Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class

by Edward McClelland

Winner of the 2021 Midland Authors Book Award in HistoryIn a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of “the strike heard around the world” is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights.The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth. The causes for which the strikers sat down—collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages—enjoyed a half century of success. But now, the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since before the New Deal.Journalist and historian Edward McClelland brings the action-packed events of the strike back to life—through the voices of those who lived it. In vivid play-by-plays, McClelland narrates the dramatic scenes including of the takeovers of GM plants; violent showdowns between picketers and the police; Michigan governor Frank Murphy’s activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women’s Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins.The epic tale of the strike and its lasting legacy shows why the middle class is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and will guide our understanding of what we will lose if we don’t revive it.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Business, American History, Labor

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 2, 2021

About the author

Edward McClelland is the author of Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President, which will be published in October by Bloomsbury Press. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and on the websites Salon and Slate, among others. A graduate of Michigan State University, he lives in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood.

His previous books include Horseplayers: Life at the Track, and The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes."

Reviews

[Lydia Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone of any age, blue-collar or white-color should read and learn about this historic strike against General Motors to bring equal rights and pay to hardworking people. The author brings this story alive. When workers stand together as one and stand up for their rights it pays off. A hard struggle to get themselves to middle class in America. My young daughter works for a big box store where the pay is poor and the work is hard and tiring. I am giving this book to her to read. A must read. Great author.

[Sarah Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was born in Flint and attended many events at UAW halls in my youth due to my mother's activities in the Michigan Democratic Party. I had heard of the Flint Sit-Down Strike but didnt know more than it was a thing that happened. Anyway, great book that goes into the why the strike and unionization was necessary and why the autoworkers went through such lengths as to stay in an unheated factory in the winter for 44 days. Author ties it in to the similarities of Amazon employees and their fight for unionization today.

I was only more curious as to what happened to the American Communist Party ties, as the strike leadership were party members. Knowing how accepted communist party membership was in the USA starting in the 40s, I was hoping the author would expand a little more. Turns out that's a whole other fascinating part of the story about how the UAW switched leadership from communist to socialist and purged communists and any mention of ties from the union. Also the author touched on the anti-unionists being members of the Black Legion (Michigan's own special pirate-themed spin-off of the KKK) but didn't fully go down that crazy rabbit hole. I recommend reading this academic paper to learn more:

McCloud, Brandi Nicole, "Solidarity Forever: The Story of the Flint Sit-Down Strike and the Communist Party from the Perspective of the Rank and File Autoworkers" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1416. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1416

[Cromaine Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Midnight in Vehicle City was the November selection by Cromaine's Non-Fiction Book Club and we really enjoyed it! The book covers the sit-down strike of the Flint General Motors autoworkers in 1936-1937 that directly contributed to the development and empowerment of the UAW.

The book was certainly topical given the recent strike of autoworkers and we were surprised by both how similar the labor issues were and yet how different the response to the strike was. For instance, the wage disparity between the average line worker and the executives was one of the major points of contention in 1936 as it is now. However, it is hard (though perhaps not impossible) to image any strike today being met with National Guardsmen manning machine gun turrets and calls for removing peacefully striking workers through violence and essentially murder being seriously entertained by government officials today.

Overall, McClelland does a very good job of documenting the key moments and developments of the strike. However, this book does read a bit like a very long newspaper article or perhaps a textbook. Midnight in Vehicle City focuses on the developments and historical timeline of events rather than the human elements at play. While there are several key participants mentioned, they are rarely fleshed out and the readers won't really get to know them much as people beyond their job titles and affiliations. This is a fine approach for a history book, but did cause a few of our members from giving it five stars because it just wasn't as engaging as it otherwise could have been.

[Sharlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

With union membership and power declining this is a book everyone should read. Michigan, Flint in particular, was the home of the auto industry. And Flint became the place that was brave enough to take on GM and eventually win creating the heyday of the middle class when I was growing up. You'll feel as though you are in the sit-downs, in Washington with Secretary of Labor Perkins and FDR, and in Lansing with Mayor Frank Murphy who later became a Supreme Court Justice. Reads like a novel.

[Hassan Kourani · Rating 4 out of 5]

“America's greatest twentieth-century invention was not the air- plane, nor the atomic bomb, nor the lunar lander. It was the middle class. We won the Cold War not because of our military strength, but because we shared our wealth more broadly than the communists and, as a result, had more wealth to share. The communists boasted of creating a workers' paradise in the Soviet Union, but Michiganders lived in the real thing..”

