Grand Designs

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, plant closings, bitter labor disputes, and manufacturing relocations profoundly and often disastrously influenced the lives of workers, unions, and communities in the Midwest. This volume tells the stories implicit in that process.

Grand Designs: The Impact of Corporate Strategies on Workers, Unions, and Communities presents case studies from throughout the Midwest. The contributors look at tire manufacturing in Akron, Ohio; corn products in Clinton, Iowa; Wisconsin Steel Company in Chicago; an Ingersoll-Rand heavy bearings plant in South Bend, Indiana; a steel foundry in East Chicago, Indiana; an American Crane subsidiary in St. Paul; Iowa Beef Processors in Nebraska; and the Calumet Project around Gary, Indiana. Taken together, these case studies describe the effective dismantling of much of our nation's postwar productive structure and industrial relations system.

Beyond documenting the damage that has been done, Grand Designs articulates the conditions under which local labor–community coalitions can win important victories. If they are adequately informed and organized, such coalitions can play a crucial part in revising the terms of the national debate over public policy on labor and economic issues.