Labor History in 2:00

June 5 - The Big One

On this day in labor history, the year was 1998.

That was the day GM workers in Flint, Michigan walked off the job.

9200 workers with UAW locals 659 and 651 had shut down a company, which at the time, accounted for one percent of the country’s economic output. 

Production at GM plants throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico all came to a screeching halt. 

Many noted that what began as a localized walkout became the most significant strike against GM since 1970. 

Management had moved dies out of the Metal Center and shipped them to operations in Canada. 

In an act of international solidarity, brothers and sisters in the CAW refused to handle the dies. 

The seven-week strike was solid against a Wall St. attack on one of the last closed shops in the country. 

The strike was also popular with autoworkers elsewhere, who confronted assembly line speedup, mandatory overtime and constant fear of plant closures. 

It inspired GM workers in Indiana, Ohio and California to strike. 

Even workers at the Tennessee-based Saturn plant, touted as a model in labor-management relations, voted to strike in response to threatened outsourcing. 

But the strike essentially ended in a standoff. 

The union had stopped GM from closing plants in Flint and Dayton, Ohio, at least for a while. 

And GM agreed to invest millions in modernizing the Flint facilities. 

But, weeks after the strike ended, GM bosses avowed more union-busting attacks. 

They declared a two-pronged strategy: First, they intended to spin off the Delphi parts division as an independent operation. 

Then, GM announced they planned to close existing U.S. plants in favor of new facilities that assembled pre-made parts, fabricated at non-union suppliers.

The war against the UAW had begun.

June 4 - Union Busting Thugs Assault Local Leaders

On this day in labor history the year was 1946.

That was the day the Detroit Free Press reported that a Grand Jury had been convened to investigate the severe beatings of four Briggs UAW local 212 officers over the previous 15 months.

Recording secretary Ken Morris had been the latest victim. He was brutally beaten May 31 behind his home.

Arthur Vega, leader of Local 212’s Flying Squadron was viciously attacked by thugs in March 1945 and suffered a broken arm and other injuries.

Next, Local 212 Sergeant-At-Arms Roy Snowden was clubbed on two separate occasions, suffering permanent injuries.

Then, in October 1945, Genora Dollinger, heroine of the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike and founder of the Women’s Emergency Brigades, was beaten so severely as she lay sleeping, that she was hospitalized in critical condition for weeks.

Since her Flint years, Dollinger had become active with Local 212.

She served as a leading member on the union committee established to investigate the earlier beatings.

Both the local and the international led investigations into the beatings and offered sizable rewards. Union militants noted the beatings benefited the company to be sure.

Briggs had fired all four victims at one point or another for union activity.

And strike preparations were underway when Morris’ wife found him with his head cracked open.

The UAW waited for the Grand Jury’s findings.  

By years’ end, another local 212 shop steward had been beaten.

By 1951, union officials demanded a second Grand Jury investigation.

They accused Briggs of awarding a lucrative scrap contract to local mob boss Carl Renda in exchange for anti-union thuggery.

No charges were ever brought against the company, which insisted the violence stemmed from intra-union disputes.

June 3 - Victory at Auto-Lite Paves the Way

On this day in labor history, the year was 1934.

That was the day striking Toledo Auto-Lite workers ratified an agreement, securing a number of first gains.

Workers won union recognition, wage increases, mechanisms to arbitrate grievances and demands, and the rehiring of all workers.

National Guard troops were withdrawn two days later.

It was truly a breakthrough in industrial organizing. Victory was ensured by a number of factors

Certainly, the six-day running battles that killed two strikers and injured hundreds had a profound impact.

But by the end of May, 85 of the 103 unions affiliated with Toledo’s Central Labor Union had voted in favor of a general strike.

As well, the powerful Edison workers demanded raises and union recognition with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Their business agent led the Committee of 23 that sought to organize the general strike in Toledo.

On June 1, 40,000 trade unionists amassed for a rally at Lucas County Courthouse Square, ready to strike.

By then the AFL had already appealed to President Roosevelt to intervene.

Edison workers won big the next day with a 22% raise and union recognition.

And then the tentative agreement was reached between Auto-Lite and UAW local 18364.

Historian Bryan Palmer notes, “These victories wrote finis to any mobilization for a general strike, but they paved the way for ongoing union victories in the automobile industry.

Before the year was out, 19 more auto-parts plants in Toledo would fall to union organizers.

A General Motors plant was rocked with the first successful strike in the history of this corporate giant, the opening blow in what proved to be a long and taxing effort to establish trade-unionism in the open shop bastions of the automobile industry.”

June 2 - Wartime Strike Defies Presidential Seizure

On this day in labor history, the year was 1952.

That was the day 650,000 steel workers walked off the job in an industry-wide strike.

The Supreme Court had just handed down a 6-3 ruling in the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer.

The court decided that the President had no authority to seize private property on the grounds of national security without prior authorization from Congress.

