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- Jun 1, 2009
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I took this from another web forum I visit often. Considering the involvement of machinists in this strike, I thought it would resonate with some here.
Here it is:
That's right, boys and girls, seventy-five years ago today, the newly-formed, two year old UAW decided to take on the big boys, General Motors, in a company-controlled town (Flint, Michigan) in a big gamble to organize the entire automotive industry. The environment inside the plants was horrible; the workers were paid piece rate (which meant for every part they installed, vs. a salary) and the faster they worked, the more they got paid. In theory this was meant to keep production humming. In practice it meant the men had to work like dogs just to keep their jobs, nevermind to make a decent wage. Layoffs occurred whenever inventory increased or sales slowed, no matter the reason, the slowest going first. And as the workers got faster, the piece rate got smaller. GM would change the rules at will, working them men like demons for a few weeks as they sought to get a few extra dollars then lowering the wage by a few cents. Workers would get home after a twelve or fourteen hour shift so tired they were crawling to bed.
And they weren't by any means getting rich, either. The average auto worker took home about 900 dollars a year in 1935. 1600 a year was the bare minimum the US Government said a family of four could live decently on. And every year they had three to five month layoffs during which they'd change over to the new years' models, during which idle autoworkers didn't get paid and had to rely on loans (from Generous Motors, of course) just to survive, which they were of course expected to pay back, with interest, once they started working again. This usually added up to about 10% of your average workers' pay per year; a wage which had already been shown not to cover basic family needs.
What was probably the straw occured in July of 1936, when a heatwave hit Michigan and hundreds of deaths occurred inside the un-air conditioned plants throughout the state. Keep in mind I've been in these exact same buildings during the summer, with air conditioning, and it still got up over ninety degrees.
And it was a gamble, make no mistake. Flint was the heart of GM, and GM was the heart of Flint. And this was in the midst of the Great Depression, remember. The union knew that if they simply called a strike, there'd be more scabs lined up to cross the picket line and take their jobs than there were positions. It was also dangerous. The town was like a police state; they knew the union wanted in, and GM wanted to keep them out by any means necessary. They had spies everywhere, they spent almost a million dollars a year on detective services, and they had less than legal means at their disposal: a group that called itself 'The Black Legion' would tar and feather, assault and even murder union activists. These pleasant gentlemen were almost certainly funded by GM.
Sam Walton ain't got shit on Al Sloan.
This family still runs Flint to this day.
The UAW officer in charge of organizing the city got death threats from the minute he checked into his hotel room. The local union was small (122 members out of a workforce of 45,000), weak, and filled with GM stooges. The local workers were cowed by the stranglehold GM had on the local government, including the police, who could get real violent. He actually had to work secretly, visiting workers in their homes and keeping the list of new members from even the UAW HQ for fear of persecution or worse.
Slowly but surely union membership grew. A few agreements were won at Chrysler Dodge, and workers began sneaking union stickers on cars as they went down the assembly line, spreading the word that they were there to others who might be too afraid to join up or speak publicly. During the second week of November 1936, no less than six work stoppages were called, each time a pay cut or a speed up was called.
I will let the BBC describe what happened next:
The union members had planned on striking after the new year, when a new friendlier governor would take office (Democrat Frank Murphy) and targeted two specific die plants where the car body components were stamped, one of which (Fisher #1&2) was in Flint (the other in Cleveland). Without the die plants, no cars could be made elsewhere. Shutting those two plants down would halt a lot of GM's auto production within days.
Unfortunately for their cunning plan, the Cleveland guys jumped the gun and declared a strike on December 30, 1936. GM, not being stupid and realizing their Achilles' heel, made plans to move the dies out of Fisher #1. The organizers found this out when the night shift came in to see railway cars being loaded up with manufacturing equipment, including the dies. Word spread fast, and a red lamp was hung in the union office window across the street from the plant, which was the agreed-upon code for an emergency lunch our meeting. Lots of men showed up and they decided that equipment leaving the plant would mean their jobs. All at once they rushed the gates of the plant and ran every which way, shouting 'strike on!' to the workers still inside. The train engineer just nodded, waved at the brakeman to stop, and walked off.
