Michigan Safety Net for Boomers Frays on Bankrupt Detroit

There’s a made-in-Michigan quality to Art Reyes, a third-generation autoworker with a pension, retiree health benefits and income that enabled him to send three of his four children to college.

He’s a product of the old Michigan, which gave birth to organized labor, worker protections and wages that propelled the middle class. That Michigan is almost gone. Now overseeing the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy in Detroit, the state is at the forefront again, this time playing host to the unraveling of the homemade fabric that cloaked and comforted working families for generations.