Work was divided into fractured tasks performed over and over again. Anyone could perform the work, which was numbing and repetitive. This seemed to strip the workers of the status of skilled tradespeople and to isolate them from each other. And in fact, the old guard of the labor movement in the AFL was unable to analyze these developments, unwilling to embrace the new situation, and unprepared to see the promise and opportunity for organizing the workers in this new arena of labor. However, the working class pushed the struggle beyond the nominal leaders, starkly showing that the essence of the struggle between labor and capital always remains the same.
New conditions provide new potential, new avenues for the class struggle.
Today the mass of industrial workers is giving way to service workers, part-time and contract workers. Welfare recipients, mostly women, are being forcibly made into workfare workers. The ruling class seems confident that none of them can be organized. New tactics will emerge as the new workers find ways to fight for their rights. That's one of the lasting lessons of the Flint sit-down strike.