In the strike-turned-lockout, Deere workers showed enormous determination to defend their jobs and living standards, while the UAW did everything to undermine and sabotage their fight.
With PATCO, history exposed as unviable and bankrupt a labor movement that based itself on anti-communism, defense of the profit system and nationalism.
Trumka embodied the reactionary instincts of a corrupt and privileged labor bureaucracy, steeped in anti-communism and nationalism, that long ago separated the unions from any connection to the defense of workers.
Paul Schrader’s 1978 crime and social drama about workers in a Michigan auto plant still resonates under contemporary conditions.