[Zeb Kantrowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sub-title of this book tells you everything important that you need to know about this story. The sit down strike at the Fisher-One factory (where the car bodies were made for Chevrolet), force GM to sign their first contract recognizing the United Auto Workers of America (UAW-CIO). With guaranteed wages and increasing additional programs like health and pensions, for the period of 1940-1970 the American middle-class grew from this first contract.

In 1937 GM was the largest employer in the country and the Auto Industry was the leader in how other industries dealt with their Unions. These contracts led to the enormous growth that ever affected the working class in the creation of wealth for the average American. At one time almost one-third of the US workforce was unionized and worker bought single family houses, second homes, were able to send and pay for their children's college.

Today around 9% of workers are unionized and the two largest corporations (Walmart and Amazon) have no reason to give their employees raises or perks. Because just companies during the Great Depression, there are lots of people willing to work for lower wages, especially immigrants who don't understand how they are being exploited.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The use of simple present-tense to narrate the events of and surrounding the 1936-37 Flint sit-down strike gives this book extra - and timely - urgency. The epilogue brings the story home in a stark and striking way, referencing people and places within walking distance of my home. It's remarkable how little the anti-union rhetoric has changed in almost a century; my daily news feed at the department is filled with the same arguments lobbed at labor unions in the 30s now being used against teachers' unions. This book offers a path to resist that tide.

[Lukas Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and well researched; a timely read considering the multiple labor strikes presently ongoing in 2021.

“The shrinking of the middle class is not a failure of capitalism. It’s a failure of government. Capitalism has been doing exactly what it was designed to do: concentrating wealth in the ownership class, while providing the mass of workers with just enough wages to feed, house, and clothe themselves. That’s the natural drift of the relationship between capital and labor, and it can only be arrested by an activist government that chooses to step in as a referee…”

[Lynn Mark]

A 5 out of 5! I am from Flint so I may be biased. However, to actually learn how the middle class was created was fascinating. My grandfather was a sitdowner and told me many stories. This book mirrors the stories he told me.

[John Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both of my parents worked for GM and were proud members of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). This 2021 book details the impact of the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937, which was one of the most significant labor disputes in US history, impacting workers in all industries, and playing a key role in the establishment of the middle class.

Prior to the strike, the working conditions in Flint GM plants were very difficult. GM offered no health benefits, pension plan, unemployment, vacation pay and limited job security. The work was often hot and dangerous, as well as exhausting. The book notes that there in many cases there were no fans, no ventilation, no dust masks, no safety glasses and no bathroom breaks. Workers that could not keep up with their work when the lines were sped up often lost their jobs. A large number of workers were paid on a piecemeal basis, which meant they did not get paid when the line was not running.

UAW organizers were threatened and workers who joined the union were at great risk of losing their jobs. Nonetheless, there were meetings in homes, churches and businesses, where GM workers learned about the potential changes a union could bring about. Union membership grew slowly and eventually led to the sit-down strike, where production was stopped and a few hundred workers remained locked inside either a Fisher Body or Chevrolet plant for over a month. Mike Hamady and restaurants provided food for the strikers. GM turned off the heat in the plant to freeze them out. The police and National Guard had a strong presence outside the plants throughout the strike. Several people ultimately played a big role in bringing the strike to a conclusion – Union and GM leaders, Governor Murphy, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and even FDR.

The first contract ushered in several meaningful changes. The book was greatly enhanced by interviews with strikers that UM-Flint professor Neil Leighton conducted in the 1970’s and 1980’s. No doubt, many of us owe a considerable amount to the brave workers that spent over a month in a sit-down strike with an unrelenting determination to improve working conditions for their fellow workers. Their strike had an incredibly positive impact on future generations and I highly recommend this book.

