Second Shift: The Inside Story of the Keep GM Movement provides an intimate look at the five-year-long campaign to keep General Motors (GM) operating in Lansing, Michigan. The book, coauthored by former Lansing mayor Dave Hollister and Ray Tadgerson, who was instrumental to the campaign, along with two Michigan State University business professors, begins in 1996 with an infamous “knock on the door” of the mayor's office. A GM representative had arrived with both good news and bad news. The good news was that the Lansing assembly plant had been chosen as the site to build the new Oldsmobile Alero. The bad news was that GM planned to close the plant at the end of the Alero run, sometime in 2004–2005.

The impact of plant closure on the local community would be devastating. Lansing had been producing Oldsmobiles for nearly a century; the identity of the city was tied up with the brand. The plant employed seven thousand auto workers earning solid middle-class wages and could be directly tied to another twenty thousand jobs in the region. The impact of losing these jobs would ripple through the local economy. Even if the odds were long, Mayor Hollister knew he had to try to keep GM.

What ensued was a full-fledged, multi-pronged campaign to convince GM to stay in Lansing. Hollister led a fieldtrip to Toledo to learn how the “Toledo Loves Jeep” campaign had helped save its local plant. He formed the Blue Ribbon Committee to Retain GM comprised of local business, labor, education, and municipal leaders, as well as a smaller Quick Response Team to respond to immediate crises.

Ultimately, the effort to convince GM to reinvest in Lansing included two complementary components. The first was a public “Lansing Works! Keep GM!” campaign to build local support and pressure GM. The second involved constructing a business model that would demonstrate to GM the viability of the Lansing area to its future. This began with a bold plan by the Lansing plant manager, an ally in the effort, to launch the Alero on the plant's second shift—an unconventional choice intended to draw attention to the quality of the local labor force. Hence, the book's title: Second Shift.

The story of the campaign to save GM is framed as the implementation of a “second shift model” that the authors claim will work for “all communities and organizations that are challenged by the rapidly changing, technological, and global twenty-first-century economy” (p. 4). The model has six components, with a chapter of the book dedicated to each: identifying the challenge; partnering to build coalitions of interested parties; building and reconstructing strategies along the way; solving, i.e., constantly problem solving; celebrating small victories; and persevering through the challenges and obstacles of implementing the first five components.

Though the authors conclude the second-shift model to be “theoretically robust, practically relevant, and dynamically flexible,” they do not offer any evidence it is more than case specific (p. 202). And no attempt is made to place the model within any theoretical tradition. The book does not include a single citation or reference to previous literature.

The book is at its best when recounting the intricacies and challenges of the campaign, though the authors unnecessarily exaggerate the feats of the “Lansing Works! Keep GM!” campaign. The book repeatedly reminds readers that “in the entire history of General Motors, once the corporation announced a plant shutdown, it had never changed its mind” (p. 11). But that is not what happened in Lansing, either. The plant did close. The success of “Lansing Works! Keep GM!” was in enticing GM to reinvest in the Lansing area by building new plants to replace the old—a major accomplishment in and of itself.

Less obvious to the casual reader will be the incomplete historical context in which the story unfolds. While the authors recount the large number of GM plant closings of the 1990s, they make not a single mention of the “whipsawing” going on in the industry. By the time Hollister got word in 1996 that the Lansing plant would shut, GM had established its practice of extracting concessions from communities and local labor unions by forcing them to compete against one other to keep their plants open. In fact, it seems inconceivable that the local players in Lansing would have been unaware of GM's decision in 1992 to close its Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, only after the automaker very publicly whipsawed that facility against one in Arlington, Texas.

Understanding this history prompts questions not answered in the book. What regulatory changes, tax breaks, and financial support did the local communities and/or the state grant GM? What concessions to its local labor contract did UAW Local 652 negotiate with GM? In lieu of these details, readers are offered a clichéd “win-win” narrative in which all parties, from business groups to labor, and competing local municipalities come together to the benefit of all. Even GM seems to be simultaneously the object of and a partner in the endeavor.

In spite of these shortcomings, Second Shift is an informative memoir of a successful campaign to keep GM from abandoning a community of which it was a vital part. It is not a model all communities could have followed successfully; GM was cutting overcapacity and some locales were destined to lose out. But it is interesting to read just what it took to have a chance.