The "United We Stand" mantra was everywhere and I used to explain to my co-workers that I was not in any way "united" with Bush or Clinton or Kissinger or any people like that. I am originally from Britain and made it clear that I was not United with the Queen either, or United with the British government's policy in Ireland. Many Irish American co-workers would not disagree with me on that position.
I also used to ask folks who they were united with when it came to strikes or a picket line. Were they united with the boss or the workers out on strike. naturally, they always said they were united with the workers. Then there is no need for us to be united with our own bosses, in the form of employers or the government. This has nothing to do with defending our homes and democratic rights from anyone who attacks them.
A few times, especially once in the Union when I tried to introduce a resolution against the war, I was called a Taliban and un-American by one guy, everyone was "proud" to be American. In response to this mood, which wasn't exceptionally bad, just in the early stages, I wrote a short piece about Labor history that I handed out at work. I am opposed to nationalism as being proud to be American, or British put me in the same camp as the Queen or Donald Trump and George Bush and I'm not proud of them. But being proud of being a worker is another issue. This was the piece I handed out to my co-workers in an effort to counter the nationalist frenzy and share some of our great history, a period of intense warfare between US workers and US bosses.
This Makes me Proud To Be An American Worker
Brothers and Sisters:
The following is an account of the struggle to win a union at GM, the largest corporation in the world that owned countries. It is one of the heroic moments in U.S. history, second in my opinion only to the revolution (both phases) and the civil rights movement. One month after the GM strike 193,000 workers engaged in 247 sit-downs; a half million more workers "sat down" before the end of 1937.
Western Union messengers, merchant seamen, milliners restaurant workers, all, followed suit and occupied or sat down in their places of work, as did workers in theater projection booths. Scabs tried to deliver coal to a school and the kids walked out. This is how the "unskilled" workers built unions in the thirties and why much of the social legislation we enjoy today was passed by the very politicians who used the troops, thugs and the Pinkerton's to crush workers halting production in order to defend and expand our rights and for a better life; our own Union, AFSCME, my own Union, was formed during this social upheaval.
Art Preis in Labor's Giant Step writes: "The very non-violence of the sit-downs infuriated the employers and their government agents. It was impossible for police or troops to provoke violence without clearly initiating it themselves. They had to attack and break in to plants where there was obviously no disorder, because strikers were on the inside, strikebreakers on the outside. Thus, only 25 sit-down strikes were broken by police of the more than 1,000 sit-downs reported by the press in 1936-37."
The GM victory might seem mild by today's standards but violence and intimidation of workers, including spying on them, was commonplace. The workers won the right to a union, they won the right to discuss unionism on company property during lunch and rest periods without being fired, and bargaining on wages, hours and line speed (a major issue with factory workers). GM, a corporation that told its workers they would never have a union, succumbed. We live off the fruits of this victory today and each day the employers erode more and more of it aided by a weak and pliant labor officialdom. It would be a dereliction of duty to allow the employers to take from us what these heroic brothers and sisters won at great cost to themselves.
The quote below is a bit long but is an account of one of the major occupations, the Chevrolet # 4 plant. The workers, knowing there were company snitches attending meetings, had arranged a decoy occupation of plant #9 to keep the police and troops busy while they occupied #4, a key plant in the victory. The account is from "The Searchlight" the official publication of UAW Chevrolet Local 569 in Flint, and written by Kermit Johnson one of the strike committee members, it's inspiring to me.
But first, Preis describes the march on plant #9, the decoy:
"Several thousand strikers marched to Chevrolet plant No. 9 from Union headquarters. They were led by Roy Reuther and Powers Hapgood. GM informers, as had been expected, had tipped off management about the march on # 9. Armed Flint detectives and company guards had been installed in the plant. The workers inside began yelling "sit-down!" and a forty minute battle was waged inside the plant. The Women's Emergency Brigade, organized and led by Genora Johnson (now Dollinger), fought heroically on the outside, smashing the windows to permit the tear gas to escape from the plant."
Johnson already inside plant #4, describes the occupation in the "Searchlight" :
"Plant #4 was huge and sprawling, a most difficult target, but extremely important to us because the corporation was running the plant, even though they had to stockpile motors, in anticipation of favorable court action." (to get the workers ousted from the plants RM).
