Once, autoworkers overcame even greater hardships than they face today
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for more than a half-century.)
This is not a happy time for American autoworkers. Their employers are cutting thousands of jobs, closing plants, and demanding and getting major pay and benefit concessions from their union.
Normally, February would be a time of celebration for the union, the United Auto Workers a time to mark the anniversary of a UAW victory in a sit-down strike in 1937 that led to making its members the world’s most secure and most highly compensated production workers.