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The key reasons for GM's decline, for their near abandonment of Flynt and Detroit, and opening of factories in Mexico and elsewhere were the cost of labor and the even more ruinous union work rules. Those rules diminished productivity, encouraged abuse, and made even routine management tasks absurdly difficult.

For example, GM workers would often hit the bars before going to work, get their report pay, then check out as sick and go back to the bars. Management could not challenge them on it. To fill in gaps in the assembly line workforce, reliable workers would get held over or called in, which then resulted in ruinous overtime rates and charges. When management complained, the unions insisted that GM had bad factory line managers and needed to hire more people.

In the 1980s, Reagan era free trade policies let in a flood of cheaper and better performing car models from Japan. This forced GM and Ford into wrenching layoffs and reorganizations, with much of their production being moved to non-union factories and contractors. Thus the decline of Flynt, Michigan.

Michael Moore made a fortune from Roger and Me. For liberals of that era, it offered an alternate universe that let them avoid the issues of out of control unionism in favor of old-fashioned corporation bashing.