and decision.”

I quote this passage because it is so appropriate to what is taking place in Detroit today. By now it is widely known that this motor city is listed by the Labor Department as a “distressed labor area”; that 140,000 workers are unemployed here; that unemployment compensation checks are terminating at the rate of about 2,500 a week; that, to cite but one example, the Dodge plant now employs only about 10,000 workers as compared to 30,000 last year; that many other plants are not working full weeks; that, finally, the auto manufacturers were far off the beam last December when they predicted prosperity would return with Spring and the robins.

The change from boom to recession is harassing workers unfortunate enough to be laid off, and is rapidly altering the attitudes and feelings of those still lucky enough to have jobs. For it must be remembered that during the past ten or twelve years auto workers have by and large enjoyed boom times, thanks to the war, the huge post-war backlog demand for cars, and later, Korea. During this long stretch of “permanent war economy” auto workers had prosperity, except for relatively short spells marked by strikes, rapid production conversion, and the recession in 1949. For almost a full decade living standards were geared to full pay checks, often with plenty of overtime thrown in.

“Since the war we bought a washing machine, a refrigerator, television. We paid down on a home, and have a car that’s less than five years old,” a Chrysler worker said. And what is true of this man’s family holds for thousands of other auto workers’ families in the metropolitan Detroit area. Thanks to the war and the installment plan, “workers never had it so good.” But considering all the bills that had to be paid, the weekly pay check lasted only till the next one was due, and often not that long. Workers with considerable seniority, and therefore less subject to short layoffs, could continue their payments and even accumulate a little nest egg; but younger workers, those “last hired and first laid off,” found it more difficult to meet their financial committme...