Sitdown, the Coming of the
United Auto Workers, and the Battle of the Overpass
The Depression exacerbated labor
woes. James Flink wrote, “Labor unrest in the automobile industry spread with
massive unemployment and the deterioration of working conditions as the
Depression deepened.”24 The crisis was compounded by technological
stagnation, and since workers were more flexible than machines, human labor was
pushed to increase productivity.25 Work on the assembly line was
characterized by the “speed-up” and “stretch out” of the workforce. “Too many
men competed for too few jobs and automobile manufacturers took advantage of the
glut in the labor market.”26 Autoworkers of the 1930s had manifold
complaints, but the foremost grievance was the speed-up. Workers argued
bitterly that the speed of the line was
unbearable; that annual earnings were inadequate; methods of payment were too
complicated; the seasonal unemployment created by the industry’s insistence
upon an annual model change; the practice of shutting down during the model
changes (at Ford) and of hiring workers, regardless of skill, at the starting
rate; management ignored and refused to recognize seniority; workers over 40
found it difficult to remain employed; female labor was being substituted to
replace male labor; the continued “speed-up” of the assembly line; and the
espionage networks and the Bennett regime of Ford.27 Mounting
complaints would give impetus to a fledgling union movement.
Under the auspices of the New Deal,
Congress passed the Wagner Act and created the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB). The original agreement was admittedly weak; it only stipulated
requirements for worker representation, and automobile companies continued to
resist unionization. The promises of the Wagner Act eventually came to
fruition. “In only ten years,” noted historian Richard Oestriecher, “the Wagner
Act led directly to an increase in union representation from approximately one
worker in ten in 1934 . . . to more than three out of 10 by
1945, and strong unions forced corporations to raise wages at roughly the same
rate that the economy expanded.”28 Concurrent with the Wagner Act,
the American Federation of Labor (AFL) chartered the United Automobile Workers
of America (UAW).
Even under the aegis of the Great
Depression and the New Deal political climate, the “Big Three” were able to
thwart worker’s attempts to organize. Unionization of the automobile industry
was not concluded when the ink of the Wagner Act dried. Ford used a police
regime to prevent violence; General Motors, Chrysler, and other firms embarked
on campaigns of espionage. It was said at the time that one out of ten workers
was a company informant. To unionize the auto industry, American politics had
to be moved to the left. In Management
and Managed Steven Jeffreys argued that the external political environment
was crucial in shaping the limits of unionization. He observed that the
Roosevelt labor coalition had left the “business community exposed.”29
Jeffreys’ thesis is also important because it recognized that “different
patterns of managerial authority developed in different plants.”30
Labor unrest is a microcosm of larger political effects on the American social
fabric. The historical experience of unionization was complex, and thus
different in every company, and then every plant within that company. A high
number of automobile strikes followed FDR’s 1932 election.
Companies battled to maintain
Detroit’s reputation as an open shop city. Historians have noted several
reasons for the auto industry’s ability to resist industrialization. First,
both the AFL and communist organizations bungled opportunities to organize
autoworkers. A proper political mechanism was not realized until a group within
the AFL created the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which intended
to jettison the AFL’s craft principle to organize workers in the mass
production industries. Second, the racial and ethnic composition of the
workforce made organization difficult. Third, management pursued deliberate
strategies to make unionization difficult. Ford’s initial benevolence was a
subtle attempt to assuage unionization, and his regime of violence under thug
Harry Bennett was an overt strategy to stop unions. General Motors had a spy
racket. In addition, politics within the unions were brutal and divisive. Even
with mounting complaints and the automobile industry’s speed-up, racial and
ethnic differences proved difficult to overcome.
Collective bargaining was made a
reality by historical actors who were catalyzed by the Great Depression and
energized as a part of the New Deal political coalition. Franklin Roosevelt’s
charisma forged a new political bloc that embraced class-based politics and
sided tentatively with labor. Workers also began to overcome their differences,
and as Ronald Edsforth and Robert Asher pointed out, “no matter what their
race, ethnicity, or gender, automobile workers found themselves confronting
similar problems . . . between
1935 and 1941 deeply felt resentments about what these workers called “the
speedup” or “the stretch out” brought diverse groups of auto workers together
in the successful organizing drives of the United Automobile Workers Union.”31
Leaders such as Homer Martin, Walter and Victor Ruether, Richard “Dick”
Frankensteen, George Addes, and others organized a motley gang of laborers into
the United Autoworkers (UAW). In a pivotal moment at the 1935 South Bend
Convention, Dick Frankensteen’s Automotive Industrial Workers Association
(AIWA) joined the UAW.32 Arnold Bernstein noted, “In the summer of
1936 the now more or less “United” Automobile Workers confronted the major task
of organization, which, given the extreme oligopolistic structure of the more
industry, necessitated a frontal attack upon one of the big three.”33
The opportunity for a “frontal
assault” came in 1936 with the sit down strike at General Motors plants around
the country. Arnold Bernstein noted that the youth of the autoworkers made the
sit down strike “democracy run wild.”34 The autoworkers used the
innovative sit-down strike tactic to prevent the removal of dies and to
obstruct the importation of strike breakers.35 After a 44-day period
of intense negotiations, the UAW gained the right to bargain with General
Motors. The moment was unique in American history; both Michigan Governor Frank
Murphy and President Franklin Roosevelt did not forcibly remove strikers. The
UAW’s conquest of General Motors quickly exacted contracts from Hudson,
Packard, and Studebaker, along with numerous parts producers. In the wake of
the strike, the union had “256 locals, 400 collective bargaining agreements,
and 220,000 dues-paying members.”36
The union won several victories and
had growing numbers, and in the summer of 1937 began to take on the Ford Motor
Company. The assault on Ford was concomitant with vicious union factionalism.
Dick Frankensteen led a progressive caucus while Walter Reuther headed up a
Unity caucus. Perhaps the most dramatic moment of UAW-CIO’s campaign to
unionize the automobile industry was the “Battle of the Overpass,” a brawl
between Harry Bennett’s thug regime and UAW leaflet distributors led by Walter
Reuther and Richard Frankensteen. Detroit
News photographer Scotty Kilpatrick captured the beat-down, and it
generated iconic images of the fight to unionize the auto industry. Arnold
Bernstein described the attack:
The
UAW people were attacked unmercifully. Reuther was beaten, knocked down, lifted
to his feet, and beaten again. Four or five men worked over Frankensteen. They
skinned his coat up his back and over his face and two men locked his arms
while others slugged him. Then they knocked him to the concrete floor . . . A
separate individual grabbed him by each foot and by each hand and his legs were
spread apart and his body was toward the east . . . and ten
other men proceeded to kick him in the crotch and in the groin, and around the
head and also to gore him with their heels in the abdomen.37
That
attack, and the public revulsion that followed, ultimately forced Henry Ford to
give in to union demands to organize, which occurred on the eve of World War
II. After several organizers and workers were fired in the spring of 1941, a
walkout occurred in the foundry, which spread to the entire plant. Unionization
was called to a vote, and a majority approved of the UAW-CIO. Much to the
dismay of a senile Ford, the “UAW received over 70% of the vote, won
recognition in all Ford plants, and obtained a favorable collective bargaining
contract.”38 The contract set limits on the arbitrary authority of
management, established grievance procedures, and stopped the use of steward
systems to mitigate disputes.
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