The Sit-Down Strike had begun.
Why sit down? What's a sit down strike? Where's the picketers? Well, that's your typical strike; the workers leave the plant, form a picket line, and harass the guys crossing it, but work continues. GM knew how to deal with that kind of strike. So the workers decided to occupy the plant to keep any scabs or even management out so that no production could occur, making sure the plant was kept idle. They had their own elected officials, kept the plant swept and clean, and wives and sympathizers brought food and spare changes of clothes in to help keep the strike going and picketed and marched outside.
The workers barricaded every entrance with car bodies, welded the doors shut, placed metal sheets over every window that had had holes carved into them through which they could shoot fire hoses, soaked clothes in water for covering their faces in the event of tear gas, and stockpiled metal parts for weapons.
These boys weren't fucking around.
You can imagine how well this went over. A state court judge issued an injunction, telling them to GTFO. The UAW discovered said judge owned a cool 200K in GM stock and while he claimed this had no bearing on his decision, the injunction was never enforced.
GM's security forces tried to enter on Jan. 11 1937 and were repulsed by workers inside the plant using fire hoses (this is January, in Michigan, mind. It was probably well below freezing) and chucking car parts at them. The cops responded with tear gas. The wives and members of the women's auxiliary broke out windows to help clear the gas out of the plant. Then the cops showed up, tried a few more times (the union members outside the plant shouting over a PA system warned the workers where the next wave would come from and generally directed the battle) and, frustrated, the motherfuckers fired almost point-blank into the crowd of union supporters. The union's sound truck battery was running low. Things were looking grim for our heroes.
Then this bad-ass broad stood up and grabbed the mic.
Rosie the Riveter wasn't just a chick on a poster
The battle continued. Shortly thereafter, the faint sound of singing and marching could be heard. A group of four-hundred women, red-caps shining in the dark, led by a bearer of the American flag and bearing homemade clubs were singing 'Hold the Fort'. (This was later rewritten for a union version). It was the Emergency Women's Brigade, formed of the wives, sisters and girlfriends of the striking union workers. They pushed through the police (who were for some reason reluctant to shoot women in the back), marched up to the plant and turned around to face the cops, brandishing whatever they'd had at home that could be swung. People were cheering their fucking heads off. The cops looked around, turned tail and left.
And that is how the strikers won 'The Battle of Bulls Run' (Bull being slang for a cop at the time, Bull's Run a famous Civil War battle). Sixteen strikers had been wounded (mostly from gunshots) and eleven police hurt by the two-inch metal door hinges thrown by the sit-downers from the roof of the plant. Thankfully, there were no deaths.
This was national news now. The Vice-President at the time, John Garner, wanted to send in the feds to intervene to end the strike but good ol' FDR forbade it. GM tried a second injunction. The union decided to seize another plant. Since they knew they had rats in the ranks, they took thirty of their most trusted members (making sure some spies were in the ranks) and announced to them they'd be heading towards plant #9 (strongly union and easiest to take). They told the union leaders at #9 they only had to hold the plant for thirty minutes, as the real target was plant #6 (also a diversion for the few spies left in this even smaller group). Only six guys were trusted with the real target: Chevy #4, the largest, most well-defended, spy-riddled plant in GM's line up, and the sole maker of Chevy engines.
On Feb. 1 they called for a general action at Plant #9. Thousands of people showed up, Women's Auxiliary, kids, sympathizers, supporters, union workers from other unions including the bus drivers (whom the striking autoworkers had supported in their own strike the year before) all descended on Plant #9.
A woman rushed up to the leader with a slip of paper, the guy announced 'they're attacking our boys in Chevy #9' and they rushed the plant. (The paper was blank). The diversion worked; Chevy Four sent all of its hired goons, security and coopted line workers alike to go quash the uprising at Plant #9, leaving #4 undefended. The security guards waded into the crowd at #9, busting heads.
And the union workers at #4 shut everything down. Half the workers, those not part of the union, just went home instead of helping the foremen restart the lines, leaving their lunch boxes behind in a pile for the strikers to help themselves. The other half took over the plant.
The UAW had captured the crown jewel of GM without striking a single blow.
These cunning bastards would later go on to defeat Hitler.
