Kept the Old Girl Running Another Good Ten Year
VAN NUYS BLOG SUPPLEMENTARY 3 It is a civilization gone with the wind, but in every decline and fall there are heroes.
I’ve been looking for the nails in Van Nuys’s coffin as far back and away as Iroquois Schenectady; one might have looked a bit closer in time and space. This morning I found a great article on http://counterpunch.org about how the hard-working middle-class of the Valley fought for their very existence in 1982 by insisting that the common wealth of the community was the point of enterprise, and its needs are more important than any pencil-head corporation’s balance-sheet shenanigans.
GM’s Van Nuys Assembly opened in 1950 and employed thousands of United Auto Workers until 1992, when the plant closed. Management had planned to shut down a decade earlier, but the Valley community supported the union, our local politicians supported the union, and one of Studio City’s greatest union men ever, Ed Asner (RIP) was turned like a Lou Grant bulldog on GM’s shiny-balloon CEO:
Eric Mann goes on to describe what sounds like a barnburner of a bargaining session:
The decade that began with chants that “the people united can never be defeated” ended, of course, with a great sucking sound.
GO I.A.T.S.E!
The Valley Village View 