The most important strike in American labor history, historians agree, began at the end of 1936. The feisty young United Auto Workers launched the first of a series of sit-down strikes against General Motors at Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint.

The goals were to earn recognition for the UAW as the bargaining agent for GM workers, and to make the company stop shipping work to plants with nonunion workers. The strike lasted 44 days and became the first of many union victories.

Union workers and sympathizers march toward a rally in Detroit's Cadillac Square in early 1937. The fledgling United Auto Workers were striking General Motor’s plants in Flint and other locations, and were encouraged when the Detroit rally drew 150,000 supporters.

This is much like today. Not only is work subbed (outsourced) out to nonunion but to other countries as well. But today, people are complacent. They feel powerless. They have only stereotypes of who and what working families were and what their Unions were really about. We have a rich history and culture from which to draw on, but young workers are estranged and do not identify themselves with past struggles.

The UAW was formed in 1935 by union activists dissatisfied that the auto union under the AFL had not been allowed to name its own leaders. Homer Martin was elected president, and Walter and Victor Reuther and George Addes were officers. The Reuther brothers, originally from Wheeling, W. Va., had come to Detroit in 1927 to find work in the auto industry and soon became active in the union movement.

And today some unions have broken away from the AFL to pursue their own goals. As we have seen in the past, there is a tendency for Unions embracing the Business Union format to become ineffective and capitulate to the point that the interests of workers are no longer represented. In the process the workers themselves will either become rebellious or docile and accepting.

Picture of Walter with Eleanor Roosevelt http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/pic/wpr/wpr4.jpg

On Nov. 18, 1936, the UAW struck a Fisher Body plant in Atlanta. On Dec. 16, they hit two GM plants in Kansas City, and on Dec. 28, a Fisher stamping plant in Cleveland. Two days later they struck Fisher Body No. 1 in Flint. Within two weeks, approximately 135,000 men from plants in 35 cities in 14 states were striking General Motors.

      As the nation was emerging from the Great Depression, the striking workers enjoyed the sympathy of most of the people, including Michigan governor Frank Murphy and popular New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt had promised in his inaugural speech to drive out the "economic royalists," a pointed reference to the General Motors officials.

Compare this to today. The “Corporate Royalists” are in control of our Country once again. Unions do not enjoy broad public support. Many politicians of both Parties represent Corporate Values and are changing our hard fought for labor laws designed to protect workers. Day by day Corporations have even more of an upper hand in our lives.

Before the Depression there were 470,000 auto workers. The number fell by half, as did the wages, which had been reduced from $40 per week to about $20. Because these harsh times still haunted the workers, job security was an important issue. Another bone of contention was the hated "spies" informing on union members. The workers could be fired by any foreman anytime. The work itself -- dangerous, difficult, and boring -- caused many injuries, often for simple reasons such as lack of gloves. Exertion caused the families extreme exhaustion, which distressed the workers' families, who shared the fear of possible job loss. Could the worker endure? They needed the money. The rock and the hard place squeezed them all.

The company, dubbed "Generous Motors" by many who wished for jobs with the prosperous firm, was caught off guard by the strike, because it considered its workers to be among the most "pampered" in the industry. GM had just given workers a Christmas bonus of $47 from its "GM Appreciation Fund." The union seemed to have ignored the "GM Layoff Benefit Plan" and the "Income Security Plan" offered by the company in 1936. Both plans emerged much later as the SUB pay union plan.

Today manufacturing is being moved overseas to countries with an exploitable labor force. Wages are being cut due to “competition”. Companies declare bankruptcy and cut wages even more. Corporations can default on pension plans as the laws are changed by Corporate politicians. Our environmental laws for chemical exposure on the job are being lessened. And workers are Black Listed today for union activity with no effective recourse.

More UAW workers bankrupt The bankruptcies show that many Michigan autoworkers are failing to scale back their lifestyles in the face of massive changes slamming the state's bread-and-butter industry. (Article Sept 18, 2005)

http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0509/18/A01-318432.htm

While “Generous Motors” gave with one hand the other took away more than what was “given”.

