The auto workers and their union did not cause the crisis of the auto industry -- after all, they had no control over the corporations' policies. True, the union in its heyday fought for and won higher wages and benefits, gains which between the 1940s and the 1970s spread throughout the economy to other unions and workers, raising living standards for us all. But workers and the UAW did not "price themselves out of the market" or "kill the goose that laid the golden egg" -- no, they challenged employers for a greater share of the profits and won. We all owe auto workers of that era for the living standards that workers achieved in this country. What the union failed to do, however, was develop a broader vision of workers' power. When confronted with other corporations competing in the market by using more modern plants and lower wages, the union had no plan. The UAW, like other unions, failed to build a genuine international labor movement to raise auto workers' wages in other countries. Nor did the union build a political movement in the United States to challenge the power of capital and to restrain competition. Nor did the UAW join with other unions to organize the great majority of unorganized U.S. workers.