General Motors and United Auto Workers Union (UAW)
Long before collapse of General Motors in 2009, the company was a jewel in the crown of
America. It was the first company to make 1$ billion dollar in terms of revenue in a single
year (1950). Its Manufacturing facility were one of the largest in the America and its
portfolio contained cars for each and every type of customer. The company saw
tremendous growth till 1980’s post that its revenue and market share started declining
sharply owing to increased competition from Japanese and other automakers in globalized
The story of rise and fall of General Motors will be incomplete without special mention of
United Auto Workers Union which was one of the important stakeholder and influencer
during the whole
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This was the time when General Motors was seeing considerable growth in business. After
getting the recognition from General Motors, Union was able to successfully bargain for
increase in wages of workers in 1945. Since the business was booming such a measure in
increased workers morale and thereby improved the productivity of their Detroit unit.
General Motors post 1945 enjoyed consistent growth and United Auto Workers Union
played a very constructive role in birding the gap between management and shop floor
workers. Management enjoyed increased productivity, better cooperation, more product
introductions while workers enjoyed better working conditions and work security (pension
scheme for workers was launched).
Post 1980’s external environment for auto business changed drastically. Japanese
automakers like Toyota improved their production systems (using techniques like Lean
Manufacturing, Total Quality Management) and were flooding American markets with low
cost high quality products. To compete in such an environment General Motors needed