After driving out the remaining union sympathizers at Plant #9, the security goons and collaborators returned to find #4 held by the union men. They tried to get back in but were beaten off until the red-bereted Women's Brigade showed up, locked arms in front of the gates and again forbid them entry.
Now GM was sweating; two key plants were down, one for over a month. It brought them to the bargaining table where CIO founder and president of the United Mine Workers, John Lewis, bargained for the UAW while its president was kept busy on a speaking tour since GM refused to be in the same room with any UAW members. Governor Murphy acted as an intermediary between the UAW/CIO and GM as a result. Governor Murphy sent in the National Guard, to 'keep the peace' (while he was a union sympathizer, he had GM breathing down his neck as well. John Lewis talked him out of having the guards clear the plants, and instead just had them be a show of force).
He wasn't fucking around, either. That's a machine gun.
On February 11, 1937, 44 days after Fisher #1 was taken, a six-month agreement was signed between GM and the UAW that recognized the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative between GM and any employees who were members, nationwide. This was the first time in the history of the United States that any employer had granted exclusive bargaining rights to any union on a national basis. David had struck a blow against Goliath.
My great-grandfather, a tool and die maker, was part of the sit-down strike. At my great-aunt's (his daughter's) funeral, a woman who'd grown up across the street from them in Flint shared fond stories of my grandfather, who would've been in the neighborhood of 14 at the time, tipping over paddy wagons full of arrested protestors with the other workers' kids to free them from 'the bulls.' Thanks Opa. Thanks grandpa.
You can hear oral history about the event from actual strikers here.
More details here, since this was already hella long, including details of the settlements and another incident that left a man shot in the stomach.
This is the thread to share stories and pictures if you have any of the Sit Down strike or hell, any interesting labor history.
Enjoy your 40 hour work week, your benefits, your weekend, your minimum wage and your time and a half overtime. And if you don't have those things, maybe the time has come again to ask, why the hell not?
Found some actual footage on youtube: from Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story The wives would bring the worker's kids to visit their fathers, lifting them up through the windows, if you're wondering what the deal is with that. The kids weren't there 24/7 or anything.
Here it is:
That's right, boys and girls, seventy-five years ago today, the newly-formed, two year old UAW decided to take on the big boys, General Motors, in a company-controlled town (Flint, Michigan) in a big gamble to organize the entire automotive industry. The environment inside the plants was horrible; the workers were paid piece rate (which meant for every part they installed, vs. a salary) and the faster they worked, the more they got paid. In theory this was meant to keep production humming. In practice it meant the men had to work like dogs just to keep their jobs, nevermind to make a decent wage. Layoffs occurred whenever inventory increased or sales slowed, no matter the reason, the slowest going first. And as the workers got faster, the piece rate got smaller. GM would change the rules at will, working them men like demons for a few weeks as they sought to get a few extra dollars then lowering the wage by a few cents. Workers would get home after a twelve or fourteen hour shift so tired they were crawling to bed.
And they weren't by any means getting rich, either. The average auto worker took home about 900 dollars a year in 1935. 1600 a year was the bare minimum the US Government said a family of four could live decently on. And every year they had three to five month layoffs during which they'd change over to the new years' models, during which idle autoworkers didn't get paid and had to rely on loans (from Generous Motors, of course) just to survive, which they were of course expected to pay back, with interest, once they started working again. This usually added up to about 10% of your average workers' pay per year; a wage which had already been shown not to cover basic family needs.
What was probably the straw occured in July of 1936, when a heatwave hit Michigan and hundreds of deaths occurred inside the un-air conditioned plants throughout the state. Keep in mind I've been in these exact same buildings during the summer, with air conditioning, and it still got up over ninety degrees.
And it was a gamble, make no mistake. Flint was the heart of GM, and GM was the heart of Flint. And this was in the midst of the Great Depression, remember. The union knew that if they simply called a strike, there'd be more scabs lined up to cross the picket line and take their jobs than there were positions. It was also dangerous. The town was like a police state; they knew the union wanted in, and GM wanted to keep them out by any means necessary. They had spies everywhere, they spent almost a million dollars a year on detective services, and they had less than legal means at their disposal: a group that called itself 'The Black Legion' would tar and feather, assault and even murder union activists. These pleasant gentlemen were almost certainly funded by GM.
