On This Day: "the most important strikes in American history" - Dec. 30, 1936
(edited from article)
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The 1936 Sit-Down Strike That Shook the Auto Industry
Over 136,000 GM workers participated in the strike in Flint, Michigan that became known as 'the strike heard round the world.'
Historically, striking workers had risked their lives on the picket lines. Though unions often formed in response to dangerous working conditions, going on strike exposed workers to the danger of physical violence from hired thugs or police that served as companies’ strong-arms. Unions had long struggled to create unions across industries.
The United Auto Workers, a recently formed trade union, had slowly and secretly begun organizing at GM. If the union was to bring the automobile industry together, it had to go after its largest employer—and do so strategically. Organizers decided to focus on the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint, Michigan, home to 7,000 workers and the place where car bodies were made. Organizers met with Flint workers at their homes and talked them out of walking off the job right away. Instead, organizers planned to stop production through a sit-down strike in January of 1937, after Christmas bonuses had been paid and a new labor-friendly governor was in power in Michigan.
That plan was derailed on December 30, 1936, when workers at the body plant saw critical equipment being lugged onto railroad cars to be sent to other factories. Word was out that the Flint factory was a union stronghold. Workers gathered for an emergency meeting, then flooded back into the plant. The strike was on.
“They were the most important strikes in American history,” says Lichtenstein. For decades, he says, industrial unionism reigned supreme, leading to a higher standard of living for working Americans. Today, the UAW has over 400,000 active members and more than 600 locals around the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
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https://www.history.com/news/flint-sit-down-strike-general-motors-uaw
(edited from Wikipedia)
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[Sit-down strike]
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 of it, striking workers prevented owners from bringing strikebreakers to resume production. It was in some ways easier to maintain the morale of participants in a sit-down than in a conventional strike. The strikers were removed from outside pressures and the hostility of the community that their action might have induced. Bad weather did not constitute a problem for sit-downers as it did for the pickets in an outside strike.
The Flint sit-down strikers set up their own civil system within the strike. A mayor and other civic officials were elected by the workers to maintain order within the plant. Departments included Organized Recreation, Information, Postal Service, and Sanitation. All rules were enforced by what was called a "Kangaroo Court" by the workers. Any person who broke the rules was given a trial, and punishments ranged from washing dishes to expulsion from the plant (in the most extreme cases). It was important for the strikers to maintain order in the plant; if property damage occurred, the Governor would intervene with the National Guard. In addition to maintaining order, the civic government also insured a steady stream of supplies from friendly vendors outside the plant. Most of the meals for the approximately 2,000 workers occupying the plant were provided free of charge by a diner across the street.
Resistance
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. 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.
At the time, Vice President John Nance Garner supported federal intervention to break up the Flint Strike, but this idea was rejected by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The president urged GM to recognize a union so the plants could re-open.
GM obtained a second injunction against the strike on February 2, 1937. GM was granted the injunction by Judge Edward S. Black. Judge Black owned over three thousand shares of GM. Judge Black was disbarred from the case after the UAW found out about the revelation. The union not only ignored the order, but spread the strike to Chevrolet Plant #4. To avoid tipping its hand, the union let it be known in the hours before the move that it intended to go after another plant in the complex, changing directions only at the last minute. GM, tipped off by an informant within the UAW, was ready and waiting for the union at the other plant and caught completely off guard at Plant #4. The strike ended after 44 days.
That development forced GM to bargain with the union. John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers and founder and leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, spoke for the UAW in those negotiations; UAW President Homer Martin was sent on a speaking tour to keep him out of the way. 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. Governor 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 finally 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 for the next six months.
Conclusion
The agreement that GM consented to was to rehire workers that were a part of the strike, allow workers to wear buttons and other symbols that represented unions, and granted 6 months of negotiations in the plants that participated in a strike to UAW-CIO.
As short as this agreement was, it gave the UAW instant legitimacy. The workers there also got a 5% increase in pay and were allowed to talk about the union during lunch. The UAW capitalized on that opportunity, signing up 100,000 GM employees and building the union's strength through grievance strikes at GM plants throughout the country. Several participants in the strike, including Charles I. Krause, went on to greater prominence within the union. Other notable participants in the sit-down strike were future D-Day hero and Greco-Roman wrestling champion Dean Rockwell, labor leader and future UAW president Walter Reuther, and the uncle of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, whose debut feature Roger & Me contains a clip from the strike.
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".
The Sit-Down Strike projected a principle weapon of mass organization in the labor industry projecting nearly 5000 strikes to come within the next year. Giving labor workers newfound unionization regardless of race, education status creating opportunities for membership agreements, payroll negotiation, and even government protection for workers. The Sit-Down Strike provoked a newfound impact in the labor industry, giving the workers a newfound confidence to join unions and use their voice.
The GM sit-down strike of 1936–37 was, all in all, the most significant American labor conflict in the 20th century. When the UAW victory in the strike was followed by the capitulation of the United States Steel Corporation to the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee, the Financial Observer remarked that "an era of labor-management relations" had come to an end and "a new era" had begun.
[Sit-down strikes later illegal]
A sit-down strike is a labor strike and a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations.
The attraction of the tactic is that it prevents employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or removing equipment to transfer production to other locations. Neal Ascherson has commented that an additional attraction is that it emphasizes the role of workers in providing for the people and allows workers to in effect hold valuable machinery hostage as a bargaining chip.
A few sit-down strikes happened in the United States before 1936.
[In 1936, the] workers at the largest [rubber] factory, Goodyear invented a new tactic—the sitdown strike whereby the strikers seize the plant, stop production, and keep strikebreakers out. Goodyear gave up, and recognized the United Rubber Workers (URW). It was a major victory for the labor movement, established the United Rubber Workers as the dominant union in the rubber industry, and provided a new tactic for future labor struggles.
In Flint, Michigan, strikers occupied several General Motors plants for more than forty days, and repelled the efforts of the police and National Guard to retake them. A wave of sit-down strikes followed but diminished by the end of the decade as the courts and the National Labor Relations Board held that sit-down strikes were illegal and sit-down strikers could be fired (see the 1939 Supreme Court ruling in NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp.). While some sit-down strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived.
Sit-ins
The sit-down strike was the inspiration for the sit-in, where an organized group of protesters would occupy an area in which they are not wanted by sitting and refuse to leave until their demands are met.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitdown_strike
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