Michael Moore: After UAW Unionized Michigan in the 30s, Everyone Had Free Health Care, Cars, Houses

RUSH EXCERPT:

MOORE: "Yeah, right. Let me put it a different way. Where you're sitting right now, Chris, you're sitting in the city that created the middle class. Before the great sitdown strike of 1936-37 in Flint, Michigan there was no middle class. There was the rich and then everybody else worked seven days a week, including their 12 and 14-year-old children. That's what it was until this town said no more and the workers took over the factories for 44 days in the middle of winter, GM shut off the heat, they shut off the water, they brought in all these -- they got the National Guard to come in. There were machine guns lining these -- right outside this building here. And the people of Flint would not give up, they would not relent and at the end of 44 days they got the first major contract ever for an industrial corporation, had to recognize a union. And because of that, because we got the union in this town, it was like dominos all over the country, everybody else started striking, everybody else got unions. And by the time of the next generation, the children of these men and women, they had full and free health care, no deductibles, no co-pays, full and free dental care. They had free eyeglasses and vision. If you were a member of the UAW, you got a free lawyer if you ever needed a lawyer, you got a free lawyer from the union. I mean, they got to send their kids to college. Everybody got to buy a house if they wanted to. They had a couple cars. They had a cottage up north. And all without -- with maybe not even a high school education. They created the middle class of this country right here in this town."