On April 4, President Harry Truman had issued Executive Order 10340, ordering Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer to seize the nation’s steel mills to ensure the continued production of steel, ostensibly for the war effort.

Seizure of the mills came after months of wrangling over wage increases and work rules between mill owners, the United Steelworkers and the Wage Stabilization Board.

Steel workers walked out just hours after the decision.

The impact was felt immediately. Lay-offs began at a number of steel-dependent industries.

By the end of the month, most defense industries and auto plants nationwide were completely shut down.

Consumer inventories of steel were almost totally depleted and exports ceased entirely.

The union’s ultimate goal was a master contract and the union shop.

They hoped to jump start negotiations by signing with the smaller companies first and forestall invoking of Taft-Hartley.

By July, the railroads began to suffer financial losses, as did California growers who lacked tin to can their crops.

After 53 days, mill owners and the union agreed to terms that were less than what the Wage Stabilization Board had recommended, far less than what the union had originally demanded, but much more than what the mill owners had been willing to concede. 

More importantly, after 15 years of struggle, the United Steelworkers had finally won the union shop.

June 1 - Standing Up by Sitting Down

On this day in labor history, the year was 2000.

That was the day meatpackers at Dakota Premium Foods in St. Paul, Minnesota staged a seven-hour sit-down strike for health and safety.

They protested assembly line speed-up, being forced to work while injured and the dreaded “gang-time,” supervisors used to avoid paying overtime.

Remarkably, the organizing drive came after the workers took action on their own behalf.

The United Food and Commercial Workers had organized the plant briefly in the early 1990s.

They quickly lost ground when the company pressed a successful decertification campaign after refusing a first contract.

This time, workers found that as the assembly line pace increased, so did the rate of injuries.

Workers came into the plant that morning, resolved to make a stand.

Management bullied them for hours throughout the day to give up.

Finally they were forced to concede to many of the workers concerns, including observation of line speed changes and uniform hours of work.

Workers eagerly signed UFCW cards, while the company unleashed its propaganda campaign to scare workers away from the union.  

Management claimed workers would have to pay outrageous sums in union dues, that they’d lose their medical benefits and that their names would be turned over to the federal government.

The undocumented among the workers, some of whom were the best union fighters in the plant, were unshaken by these threats.

Then the company began targeting the strike leaders with firings and endless job transfers.

Workers stood intransigent and the UFCW overwhelmingly won the NLRB election a month later.

The union successfully weathered years of continued harassment, threats and decertification campaigns, but could not survive the closing of the plant in 2014.

May 31 - The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot

On this day in labor history, the year was 1921.

That was the day one of the worst race riots in American history began in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In a frenzy of anti-black violence, a white mob destroyed virtually the entire black neighborhood of Greenwood.

Over the course of two days, as many as 300, mostly black residents were killed. ‘Black Wall Street’ had been burned to the ground, leaving 10,000 homeless.

The day before, Dick Rowland, a young black man tripped as he boarded an elevator at his job.

 He fell against the young white woman elevator operator.

When she shrieked, nearby department store employees assumed she had been assaulted.

Rowland was arrested and newspapers fanned the flames of race violence and vigilantism.

On this day, white racist mobs surrounded the Tulsa County Courthouse where Rowland was being held and demanded he be turned over to them.

Returning black veterans had become increasingly assertive about their rights as citizens.

They marched to the courthouse, armed in an attempt to prevent Rowland’s lynching.

When the vets refused to disarm in the face of demands by the white mob, gunfire ensued, touching off 16 hours of fighting that literally decimated the community black workers and professionals had built up over the course of decades.

The National Guard was called out, mainly to disarm and round up black residents of Greenwood. Witnesses reported that Greenwood was bombed from the air by police and by Sinclair Oil company planes.

The history of the riot was buried for more than half a century.

It would take until 1997 for the Oklahoma State Legislature to set up a commission to uncover the bloody details, produce a 200 plus page report and recommend millions in reparations.

May 30 - The Memorial Day Massacre

On this day in labor history, the year was 1937.

That was the day known as among the darkest days for Labor, the Memorial Day Massacre.

For days, strikers had suffered arrests and severe beatings at the hands of Chicago police, who physically prevented them from establishing picket lines at South Chicago’s Republic Steel.  

Joined by supporters from practically all walks of life, strikers decided late in the afternoon to march to the gates, determined to picket.

For Michael Dennis, author of The Memorial Day Massacre and the Movement for Industrial Democracy,“Southeast Chicago became a crucible in which a wide spectrum of social and political alternatives became possible…

The Little Steel Strike was propelled by the realization that workers lived in a country dedicated to democratic freedom, but worked under conditions of near autocracy.”

Men, women, and children, black, white and Mexican workers all chanted “CIO! CIO!” as they marched down Green Bay Avenue.

The Chicago Police waited for them, armed with revolvers, nightsticks and blackjacks.

Strikers defended their right to picket as police once again formed a solid line, preventing their passage.

The police soon launched tear gas canisters and began firing into the crowd.

The picketers turned away in a futile attempt to escape the staggering brutality.