[Jeff Pett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. Having grown up in downriver Detroit, the son of a small business owner, and eventual executive in a tier-1 auto supplier I have conflicting views about the value of unions. This book is a great recount of why unions were so necessary back in the early 1900s and, I would argue, why they continue to be necessary in the private industry sector.
My Dad started a small business in Wyandotte, MI in the early 60s and rather than fight the union organizing his warehouse he invited the Teamsters union in shortly after starting the company. I learned a ton about how negotiations work - and don't work - around the dinner table at night. For the most part the union and the businesses working with that local worked pretty well.
Fast forward to the late 1970s. I was a quality engineer for Prince Corporation and regularly went into GM, Ford, and Chrysler assembly plants to help solve quality/engineering issues with our products. What I saw was huge abuse by the UAW workers - getting paid huge hourly wages and taking turns sleeping on the storage racks along the line and generally doing as little work as possible and getting by. The corporate management gave in to union demands throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s seemingly thinking that it would all work out somehow. Meanwhile, our overseas competitors were able to eat our lunch on price and quality because they ran operations that had much lower costs of sales.
The author's epilogue reveals his union sympathies which are somewhat misplaced based on my first hand experience. Still, a well researched and well written book that I would recommend. Unions have their place but there needs to be some mechanism that creates a balance of power and business/government competitivity.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting. The author creates a compelling narrative by first giving a detailed description of life in Flint and the auto industry in the 1930s before moving to the story of the strike itself.

The author also does a great job of providing the perspectives from the view of the strikers, their families, especially their wives, to Gov. Murphy to Sec. Labor Perkins and President Roosevelt.

It should be noted that the book is largely from the perspective of labor. The author does not provide a great deal of insight into the views and mindset of corporate leadership or even managers at the factories. For example, the foreman at the factories are not really profiled except to be shown as villains who take advantage of workers and their families.

The book's pro labor bias is especially clear in the epilogue. The author makes some valid points about how unions made it possible for a middle class in the 1950-60s and into the 70s and the loss of union influence more recently and how their might be a role for unions now.

However, the author does not at all address the negative impact unions had on the auto industry and many actions of the unions contributed to the decline of the US auto industry (ie union opposition to vehicle modifications in the 1980s, refusing to reevaluate pension contributions).

overall an interesting read.

[Thomas Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a look back on history in the 1930's in Flint Michigan what was called at the time the second city of the auto industry. The amount of people coming in and being brought in made Flint the fastest growing industrial city in the nation. They were giving tickets away in the south to get workers to come man the GM plants. There were some many men that individuals had to rent beds by shifts. Everything here was controlled by the company, just like Pullman in Chicago and Carnegie in Pennsylvania. It was so bad the bosses could use any excuse to fire someone it did not matter because there was someone to replace you. Can you imagine having to go to your bosses house on the weekends and do yardwork for him just so you would stay in his good graces so he would keep your working. But eventually the workers have enough and proceed to take over the various plants in a sit down strikes. They shut down production from the 10's of thousands to handfuls if any any at all. This strike had a major effect on not only starting the UAW but the middle class in general. So give this a read and add to your labor history.

[Connor Coyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vivid and fast-paced telling of the "strike heard 'round the world," McClelland's new book on the Flint Sit-Down Strike brings the people who sheltered in stockaded factories with doors welded shut, as well as those who haggled in hotel meeting rooms over the future of American Labor, to life.

This is a great point of entry to a complicated subject, as many other books on the nascent UAW are written as a more comprehensive account and are filled with details that can overwhelm or even bore a casual reader. McClelland leaves a lot of that out, focusing like a laser on the people involved and the very real stakes for them.

The Epilogue deserves special attention. Just as Sidney Fine won plaudits for his nuanced history of the Sit-Down Strike by tying it thematically to the contemporaneous Civil Rights struggles of the late 1960s, McClelland draws clear and compelling lines between the events of 1936-1937 and the decline of unionism and the American Middle-Class in the early decades of the 21st century.

A quick but thoroughly worthwhile read.

[David Fulmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a historical account of the Sit Down strike in Flint Michigan in 1936-1937 which forced GM to recognize the United Automobile Workers of America and enshrined unionization in the automobile manufacturing industry. McClelland gives a brief section of background information about the auto industry and working conditions, describes the union leaders who were aiming to change it, and then launches into a minute-by-minute account of the strike that paralyzed General Motors for over a month, generated international headlines, and ultimately led to the unionization of hundreds of thousands of workers in the auto industry. The author draws on the papers and memoirs of GM executives, union officials, and government officials who were involved. He also quotes extensively from contemporary newspaper accounts (the strikers published their own newspaper during the strike) and even a diary kept by a striking worker. The result is a panoramic portrait of a unionization effort that changed the industry and, as the book cover claims, “created the middle class.”

