SHEVYs and BUIKKS and FORDZ, oh my! Get your HTROD craze on in the city that started it all!
Today marks 111 years since the Studebaker strike: regarded as the first major labor action in the auto industry. It's nearly unthinkable today that unionization was still prohibited at the time, with no legal protections against termination simply for trying to stand up for your rights with your fellow co-workers. Studebaker employees at their #3 plant on Jefferson Avenue had enough: thousands walked off during shift and marched on Studebaker's headquarters at the Piquette Avenue factory—the birthplace of the Model T—demanding 8-hour workdays, a restoration of weekly pay schedules, equitable pay rises, and other general improvements to working conditions.
Unfortunately for the strikers, Detroit had no shortage of people desperately in search of work at any wage, and within a few days Studebaker had replaced many strikers with new hires, as well as tempting some strikers back with marginal pay rises. Although generally considered a tactical failure for Studebaker's striking employees, it could be seen as something of a strategic victory for the labor movement at large: fearing further, more intense labor-dispute related disruption, Detroit's manufacturing firms—most notably Ford, the city's largest employer—would end up quickly implementing many of the strikers' demands: with Ford nearly doubling worker salaries, 8-hour workdays becoming industry-standard, and eventually, unions being able to negotiate directly with employers, setting the conditions right for the rise of the automobile in the interwar and post-World War 2 eras.
Join the Cleveland ARTCC after your shift in celebration of this major milestone in the Motor City's industrial heritage!
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MSFS (payware:) IniBuilds
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