"GM had already recovered from the first shock of being forced to surrender four of their largest body plants to sit-down strikers. They already had the legal machinery in motion that would, within a short time, expel by force if necessary, the strikers from the plants. If that happened, we knew the strike would be broken, and the fight for a union in General Motors would be lost."
"The next few minutes seemed like hours, as I ambled toward the door, my previous confidence was rapidly giving way to fear--fear that we'd lost our one big gamble. My thoughts were moving a mile a minute, and I was rehashing the same plan over and over, but this time, all its weaknesses stood out like red lights." ".......then the door burst inward and there was Ed! Great big Ed, his hairy chest bare to his belly, carrying a little American flag and leading the most ferocious band of twenty men I had ever seen. He looked so funny with that tiny flag in comparison with his men, who were armed to the teeth with lead hammers, pipes, and chunks of sheet metal three feet long. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time."
"When I asked where the hell the three hundred men were that he had guarunteed to bring with him, he seemed dumbfounded. I don't think he'd ever looked back from the time he'd dropped his tools, picked up the flag, and started his line plunge to plant 4. It didn't take a master mind to know that trying to strike a roaring plant of more than three thousand men and almost as many machines with just twenty men was almost impossible. We huddled together and made a quick decision to go back to plant 6 for reinforcments, and if that failed to get out of Chevrolet in a hurry. Luckily we encountered little opposition in Ed's plant and in a short time we were back in Plant 4 with hundreds of determined men."
"Although we didn't know it then, a real war was going on in and around plant 9, the decoy. Every city cop and plant police were clubbing the strikers and using tear gas to evacuate the plant. In retaliation the men and women from the hall were smashing windows and yelling encouragement from the outsdie."
"Back in plant #4, a relatively peaceful operation was proceeding according to plan; a little late, but definitely moving now. Up and down the long aisles we marched, asking, pleading, and finally threatening the men who wouldn't get in line. For the first hour the men in plant #4 were being bullied not only by us but by management as well. Almost as fast as we could turn the machines off, the bossses, following our wake, would turn them on, and threaten the men with being fired. As the lines of marchers grew longer, the plant grew quieter, and finally after two hours every machine was silent."
"The men were standing around in small groups, sullenly eyeing members of supervision. No one knew who belonged to the Union because no one had any visible identification. We had successfully taken the plant, but we knew that our gains had to be immediatly consolidated or we'd face counteraction. We had a few men go through the plant and give a general order that all who didn't belong to the Union should go upstairs to the dining room and sign up. While the vast majority were thus taken care of, a few hundred of us were left unhampered to round up the supervisors. It didn't take long to persuade them that leaving the plant under their own power was more dignified than being thrown out. Herding the foremen out of the plant, we sent them on their way with the same advice that most of us had been given year after year during layoffs. "We'll let you know when to come back." "
"The next day, when Judge Gadola issued his injunction setting a deadline for the following day, the strikers held meetings and decided to hold the plants at all costs. The Fisher #1 workers wired Governor Murphy "Unarmed as we are, the introduction of the militia, sheriffs, or police with murderous weapons will mean a blood bath of unarmed workers...We have decided to stay in the plant. We have no illusions about the sacrifices which this decision will entail. We fully expect that if a violent effort is made to oust us, many of us will be killed, and we take this means of making it known to our wives, to our children, to the people of the state of Michigan and the country that if this result follows from an attempt to reject us, you (Governor Murphy) are the one who must be held responsible for our deaths."
"Early the next day, all the roads in to Flint were jammed with cars loaded with Unionists from Detroit, Lansing, Pontiac and Toledo. More than a thousand veterans of the Toledo Auto-Lite and Chevrolet strikes were on hand. Walter Reuther, then head of the Detroit West Side UAW Local, brought in a contingent of 500. Rubber workers from Akron and coal miners from the Pittsburg area joined the forces rallying to back the Flint strikers. No Police were in sight. The workers directed traffic. Barred from Fisher #2 and Chevrolet # 4 by troops with machine guns and 37 millimeter howitzers, the workers from other areas formed a huge cordon round Fisher #1"
end quotes
The Flint sit-down strikes should be Labor's Fourth of July. The men that took over those plants were prepared to die and broke the back of one of the world's most ruthless employers. The women that helped them, fed them through factory windows, picketed outside plants etc, are also giants in American history. It is these brothers and sisters that make me proud to be an American worker.
Richard Mellor
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