Taking on General Motors: A Case Study of the Campaign to Keep Gm Van Nuys Open

Description

TAKING ON GENERAL MOTORS is the story of UAW Local 645 in Van Nuys, California. The union, faced with GM’s threat of a plant closing since 1982, has kept its plant open through an aggressive community-based coalition threatening GM with a Los Angeles Area boycott of its products. It is also the story of the union’s embattled response to GM’s introduction of a new labor system, “the team concept” – which some see as a chance for greater worker participation and others see as an effort to involve the workers in breaking their own union.