American Reindustrialization: Industrial Work in the American Rust Belt

• In Event: 397 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Shifting Labor Conditions in the Wake of the Great Recession

Abstract

American car manufacturing based in and around Detroit --which used to be called the Big Three and is now called the Detroit 3-- has been restructured fundamentally with the two-staged bailout program initiated in the final weeks of the Bush administration and continued under the Obama administration. Eventual bankruptcy and controlled reorganization of GM and Chrysler reshuffled the cards on and off the shop floor and altered labor-capital dynamics at an unprecedented level. New ‘bailout’ policies ushered in a two-tier wage system, where higher tier workers' wages are frozen while new hires start with wages equal to non-union transplants. The bailout exposed a host of generational differences, including vastly different expectations around labor processes and compensation between long-time employees and recent hires. Additionally, changes in benefit structure altered the conditions of social reproduction. However, while the bailout 'saved' the industry from a complete shut down, it also paved the way for American reindustrialization. In this paper, I will present findings from my ethnographic work based in Buffalo, New York, and discuss the meanings of such transformation in the context of deindustrialization, which provides an ideal setting for reindustrialization, and debate implications for working class subjectivity under globalization.

Author

• Evren Mehmet Dincer, Cornell University