Sam Walton ain't got shit on Al Sloan.
This family still runs Flint to this day.
The UAW officer in charge of organizing the city got death threats from the minute he checked into his hotel room. The local union was small (122 members out of a workforce of 45,000), weak, and filled with GM stooges. The local workers were cowed by the stranglehold GM had on the local government, including the police, who could get real violent. He actually had to work secretly, visiting workers in their homes and keeping the list of new members from even the UAW HQ for fear of persecution or worse.
Slowly but surely union membership grew. A few agreements were won at Chrysler Dodge, and workers began sneaking union stickers on cars as they went down the assembly line, spreading the word that they were there to others who might be too afraid to join up or speak publicly. During the second week of November 1936, no less than six work stoppages were called, each time a pay cut or a speed up was called.
I will let the BBC describe what happened next:
The union members had planned on striking after the new year, when a new friendlier governor would take office (Democrat Frank Murphy) and targeted two specific die plants where the car body components were stamped, one of which (Fisher #1&2) was in Flint (the other in Cleveland). Without the die plants, no cars could be made elsewhere. Shutting those two plants down would halt a lot of GM's auto production within days.
Unfortunately for their cunning plan, the Cleveland guys jumped the gun and declared a strike on December 30, 1936. GM, not being stupid and realizing their Achilles' heel, made plans to move the dies out of Fisher #1. The organizers found this out when the night shift came in to see railway cars being loaded up with manufacturing equipment, including the dies. Word spread fast, and a red lamp was hung in the union office window across the street from the plant, which was the agreed-upon code for an emergency lunch our meeting. Lots of men showed up and they decided that equipment leaving the plant would mean their jobs. All at once they rushed the gates of the plant and ran every which way, shouting 'strike on!' to the workers still inside. The train engineer just nodded, waved at the brakeman to stop, and walked off.
The Sit-Down Strike had begun.
Why sit down? What's a sit down strike? Where's the picketers? Well, that's your typical strike; the workers leave the plant, form a picket line, and harass the guys crossing it, but work continues. GM knew how to deal with that kind of strike. So the workers decided to occupy the plant to keep any scabs or even management out so that no production could occur, making sure the plant was kept idle. They had their own elected officials, kept the plant swept and clean, and wives and sympathizers brought food and spare changes of clothes in to help keep the strike going and picketed and marched outside.
The workers barricaded every entrance with car bodies, welded the doors shut, placed metal sheets over every window that had had holes carved into them through which they could shoot fire hoses, soaked clothes in water for covering their faces in the event of tear gas, and stockpiled metal parts for weapons.
These boys weren't fucking around.
You can imagine how well this went over. A state court judge issued an injunction, telling them to GTFO. The UAW discovered said judge owned a cool 200K in GM stock and while he claimed this had no bearing on his decision, the injunction was never enforced.
GM's security forces tried to enter on Jan. 11 1937 and were repulsed by workers inside the plant using fire hoses (this is January, in Michigan, mind. It was probably well below freezing) and chucking car parts at them. The cops responded with tear gas. The wives and members of the women's auxiliary broke out windows to help clear the gas out of the plant. Then the cops showed up, tried a few more times (the union members outside the plant shouting over a PA system warned the workers where the next wave would come from and generally directed the battle) and, frustrated, the motherfuckers fired almost point-blank into the crowd of union supporters. The union's sound truck battery was running low. Things were looking grim for our heroes.
Then this bad-ass broad stood up and grabbed the mic.
Rosie the Riveter wasn't just a chick on a poster
Genora Johnson said:
The battle continued. Shortly thereafter, the faint sound of singing and marching could be heard. A group of four-hundred women, red-caps shining in the dark, led by a bearer of the American flag and bearing homemade clubs were singing 'Hold the Fort'. (This was later rewritten for a union version). It was the Emergency Women's Brigade, formed of the wives, sisters and girlfriends of the striking union workers. They pushed through the police (who were for some reason reluctant to shoot women in the back), marched up to the plant and turned around to face the cops, brandishing whatever they'd had at home that could be swung. People were cheering their fucking heads off. The cops looked around, turned tail and left.
