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Founded during The Great Depression, the UAW is now more than seventy years old. Henry Ford once supposedly said that the union would organize Ford (F) workers over his dead body. Ford is gone now. The company he founded may not be an independent enterprise much longer. Other players in the car company/union wars are also long gone. Walter Reuther, who became the head of the UAW in 1946 died in 1970. Jimmy Hoffa, the longtime head of the Teamsters, disappeared from the parking lot of a Detroit-area restaurant in 1975. Both were willing to press the case of their workers, even to the point of violence.
The war between the unions and The Big Three has lasted since Ford made his comment. There was some rapprochement when the Arab Oil Embargo crippled the industry in the early 1970s. But, unemployment in southeastern Michigan moved up to nearly 15% at the depth of the recessions in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. The union was anxious to claw back what it could for its members once the industry began to recover
