The United Auto Workers is a union that has had great power and prestige over the years since its founding. It worked to organize auto workers, represented their interests, and addressed a variety of political and social issues of interest to these workers. The organization has had a number of reverses in recent years because of a downturn in the American automobile market, caused in part by the success of the Japanese industry at making inroads into the American marketplace. The UAW has been faced with a number of failed strikes, with plant closings across the country, and with reduced union membership and power throughout American life. At the same time, the organization has continued to support legislation of interest to workers and to address various political issues with whatever power it could muster. While the future of the automobile industry and thus of the UAW is far from certain, it is evident that the UAW has no intention of giving up its fight to preserve jobs and improve the industry.
The history of the UAW is bound in interesting ways with the history of General Motors, the largest auto company in the country when the UAW was formed and the company with which the UAW would spar right up to the present day. General Motors at the time had been put together by William Crapo Durant from a coalition of struggling companies. He made it into the world's second largest auto manufacturer by 1920, a corporation then worth $350 million and employing 100,000 workers. At that time, the workers in American industry still labored in isolation and anonymity. There had been an attempt to form an auto workers union. As early as 1891 there had been an International Union of Carriage and Wagon Workers affiliated with the Knights of Labor. The carriage industry gave way to the fledgling auto industry, and the union tried to make the transition by changing its name and organizing mission as the Union of Carriage, Wagon and Aut...