Detroit’s Financial Slide Linked to Exodus of Auto Industry
July 23,2013
Its nickname is the Motor City, but many of the automobile factories that gave Detroit that moniker are now hard to find inside the city limits. Detroit’s financial crisis is linked to the exodus of its auto industry, as it failed to achieve the economic diversity that helped other cities avoid bankruptcy.
At the height of Detroit’s boom in the mid 20th century, this plant manufactured Packard automobiles, employing about 40,000 people.
The promise of good pay and plenty of work at similar plants around the city attracted people like Tennessee native George McGregor in the 1960s. Today, he's president of the United Auto Workers Local 22 in Detroit.
“When I first came here, in the automobile factory, they were begging people to come. The hour rate was something like $3.25 an hour,” he recalled.
But the auto industry stopped begging when demand for American cars slowed and interest in foreign automobiles increased.
The Packard brand became extinct, and the hum of its once mighty factory is silent.
Crumbling buildings are part of one of the largest vacant industrial complexes in the world. They symbolize Detroit’s boom-to-bust story.
“There were about a dozen auto factories, and you know very large employers, and over time those have been shut down to now there’s only one left,” Scorsone said.
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