Further Reading
Dal Co, Francesco, Kurt Forster, and Hadley Arnold.
Frank O. Gehr y: The Complete Works. New York:
Monacelli Press, 1998.
Gehry, Frank, et al.Frank Gehr y, Architect. New York:
Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2003.
Johnson, Jinny.Frank Gehr y in Pop Up. San Diego,
Calif.: Thunder Bay Press, 2007.
Sara Vidar
See also Architecture; Art movements; Burning
Man festivals; Christo; Feng shui; Graves, Michael;
Koons, Jeff; Mall of America; National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Mu-
seum; Sustainable design movement.
General Motors strike of 1998
The Event An eight-week strike at two General
Motors automobile parts factories results in the
temporary layoff of thousands of workers and
the closing of most of the company’s plants in
North America
Date June 5-July 30, 1998
Place Flint, Michigan
The strike, one of the costliest in U.S. histor y, represented the
longest work stoppage by autoworkers since 1970. The
strike’s underlying issues, the corporate outsourcing of jobs
overseas and outsourcing to nonunion, lower-wage facto-
ries within the United States, affected millions of American
workers in the 1990’s.
On June 5, 1998, all 3,400 employees at a General
Motors (GM) metal parts factory in Flint, Michigan,
walked out. This stamping plant produced essential
parts for GM factories throughout the United States,
Canada, and Mexico, including fenders, hoods, and
engine cradles. Workers were outraged when man-
agement hired outside contractors to secretly re-
move essential equipment, thereby breaking its
promise to invest $180,000 to upgrade machinery at
the factory.
Workers feared that their plant would be closed;
thousands of jobs had already been cut. Overall in
Flint (GM’s “hometown”), GM jobs had declined
from 78,000 in 1980 to 33,000 in 1998. Plans called
for more cuts even as GM was building new assembly
plants in China, Thailand, Poland, and Argentina.
National Repercussions Workers saw their local
strike in national and international terms. Accord-
ing to United Auto Workers (UAW) national leader-
ship, GM was ignoring its social contract with Amer-
ica by transferring jobs, technology, and capital
overseas. The issues of downsizing, outsourcing,
speedups, excessive workloads, and the spinning off
of union jobs to lower-paid, nonunion suppliers
struck a deep chord with the public. With the pas-
sage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) in 1993, it was far easier for U.S. corpora-
tions to relocate production abroad. Most newspa-
per coverage and public reaction to the strike was
supportive of the workers.
On June 11, another 5,800 workers at a nearby
spark plug and speedometer plant also went on
strike. GM had cut its workforce in half over the pre-
vious decade. In both cases, workers struck over lo-
cal issues. However, the two strikes quickly gained
national attention. They demonstrated that unions
still retained significant power to cripple production
far beyond their local workplaces. Within the first
week, GM laid off 50,900 workers. Because of its new
“lean production” model and “just-in-time” inven-
tory system, GM had no stores of the critical parts
produced by the two plants. By the end of the bitter,
fifty-four-day strike, 9,000 striking workers had shut
down 90 percent of GM facilities in North America.
For over a month, 189,000 GM workers were laid off,
along with tens of thousands of workers at GM’s in-
dependent supply companies.General Motors’ Response Between 1990 and
1998, twenty-two strikes occurred at GM factories.
Although each focused on specific local issues, they
reflected common concerns over job security and
disinvestment, rather than wages or benefits. In
1996, a seventeen-day strike at two brake parts facto-
ries had forced GM to temporarily lay off 178,000
workers.
During the 1998 strike, GM executives insisted
that in order to stay competitive, the company had to
become more efficient. GM was at a particular disad-
vantage. Its two main competitors, Ford and Chrys-
ler, faced less foreign competition because they de-
rived most of their profits from the sale of pickups
and minivans (which few foreign companies pro-
duced). In contrast, GM sold mostly cars and thus
faced heavier pressure from imports. GM also pro-
duced more of its own parts.The Nineties in America General Motors strike of 1998 357