or force, working in a shared environment--and also, due to the nature of the assembly line, an almost inevitably regimented environment.
Much of the history of labor relations in the automobile industry stems from these characteristics. Entire communities have had much of their working population employed by a plant, and thus sharing an employer and a working experience. These conditions, we may suggest, are highly conducive to labor solidarity; thus the United Automobile Workers has tended to be one of the strongest of American labor unions.
A comparison may be made here to that familiar stereotype of the "service economy," the fast-food restaurant. Both industries involve mostly low-skilled work under fairly regimented conditions. But individual fast-food outlets employ only a relative handful of workers, and outlets and employees are scattered through a community, having little contact with one another. If a worker is fired from one outlet, news of the firing is unlikely to spread. A work stoppage at one outlet might have dramatic short-term impact on that outlet, but an imperceptible one on the industry or community as a whole.
In contrast, if a worker at an auto plant is fired under circumstances that other workers regard
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