Labor Since The Overpass

Newsweek, August, 2005 by George F. Will

Dearborn, Mich.--A suitable venue for contemplating organized labor's current disarray is here, at the footbridge over Miller Road. In 1937 it led to the main entrance of the foremost example of America's manufacturing might--the Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge plant, then the world's most fully integrated car-manufacturing facility, from blast furnaces to assembly line. Five years later the plant would exemplify America as the "arsenal of democracy." It made jeeps, tanks, trucks and engines for B-24 bombers. But on May 26 the footbridge to the plant made history.

"The Battle of the Overpass," a heroic event in American labor history, began when Walter Reuther, president of UAW Local 174, and three colleagues started across the footbridge to distribute leaflets as part of...

Read the full article with a Free Trial at MyWire.

Premium Content Partnership | MyWire provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.