United States 1987

Synopsis

General Motors (GM) introduced the team concept of labor management into the Van Nuys, California, Camaro and Fire-bird assembly plant in May 1987 in the hopes it would boost production. At the time, GM was facing triple troubles: (1) sagging sales due to foreign and domestic competition; (2) a mobilized Van Nuys United Auto Workers (UAW) Local union with a mission to keep the plant open and a threatened boycott of GM in the Los Angeles market if it did not—plus the Local was hotly divided on the team concept as the solution; and (3) the threat of a general UAW strike if GM did not agree to a new three-year contract that included job guarantees and other benefits that the UAW had just won from Ford. In the end, GM and the UAW did sign a three-year contract, during...