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General Motors And United Auto Workers Union (UAW)

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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 …show more content…

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

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