Winant’s writing about the struggles of Pittsburgh steel workers in the 70s and 80s strikes a chord, especially in the modern age, considering the potential changes to the labor structure AI may cause in the coming years to decades. From the article, one of the largest consequences of deindustrialization was, of course, the spike in unemployment following the rapid movement overseas in 1979 of the industry. Winant says “By 1980, American steel was running at only 50 percent capacity,” compared to the 78 percent it was at the year prior. The recycling came through multiple facets, with one of the most notable being the moving of workers from place to place to try to keep the good, reliable ones around for as long as possible. There’s a quote from Ed Stankowski that stood out to me involving this:
“I was mad. Mad at myself forhaving nothing but a beat-up Chevy to show for 25 years of living; mad at someone else, anonymous and distant, for taking away my job, birthright and heritage; and mad at myself again for having bought into it all, for having allowed myself to believe that steel was my birthright and heritage.” (Winant 188)
Around this time, the unemployment rate spiked to almost 20 percent, nearly doubling the worldwide rate of 10.8%, according to Winant. This mass influx of unemployed steelworkers showed off many risks: for one, the steel workers have a tough time finding any other jobs where they can make a similar amount to what they were making steel (specialized workers know how to do their job really well, hence the pay, and now that the industry has crashed, there’s essentially a near-useless gap in their resume for the last however-many years). Another giant risk was the lowered amount of cash able to be circulated through the economy, even with the attempts to help balance it out through the government’s introduction of social welfare and government assistance.
The attempts of the government to help were viewed as meager for many reasons. One, there was a large gap between the amount of money the government was willing to allot to families and the money the steelworkers were making at the time, leading to mass debt in the Steel Belt of the nation. Winant mentions that many local governments in the area drew a large part of their taxes from the steel industry, leading to a rapid decline in many of the basic services the government was used to offering their citizens. This caused the collapse of the steel industry to spread much farther than just the steel workers and rippled out to the populous at large in the affected areas.
Will Wright 