The Contentious Relationship Between General Motors and the UAW, 1962

From  Ed -- he is keeping the Blog going right now!!!

After several years of it being in a storage shed, I finally got around to going through my late father-in-law's tool box that he used during his many years as a union machinist with TEREX in northeastern Ohio.  TEREX, at the time, was a subsidiary of General Motors and of course made huge earth moving equipment.  

The company was starting to decline around 1962 and was considering permanently laying off union workers and machinists.  In my late father-in-law's tool box -- at the bottom -- were various letters that the head of the local union had written to the CEO of TEREX and I was struck by the first page of the one here attached.

Its seems that the CEO had written all hourly employees telling them that hard times were coming and "better prepare" for extensive layoffs and if things didn't improve from a competitive position, then the company might close or be bought by a competitor.  In essence: "Shape up union workers."

But in this letter, I had to laugh when I read that the head of the union tells the CEO that his letter to employees is filled with "hogwash and reeks of the style of a General Motors Word Merchant."

But having now gone through all the letters that my father-in-law saved -- correspondence between the local union and plant management, it dawned on me how contentious labor-management relations were in this plant and, of course, quite often in the auto industry.