Keeping in line with my previous post, I would like to explore more of Detroit’s history as an industrial powerhouse, and how Detroit’s factories impacted the city, and the individuals working within them. How did work life in factories evolve over time for employees in regards to issues like employee safety, working hours, salary, and who could work? Which parties were primarily responsible for these changes–workers unions or even unorganized employees, the employers and business owners themselves, or the government imposing new regulations?
I have located a report by the US bureau of labor statistics on work stoppages in the automotive industry from 1927-1958, and upon reading have found that the majority of the information within pertains to Detroit, and most of the rest to its neighboring cities within Michigan. This data comes as little surprise given what we have learned already about Detroit’s central and dominant role in automotive manufacturing. The source goes over every major work stoppage from 1927-1958 in the automotive industry, listing how many employees were involved, man hours lost, and the resolution and agreed upon terms for the ending of the stoppage. I believe the original intent of the source was to compile all these instances of labor stoppages in order to better analyze them, and thus prevent more stoppages in the future–this further evidenced by the existence of more volumes of these reports for various other US industries. This data will instruct the research by noting where stoppages occured, how often and for what length and how many employees were involved, with the added benefit of the resolutions being listed as well.
US Department of Labor. Work Stoppages: Motor Vehicles and Motor Vehicle Equipment Industry: 1927-1958. By James P. Mitchell, Ewan Clague, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Government Printing Office, 1959. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112101927975&view=1up&seq=1 (Accessed October 19, 2022)
