Using industrial disputes to teach about economic geography

In this article I explore some aspects of the 1998 General Motors/United Auto Workers dispute to suggest that industrial disputes such as this can be used productively to teach about economic geography. In particular, the temporal and spatial aspects of the dispute's spread from two plants in Flint, Michigan, to the point where virtually all of General Motors' North American production was shut down can be used to teach about such important geographic concepts as relative location, the spatial scale at which social life is organized, diffusion, and the interconnectedness of places.