How Workers Won the Big One

Last week was the 75th Anniversary of the Flint Strike that forced the auto industry to accept collective bargaining with the UAW. The Big Three's cave led directly to the capitulation of the steel industry shortly thereafter.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

On (Feb. 11) in 1937, the Flint Sit-Down strike ended after General Motors recognized the United Auto Workers at the bargaining agent for GM employees. This titanic victory legitimized the AFL and the CIO more broades. The UAW’s militant organizers had to teach unionism to workers at the same time that they battled the auto companies.

The sit-down strike put the company in a tricky position. Violence against the strikers threatened the capital of the plant itself, making a forceful eviction potentially costly. However, the success of the Fisher Body occupiers in galvanizing attention led to a huge wave of workers signing up for UAW membership and spawned radical actions throughout the GM system. In response, on January 11, GM ordered the city’s compliant police force to attack the occupiers. But the workers inside began spraying fire hoses and hurling metal objects onto the police below, quickly convincing GM that a frontal assault was not a good idea.

GM also hoped to convince the state or federal government to crack down, in the style of what corporations might soon call “the good old days.” Vice-President John Nance Garner wanted to send in the military to crush the strikers (side note, how disastrous would a Garner presidency have been had FDR not run for the 3rd term in 1940? Horrible). GM attempted to use an injunction to declare the sit-down strike illegal. A judge complied but UAW officials discovered he owned $200,000 in GM stock, which disqualified him from ruling on GM-related cases. More importantly, Frank Murphy took over as governor of Michigan. A committed New Dealer, Murphy has previously been the pro-working class mayor Detroit. He would later serve as Attorney General for Roosevelt and Supreme Court justice, where he dissented strongly in Korematsu v. U.S. In fact, the UAW had originally hoped to time the sit-in to coincide with Murphy taking office. Finally, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt rejected federal intervention out of hand, despite the desires of his Dixiecrat Vice-President.

The strike worked because it galvanized the community. While workers might have feared for their jobs by joining the UAW in 1936, after the strike started, it unleashed enormous pent-up desires for justice, decent wages, and good working conditions within the people of Flint. The UAW did an outstanding job of tapping into the community. An women’s auxiliary quickly formed to support the workers inside, bringing them food, clean clothing, newspapers, and other items to wile away the long days of boredom inside the plant. While the whole idea of a women’s auxiliary reinforces the male-dominated single-income family, it was 1937 so it was a good strategy at the time. The workers both inside and outside the plant also showed a tremendous amount of discipline. Conditions inside the plant could have deteriorated quickly, giving the police a clear reason to evict the strikers. Strong leadership within the UAW and first-rate organizers worked closely with the workers and community to stay on message, keep the pressure on GM, and not allow frustrations to boil over in counter-productive ways. Today, In a world where a return to street-based organizing is giving anarchist-fringe groups room to hijack movements and engage in personally satisfying violence at the expense of larger movements, the actions of the UAW in 1937 should provide a lesson on how to organize. Self-discipline and community-discipline are both key tenets of successful organizing campaigns.

Another key lesson of the GM strike is the absolutely vital role state and federal governments play in deciding labor battles. Labor had been routinely crushed by the state before 1933. During the GM strike it was the neutral and even pro-labor attitudes of Murphy and Roosevelt that allowed the UAW to win. Recently, in a comment to one of my labor posts, a libertarian linked to a piece arguing that the state actually prevents unions from succeeding when it gets involved in labor disputes. This was patently absurd because the effect of the state depends entirely on which side it takes in the conflict. Traditionally, the American state had oppressed workers. The Roosevelt years saw a marked change in this attitude. Not surprisingly, millions of Americans joined unions. This seems self-evident, yet people seem to misunderstand this basic equation.

Read the inspiring details here.

Son of Flint Michael Moore reflects on the 75th anniversary here.