The Flint sit-down strike began the evening of Dec. 30, 1936, when the night shift stopped the loading of dies being shipped by the company to places where unionism was weaker. The union had noticed that the sit-down method of protest, which had started in Europe, seemed to work successfully. So the workers sat down and locked themselves in, trying to protect their jobs from being removed.

      The charismatic, aggressive young Walter Reuther became the workers' champion, and he won their hearts. He did not fear violence, nor did his brothers Victor and Roy. Biographers of the future UAW president would call him the "crown prince of labor" and "the most dangerous man in Detroit."

      On Jan. 3, 1937, The Detroit News reported that Knudsen said: "A meeting between the management and the union was scheduled for Monday, Jan. 4, but on Wednesday, before that meeting could take place, the second shift sat down and caused the plant to close, throwing out of work 7,000 men. More than 1,000 are still in the plant." Nearly all 7,000 plant workers were union members.

The only real power workers have with Corporations is stopping production. Workers create wealth. When the wealth stops being produced, Corporations go postal. Today we have labor laws being changed which set up a level playing field between Management and Labor.  As those laws are weakened by Neoconservatives running our Country, we are finding ourselves moving toward that historic rock and the hard place all over again. Just think what would happen today if workers staged a sit-down work stoppage!

We will continue next week and finish our examination of this article.

Here is an excerpt from a book titled “Industrial Valley” by Ruth McKenney. The words are Walter Ruther’s. By contrast we have it pretty good today right? Well ask someone out of work because her job was exported to China just how great everything is today! Think about this and what we can do to start building a foundation for the next Union Movement.

“The foreman paced slowly past his workmen, his eyes darting in and out of the machines, eager for any betraying gesture. He heard no word, and he saw no gesture. The hands flashed, the backs bent, the arms reached out in monotonous perfection. The foreman went back to his little desk and sat squirming on the smooth-seated swivel chair. He felt profoundly disturbed. Something, he knew, was coming off. But what? For God’s sake, what?

It was 1:57 A.M., January 29, 1936.

The tirebuilders worked in smooth frenzy, sweat around their necks, under their arms. The belt clattered the insufferable racket and din and monotonous clash and uproar went on in steady rhythm. The clock on the south wall, a big plain clock, hesitated; its minute hand jumped to two. A tirebuilder at the end of the line looked up, saw the hand jump. The foreman was sitting quietly staring at the lines of men working under the vast pools of light. Outside, in the winter night, the streets were empty, and the whir of the factory sounded faintly on the snow-swept yard.

The tirebuilder at the end of the line gulped. His hands stopped their quick weaving motions. Every man on the line stiffened. All over the vast room, hands hesitated. The foreman saw the falter, felt it instantly. He jumped up, but he stood beside his desk, his eyes darting quickly from one line to another.

This was it, then. But what was happening? Where was ‘It’ starting? He stood perfectly still, his heart beating furiously, his throat feeling dry, watching the hesitating hands, watching the broken rhythm.

Then the tirebuilder at the end of the line walked three steps to the master safety switch and, drawing a deep breath, he pulled up the heavy wooden handle. With this signal, in perfect synchronization, with the rhythm they had learned in a great mass-production industry, the tirebuilders stepped back from their machines.

Instantly, the noise stopped. The whole room lay in perfect silence. The tirebuilders stood in long lines, touching each other, perfectly motionless, deafened by the silence. A moment ago there had been the weaving hands, the revolving wheels, the clanking belt, the moving hooks, the flashing tire tools. Now there was absolute stillness, no motion anywhere, no sound.

Out of the terrifying quiet came the wondering voice of a big tirebuilder near the windows: "Jesus Christ, it’s like the end of the world."

He broke the spell, the magic moment of stillness. For now his awed words said the same thing to every man, "We done it’ We stopped the belt! By God, we done it.” And men began to cheer hysterically, to shout and howl in the fresh silence. Men wrapped long sinewy arms around their neighbors’ shoulders, screaming, "We done it! We done it!"

For the first time in history, American mass-production workers had stopped a conveyor belt and halted the inexorable movement of factory machinery.”