When I first started reading Chapter 7 of America's Assembly line it made it seem like the common "we" they kept bringing up was the white man. However, as I kept reading I realized that it wasn't just the white men who were affected. Leading up to the 1960's and 70's automation began taking over the jobs of blue collar workers. Usually these blue collar workers were poorer and were people of color which already shows how intersectionality is relevant. The robots started taking the place of poorer people of color first just because of their identities and abilities. These poorer people had less schooling and less abilities so when they needed workers to man the machines, they weren't able to do these jobs because they didn't have the skills to do so (162). The article even goes to state that in the 1950's "industrial production rise 43%, but the number of blue-collar workers fell by 10%" which is completely absurd as these people were becoming unemployed due to their identities (164).
In the 1960's Samuel Gompers declared that the rise in technology had led to unemployment in "mill towns, mining towns, textile towns". This also shows how blue collar workers were becoming unemployed due to the fact that they did not have the skills as they weren't as educated enough to work the machinery.
In the 1970's automotive workers were striking due to the conditions they had to suffer through in factories. These unions were usually led by "older white ethnic workers" who had more of the skilled jobs. These people were not giving the younger workers, "many of them unskilled African Americas or immigrants", the right to share their opinions and arguments (177). This even further showed how intersectionalities of being a person of color and unskilled led to not even having a voice in the strikes that were supposed to make their work life a little easier. So once again, these workers were not able to voice their opinions. Furthermore, if you a women of color, there would be even more suppression.
As younger people started entering the workforce, they began to be more racially assertive and less manipulable as said by Malcolm Denise (Ford's VP of Labor Relations) (178). As more and more automation began entering the automotive industry, people were beginning to get more and more hurt. "A ten hour day became standard" which meant that this started to isolate older people who weren't able to keep up with that pace as their abilities weren't as great as the younger generation (179). This is another example of the intersectionality that happened in the automotive industry. In fact, the average age of the assembly line in Lordstown was 28 (179).
Lastly, the rise in automation in the automotive industry led women workers in Ford's plant in Britain to strike for equal pay as they were doing equal work to the men (180). Women were getting paid a lot less just because of their gender and women of color were being paid even less that that which is another example of how intersectionality was hurting people's right and earnings. The fact that this is still an issue in the world today is astounding and needs to be dealt with right away.
Overall, the automotive industry was not a great place to work and the rise of automation led to a lot of people becoming unemployed a lot of which correlated to people with similar identities becoming alienated by the workforce.