On this day in 1937, the Flint Sit-Down Strike ended. It changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated local unions on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union and led to the unionization of the American automobile industry.
The United Automobile Workers (UAW) labor union had only just been formed in 1935 and held its first convention in 1936. Shortly thereafter the union decided it could not survive by organizing campaigns at smaller plants as it had in the past. Instead it would organize automobile workers and go after the biggest and most powerful employer, General Motors Corporation. It would do this by focusing on GM’s most valuable plants, which were in Flint, Michigan. The importance of these plants to GM cannot be overstated: the production plants in Flint were essential to the multiple lines of GM cars, and to the cars of GM’s subsidiary companies like Chevrolet and Buick.
Organizing in Flint was a difficult and dangerous plan. GM controlled city politics in Flint and kept a close eye on outsiders. As Wyndham Mortimer, the first UAW officer put in charge of organizing the campaign in Flint, entered the town, he was noticed. GM also maintained an extensive network of spies throughout its plants. Mortimer concluded after talking to Flint auto workers that the existing locals, which had only 122 members out of 45,000 auto workers in Flint, were riddled with spies. He decided that the only safe way to organize Flint was to bypass those locals and meet with workers in their homes.
As the UAW studied its target, it discovered that GM had only two factories that produced the dies from which car body components were stamped: one in Flint that produced the parts for Buicks, Pontiacs, and Oldsmobiles, and another in Cleveland that produced Chevrolet parts. Events forced the union to accelerate its plans when the workers at Cleveland’s Fisher Body plant went on strike on December 28, 1936, due to two brothers being fired from the assembly line. The UAW immediately announced that it would not settle the Cleveland strike until it reached a national agreement with GM covering all of its plants. At the same time the union made plans to shut down Fisher #1 in Flint. On December 30, at 8:00 AM, the union learned that GM was planning to move the dies out of Fisher #1. UAW lead organizer Bob Travis immediately called a lunchtime meeting at the union hall across the street from the plant, explained the situation, then sent the members across the street to occupy the plant. The Flint sit-down strike began.
In a conventional strike, union members leave the plant and establish a picket line to discourage other employees from entering, thus preventing the employer from operating. In a sit-down strike, the workers physically occupy the plant, keeping management and others out. By remaining inside the factory rather than picketing outside it, striking workers prevented owners from bringing strikebreakers to resume production.
Once the strike had been established in Flint, workers at other General Motors plants joined the strike. By January 25, the strike had major secondary effects throughout General Motors’ chain of production, leading fifty GM plants to close and suspending work for 150,000 employees. The police, armed with guns and tear gas, attempted to enter the Fisher Body 2 plant on January 11, 1937. The strikers inside the plant pelted them with hinges, bottles, and bolts, led by Bob Travis and Roy Reuther.[15] They were able to withstand several waves of attack, eventually ending the standoff. The strikers dubbed this “The Battle of Running Bulls”, a mocking reference to the police (“bulls”). Fourteen strikers were injured by gunfire during the battle.
GM obtained a second injunction against the strike on February 2, 1937. GM was granted the injunction by Judge Edward S. Black. Black owned over three thousand shares of GM and was disbarred from the case after the UAW found out about this. GM’s representatives refused to be in the same room as the UAW’s, so Governor Frank Murphy acted as courier and intermediary between the two groups. Murphy sent in the Michigan National Guard, not to evict the strikers, but rather to protect them from the police and corporate strike-breakers. The two parties reached agreement on February 11, 1937, on a one-page agreement that recognized the UAW as the exclusive bargaining representative for GM’s employees who were members of the union. In the next year, UAW membership grew from 30,000 to 500,000 members. Employees of other car manufacturers such as Ford joined, as the entire industry was rapidly unionized. As later noted by the BBC, “the strike was heard ’round the world”.
Strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Flint, Michigan.
Romantic idea for Valentine’s Day
Today is the birthday, in 1941, of Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes, who had the 1983 US No.4 single ‘Never Gonna Let You Go’. His career took off with worldwide hits by his band Brasil ’66. He has over 55 releases and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2012 as co-writer of the song ‘Real in Rio’ from the animated film Rio. He died from complications of long COVID in Los Angeles on 5 September 2024, at the age of 83. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrZBiqK0p9E
