The Great Divergence

I?ll grant you that an economy built around large industrial companies like U.S. Steel and General Motors was easier to unionize than an economy built around smaller post-industrial companies like Wal-Mart and Apple. (By ?large? I mean companies that employ lots and lots of people; clearly Apple can hold its own in any profit-based comparison.) But even in its mid-20^th-century heyday, U.S. Steel wasn?t the only steel company in America, or General Motors the only auto company. Those companies had competitors, too. In my book I use Walter Reuther?s career as autoworker, union activist, and eventually president of the United Auto Workers to describe the labor movement?s rise from the 1930s to the 1950s. GM and Chrysler yielded to the UAW?s sit-down strikes in 1937, but Ford held out until 1941. (Reuther himself got beaten up by Ford company goons when he tried to distribute UAW leaflets at Ford?s River Rouge plant.) During those four years GM and Chrysler, both union shops, managed to stay in business even though they were competing against the nonunion Ford.

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