This is not a happy time for American autoworkers. Their employers are
cutting thousands of jobs, closing plants, and demanding – and getting –
major pay and benefit concessions from their union.
Normally, February would be a time of celebration for the union, the
United Auto Workers – a time to mark the anniversary of a UAW victory in a
sit-down strike in 1937 that led to making its members the world’s most
secure and most highly compensated production workers.
But though they are losing that hard-won standing, autoworkers can draw
important inspiration from that victory in Flint, Michigan, as they
struggle against the severe employer pressures they’re facing today.
The victory ended one of the most dramatic and important economic battles in
U.S. history. It pitted the UAW, then struggling for mere survival, against
General Motors, then the world’s largest and most profitable manufacturer of
any kind.
Mighty GM had vowed publicly that it would never allow the UAW to represent
its employees. But the corporation ended up granting that crucial right –
and more. It was a stunning victory. It swiftly led to unionization of
workers throughout heavy industry and, ultimately, to unionization in most
fields.
For 44 bitterly cold winter days the auto workers in Flint held out,
seizing, shutting down and occupying three of the key GM plants that stood
within a few hundred yards of each other. That eventually inspired more than
two-thirds of GM’s 145,000 other production workers to strike as well, at
dozens of plants elsewhere.
Marching just outside the Flint plants were hundreds of pickets – members of
the strikers’ families, fellow unionists and other supporters. They provided
immense aid and comfort, including, especially, three hot meals a day,
prepared by volunteers at a rented restaurant across the road for what
ultimately amounted to 5,000 strikers.
The food was passed through open plant windows while municipal and company
police stood by in frustration, fearing the publicity they would reap from
an attack, given the heavy presence of women and children and reporters from
all over the country. Nor did they stop supporters from entering the plants
to entertain, reinforce and otherwise help the strikers.
Why were they so driven, so militant, the strikers and their supporters?
Albert Cline, an assembly line worker, recalled working “in an atmosphere
where you got two cups outside the plant each morning – one for coffee and
the other to urinate in. There were no cooling fans, no gloves, no relief
men. You could see 150 people lined up at the front door, all wanting your
job. Our backs were so bent we’d lie on the grass after work until we could
straighten out and walk. We were ready to do anything we could to get
dignity on the job.”
The rate of pay was set by management whim. Workers averaged $1,000 a year,
even with mandatory overtime work, paid at the same rate as any other work.
There were no health and safety regulations, no rules governing GM’s
unceasing efforts to speed up assembly lines. Layoffs were frequent and
workers did not even have rehiring rights. They had to get in line with
thousands of others desperate for jobs.
Their victory gave autoworkers rights most workers had only dreamed of,
above all the right to have their union representatives negotiate a contract
that would determine their wages, hours and working conditions. The
contract included procedures for workers to effectively address their
grievances, and guaranteed that the jobs which were their most important
possessions would be theirs as long as they adhered to the conditions
negotiated by their representatives and ratified by the workers themselves.
Suddenly, workers everywhere were sitting-down. There were 477 sit-down
strikes by the end of 1937, involving more than 500,000 workers, mainly in
industrial plants but also in mines, in hotels and restaurants, even in
five-and-ten-cent stores. Most won at least partial victory, most
importantly including the right to bargain with their employers.
Within two years, workers in virtually all private employment outside
agriculture won a firm legal right to collective bargaining and so could
turn to other tactics and other demands.
It should not be forgotten that whatever their later tactics and demands,
workers could have done nothing truly effective to improve their working
lives – and can do nothing truly effective today – without the tool of
collective bargaining. They would not have won the right to use that
essential tool had it not been for the autoworkers who sat down on the job
in Flint, Michigan, so long ago.
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Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor issues for
more than a half-century. Contact him through his website,
www.dickmeister.com.