[Liana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! So many lessons to draw from our past as we witness the rise of income inequality and modern robber barons monopolizing our government.
I got quite emotional during a couple parts in this book. The bravery, the solidarity and steadfast vision of these workers is truly inspiring.
While the book attempts to place political leaders from the FDR admin as central to the UAW negotiations, it actually reveals how timid politicians are when dealing with corporations. It’s strengthens the resolve that only militant rank-and-file unions can get the job done. My biggest historical critique is that the influence of the communist party in building up the CIO and hence the UAW are watered down - and even erased in the epilogue. Intellectual McCarthyism strikes again. However, I still recommend this book for anyone interested in one of the greatest and most influential labor strikes in American history.

[Lauren Barton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a good job describing the very interesting history of the 1936-1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. It was an event with ripple effects across the nation and it eventually led to the recognition of the United Autoworkers (UAW) Union and some improvements for workers. The author does well at weaving together the chronology and different perspectives of key players involved from the strike workers to union organizers to the governor and the federal executive managing labor relations. I'd really give it about 3.5 stars. It wasn't the same can't-put-down kind of nonfiction in some books, but it was very interesting and the ideas shared made me want to look up more detail about the events. Reading the history associated with the union was especially fascinating given that I was reading it while the current autoworkers were in the middle of striking now. Check it out....

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m looking forward to discussing the rise of, and future of the middle class with book club. But I’d stop short of recommending this book as definitive on the subject as the author primarily presents the timeline and details of the strike. Any analysis is confined to about 9 pages in the epilogue.

In the end, the author states “America’s greatest 20th century invention was not the airplane, nor the atomic bomb, nor the lunar lander. It was the middle class.” Then asks, “were the victories of the sit-down strike ephemeral, not just for Flint (the city that formerly modeled the strongest middle class although now has one of the highest poverty rates), but for the entire middle class? Did they benefit only the generation that won them, and the generation that followed?”

He then goes on to say that today American workers are back to where they were before the strike, in terms of income distribution. He cites middle class households falling from 62% to 43% in 40 years, and states that the wealthiest 1% now claims 19% of the nations income - their highest share since 1928. After the middle class symbolizing the American Dream, are we moving back toward the old-fashioned economic structure of aristocracy and peasantry?

No matter where you stand politically, the matter of equitable wages and benefits have great import for the future needs of society.

[Dori Sabourin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Stranger Comes to Town

Edward McClellan’s nonfiction book, “Midnight in Vehicle City” tells the story of Flint and how it became known as “Vehicle City."”

Flint became known as the Nation's leading transportation manufacturer; first, through building carriages, then as the home of General Motors.

McClennan relates how the United Auto Workers of America (UAWA) renamed UAW, came to Flint to help Auto Workers fight for their rights and how GM reacted to what they deemed interference in their operations.

Many atrocities occurred between the Union’s inception and how today strikes are handled.

[Reading · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a little odd. Told in the present tense (!), for 95% of its length it is a play-by-play of the strike.

The 6 page epilogue is where the author puts forth his analysis and opinions. It’s where the whole “birth of the middle class” aspect of the book comes up.

I was going to give it a 3 but then he spent the last two pages talking about how Amazon workers should unionize and do a sit down strike and bring global commerce to its knees. So that bumped it up for me a bit

[Jacquie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on the Sit-Down Strike of General Motors. An extremely well written book using newspaper articles and interviews to tell the story of what happened during the strike. It was never dry or hard to understand. Having grown up in Flint and heard about the strike I was still amazed at all the information I did not know. This book is a must!

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the development of the UAW, the changes it wrought on society and the current state of wages as unions have been weakened. When you look at $70,000,000 in the 1930's vs. wages it is so relevant to the income gap today.

[Clara Liang · Rating 4 out of 5]

important labor history, very dramatized. an engaging read

[Pat Dunnigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

One point of view.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

My grandpa was involved in this strike. It’s great to read the details and perspective. Thank you.

[Maneesh Goel · Rating 3 out of 5]

solidarity forever

[Kelsey Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting labor history that I didn't know about before.

[david mccreless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow amazing

It is jus amazing how far we have come. Now mgmt wants to regress to those days!!
SOLIDARITY, do not let this happen again!

[Luke Mohamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good starter into unions and establishment of the middle class. I didn't love the author's use of quoted dialogue for conversations that he was recreating.

[Vern Scott]

Good