And that is how the strikers won 'The Battle of Bulls Run' (Bull being slang for a cop at the time, Bull's Run a famous Civil War battle). Sixteen strikers had been wounded (mostly from gunshots) and eleven police hurt by the two-inch metal door hinges thrown by the sit-downers from the roof of the plant. Thankfully, there were no deaths.
This was national news now. The Vice-President at the time, John Garner, wanted to send in the feds to intervene to end the strike but good ol' FDR forbade it. GM tried a second injunction. The union decided to seize another plant. Since they knew they had rats in the ranks, they took thirty of their most trusted members (making sure some spies were in the ranks) and announced to them they'd be heading towards plant #9 (strongly union and easiest to take). They told the union leaders at #9 they only had to hold the plant for thirty minutes, as the real target was plant #6 (also a diversion for the few spies left in this even smaller group). Only six guys were trusted with the real target: Chevy #4, the largest, most well-defended, spy-riddled plant in GM's line up, and the sole maker of Chevy engines.
On Feb. 1 they called for a general action at Plant #9. Thousands of people showed up, Women's Auxiliary, kids, sympathizers, supporters, union workers from other unions including the bus drivers (whom the striking autoworkers had supported in their own strike the year before) all descended on Plant #9.
A woman rushed up to the leader with a slip of paper, the guy announced 'they're attacking our boys in Chevy #9' and they rushed the plant. (The paper was blank). The diversion worked; Chevy Four sent all of its hired goons, security and coopted line workers alike to go quash the uprising at Plant #9, leaving #4 undefended. The security guards waded into the crowd at #9, busting heads.
And the union workers at #4 shut everything down. Half the workers, those not part of the union, just went home instead of helping the foremen restart the lines, leaving their lunch boxes behind in a pile for the strikers to help themselves. The other half took over the plant.
The UAW had captured the crown jewel of GM without striking a single blow.
These cunning bastards would later go on to defeat Hitler.
After driving out the remaining union sympathizers at Plant #9, the security goons and collaborators returned to find #4 held by the union men. They tried to get back in but were beaten off until the red-bereted Women's Brigade showed up, locked arms in front of the gates and again forbid them entry.
Now GM was sweating; two key plants were down, one for over a month. It brought them to the bargaining table where CIO founder and president of the United Mine Workers, John Lewis, bargained for the UAW while its president was kept busy on a speaking tour since GM refused to be in the same room with any UAW members. Governor Murphy acted as an intermediary between the UAW/CIO and GM as a result. Governor Murphy sent in the National Guard, to 'keep the peace' (while he was a union sympathizer, he had GM breathing down his neck as well. John Lewis talked him out of having the guards clear the plants, and instead just had them be a show of force).
He wasn't fucking around, either. That's a machine gun.
On February 11, 1937, 44 days after Fisher #1 was taken, a six-month agreement was signed between GM and the UAW that recognized the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative between GM and any employees who were members, nationwide. This was the first time in the history of the United States that any employer had granted exclusive bargaining rights to any union on a national basis. David had struck a blow against Goliath.
The BBC said:
My great-grandfather, a tool and die maker, was part of the sit-down strike. At my great-aunt's (his daughter's) funeral, a woman who'd grown up across the street from them in Flint shared fond stories of my grandfather, who would've been in the neighborhood of 14 at the time, tipping over paddy wagons full of arrested protestors with the other workers' kids to free them from 'the bulls.' Thanks Opa. Thanks grandpa.
You can hear oral history about the event from actual strikers here.
More details here, since this was already hella long, including details of the settlements and another incident that left a man shot in the stomach.
This is the thread to share stories and pictures if you have any of the Sit Down strike or hell, any interesting labor history.
Enjoy your 40 hour work week, your benefits, your weekend, your minimum wage and your time and a half overtime. And if you don't have those things, maybe the time has come again to ask, why the hell not?
Found some actual footage on youtube: from Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story The wives would bring the worker's kids to visit their fathers, lifting them up through the windows, if you're wondering what the deal is with that. The kids weren't there 24/7 or anything.