When the dust settled, ten were killed, thirty more shot, twenty-eight others hospitalized with eight suffering permanent disability and another 20-30 injured.

Virtually all those shot had wounds in the back or side.

Michael Dennis notes that the massacre “cast the die for the strike…

Collaboration between municipal officials, corporate leaders and the military in suppressing the strike would go uncontested by federal authorities and cheered by middle-class opinion.”

The campaign to organize Little Steel had suffered a crushing blow.

May 29 - The Little Steel Strike Revs Up

On this day in labor history, the year was 1937.

That was the day five governmental agencies began independent investigations into the Little Steel strike, then in its third day.

The Labor and Justice Departments as well as the NLRB and Senator Robert LaFollette’s Civil Liberties Committee all inquired about Wagner Act violations.

Production at Republic, Inland and Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mills was grinding to a halt.

Across five states, strike forces proved stronger than steel bosses had anticipated.

Subsidiaries across the Great Lakes region continued to shut down.

Weekend wrap-up reports of violent clashes on picket lines appeared in newspapers across the country.

Strikers had adopted a “Quit Work or Starve” policy against those who remained behind the gates.

They successfully turned away mail trucks and tore up railroad tracks in yards at Warren and Youngstown, Ohio facilities to stop food deliveries.

The strike was referred to as a grim siege as Republic was forced to drop food by airplane to hemmed-in scabs behind the lines.

At Inland Steel in East Chicago, Indiana, company police clubbed picketers as they stopped railroad cars headed into the plant.

In Buffalo, strikers stoned scab cars as they passed through the gates.

In Monroe, Michigan, strikers successfully prevented the night shift from crossing.

In South Chicago, three strikers were being held on conspiracy charges, following a pitched battle with police the day before that injured more than 20.

1000 strikers there had attempted to establish a picket line at Republic Steel gates. SWOC president Philip Murray demanded additional investigation against Republic, charging the company had been stockpiling ammunition and hired private gunmen.

His worries would be confirmed in the decisive battles that lay ahead.

May 28 - The 54th Massachusetts

On this day in labor history, the year was 1863.

That was the day the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry marched through the streets of Boston in a farewell parade and then boarded ships headed for Beaufort, South Carolina.

Thousands lined the streets for the send off, including prominent abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass.

It was the first Black regiment organized to fight in the Civil War.

Abolitionists had wrestled with Lincoln and others that the Civil War wasn’t just about preventing national disintegration but about ending the slave labor system.

They were emphatic that slaves and free black men had a right and a vested interest in fighting for their freedom and the freedom of their families.

Finally the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 codified that demand as it abolished the slave system.

The Union Army began accepting black enlistees and embarked on recruitment campaigns to enlist future black soldiers.

By May, over 1000 black men had enlisted from 24 states.

Others came from as far away as Canada and the Caribbean.

Fathers and sons enlisted together.

The Union Army was far from free of its own anti-black prejudices.

Secretary of War Edward Stanton determined white officers would lead all black regiments.

Nonetheless, black enlisted men were trained, armed and ready to fight.

A young Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was put in charge of the regiment.

Though Shaw and hundreds of troops would soon be killed in battle at Fort Wagner, the regiment forced the Confederacy to abandon the Fort altogether.

The “Swamp Angels” as they were called, would continue to exact justice throughout the South for the duration of the war.

They served as a model for other black regiments, whose fighting proved decisive for victory.

May 27 - Rubber Workers Push Back Against War Profiteering

On this day in labor history, the year was 1943.

That was the day 50,000 striking rubber workers ended their 5-day walkout in Akron, Ohio.  

It was World War II and the no-strike pledge was in full effect.

Bosses were awash in defense contract profits.

At the same time, they used the no-strike pledge to violate collective bargaining agreements, crank up assembly line production and ignore grievances.

As one sympathetic headline read, “Workers Forced to Strike in Defense of Their Living Standards Slashed by Soaring Prices, Taxes and Anti-Union Profiteers.”

Workers at Goodyear, Firestone and Goodrich had petitioned the War Labor Board for an 8 cent raise and shift differentials they were entitled to per the Little Steel Formula.

For a year, they waited patiently and were outraged when they learned the Board had only granted a 3-cent raise.

Firestone and Goodrich workers threw down their tools immediately and poured out of the factories.

Goodyear workers soon followed.

In a protest telegram to the Board, United Rubber Workers leaders pointed out that living costs had increased by 23% since January 1941.

They also noted that essential to maintaining the no-strike agreement was a just settlement of grievances and a $25,000 cap on executive salaries, neither of which had been adhered to.

The walkout was one of the first major challenges to the no-strike pledge.

Women took the lead as picket captains and dispatchers.

Their leadership was accepted without question.

Flying pickets cruised the city to enforce picket lines.

Black workers at Firestone, impressed by the union’s fight for equal rights, figured prominently in the strike.

Workers returned to the job with their spirits high, having forced the Board to reconsider their demands.