This fall didn’t just bring colorful leaves and cooler temperatures — it brought a wave of labor activity to Detroit and the surrounding area.
Labor strikes in the automotive, health care and casino industries started in September, and thousands of workers in metro Detroit are still striking.
“Detroit is a union town,” Art Reyes III, executive director of We the People MI, said. “Working-class people here know that direct action gets the goods. And right now, people are claiming their spot in a long legacy of worker power. It’s beautiful to see.”
Strikes are woven into the fabric of the city. Successful strikes can lead to other strikes and encourage workers to fight for better working conditions. Labor experts say that’s the gist of what’s happening in the city. But many Detroiters are left with questions about the mechanics, importance and impact of labor strikes. We have some answers for you.
Strikes have an impact on individual industries and the broader economy. Because labor strikes are adversarial and each side uses information to gain leverage, it can take a lot of work to tease out what exactly the effects are.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against Detroit’s Big Three automakers, for example, hurt those companies financially. One estimate says they lost a combined $4.3 billion in revenue during the strike. The automakers had made nearly $21 billion in profit in the first six months of 2023, just before UAW...
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