SYMHC Classics: Flint Sit-down Strike

This late 2021 episode covers a strike in Flint, Michigan, which was at the heart of auto manufacturing for General Motors in 1936. And while the strike was largely centered around Flint, it also involved workers at GM factories all over the U. S. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 0:34Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:09Holly Frey?

  We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:41Speaker 04

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• 2:11Holly Frey?

  Happy Saturday, everybody. We have an upcoming episode about organized labor in the 1940s in the US. And it's got some connections to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act. We talked about the Wagner Act and how it related to workers' rights to unionize and strike in our episode on the Flint Sit Down Strike. So we are replaying that episode as today's Saturday classic. This one originally came out on December 6, 2021. Enjoy.

• 2:46Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 3:00Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 3:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  The 85th anniversary of the Flint Sit Down Strike is this month. It's marked as starting on December 30 of 1936. But that name and date don't quite capture the whole of the strike. Flint, Michigan was absolutely at the heart of auto manufacturing for General Motors. And the strike was largely centered around Flint. But this strike also involved workers at GM factories all over the United States. And while the major strike activity in Flint started on December 30, it also followed earlier strikes in other parts of Michigan and in other states. So this name and date, as they're commonly known, is really a little bit broader than that.

• 3:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have talked about several strikes on the show before, including strikes in the United States, Canada, England, and Ireland. But this one in particular has been cited as one of the most significant and influential strikes in United States labor history.

• 4:02Holly Frey?

  And this strike took place while the world was still trying to recover from the Great Depression. This economic catastrophe had, of course, been devastating to people all over the globe. General Motors in particular had cut nearly half of its staff, while also increasing requirements for workers' productivity and implementing seasonal layoffs. Although the company would loan money to laid off workers, they had to pay it back out of their wages once they were back on the job.

• 4:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  But even people who had steady work at GM during the Great Depression didn't really have a sense of job security. There were so many people who were out of work and just desperate for jobs that the company knew it could fire anyone for essentially any reason and have a replacement waiting immediately. This is especially true in places like Flint, where GM was by far the biggest employer.

• 4:55Holly Frey?

  The US government took various steps to try to bolster the nation's economy during the Depression. One was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. This was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and he signed it into law during his first 100 days in office. This was an act, quote, "to encourage national industrial recovery, to foster fair competition, to provide for the construction of certain useful public works, and for other purposes."

• 5:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  The National Industrial Recovery Act suspended a lot of the antitrust legislation that we talked about recently in our episodes on Ida Tarbell. Instead, this act encouraged businesses to form alliances and to establish codes of fair competition. These codes were meant to apply across whole industries, setting standards for things like consumer protections, fair wages, and prices for goods. The idea was that these codes would reduce unfair business practices that were making it harder for struggling businesses to stay afloat during the crisis. So, things like undercutting competitors' prices to the point that they just could not go that low.

• 6:08Holly Frey?

  Section 7A of the act read, quote, "Every code of fair competition, agreement, and license approved, prescribed, or issued under this title shall contain the following conditions: One, that employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor or their agents in the designation of such representatives, or in self-organization, or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." Two, that no employee and no one seeking employment shall be required as a condition of employment to join any company, union, or to refrain from joining,

• 6:51Holly Frey?

  organizing, or assisting a labor organization of his own choosing. And three, that employer shall comply with the maximum hours of labor, minimum rates of pay, and other conditions of employment approved or prescribed by the president.

• 7:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  This act contained lots of provisions that we haven't gotten into here, including authorizing the president to establish a federal emergency administration of public works. But in terms of the Flint sit-down strikes, Section 7A was key. It protected employees' right to organize and bargain collectively.

• 7:28Holly Frey?

  And this was a huge deal. Although the term collective bargaining had been coined by British social reformer Beatrice Webb in 1891, workers had been trying to work together to secure better pay and working conditions for centuries. And in the US, trade unions and other efforts to collectively bargain had been illegal. They were treated as criminal conspiracies. The National Industrial Recovery Act was the first federal law legalizing union membership and collective bargaining.

• 7:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  But in general, employers were reluctant to comply with various provisions of the act. There were also questions about whether the Supreme Court would find it to be unconstitutional. Some employers used this uncertainty to justify their non-compliance with the law, and they kept working directly against their employees' legal right to unionize.

• 8:21Holly Frey?

  As a result, labor disputes, including strikes, surged as workers and their unions fought for the kinds of rights and protections they were legally entitled to. And some of these disputes led to violence. In August of 1933, Roosevelt established the National Labor Board, chaired by Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, to try to mediate between the growing labor movement and industry leaders. In addition to Wagner, the board had six members, three each representing labor and industry.

• 8:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  But the board really didn't have much enforcement power. Companies that were operating under one of the codes that had been established under the new law were allowed to display an emblem of a blue eagle. And all that the N L B could really do when companies stopped following the rules was to make them take their eagle down.

• 9:13Holly Frey?

  In May of 1935, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Schechter Poultry Corp. versus United States, which did indeed find the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional. At the same time, though, the Act's industrial provisions were supposed to expire after two years, or sooner if the president or Congress decided they were no longer needed. This decision came just a few weeks before that expiration date.

• 9:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  A big reason behind that decision was that this act delegated a lot of legislative power to the president without really setting guidelines on how the president could use that power. It was not the whole decision, obviously, but that's sort of the crux. People were divided as to whether or to what extent this act had been effective at what it set out to do. It was supposed to, quote, "remove obstructions to the free flow of interstate and foreign commerce." It was supposed to do that by reducing labor disputes, reducing unfair competitive practices, and making sure industries were working at full capacity. It had generally improved workers' pay and working conditions, and it had cut down

• 10:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  on some of the competitive practices that were undermining the economic recovery. But it was also blamed for things like making various goods more expensive and slowing the pace of production.

• 10:35Holly Frey?

  The government still had a vested interest in this idea of removing obstructions to interstate commerce, including obstructions that stemmed from labor disputes. And labor activists were advocating for the protections that had been part of the National Industrial Recovery Act to be restored. This led to the National Labor Relations Act, introduced by Senator Wagner and also called the Wagner Act, which was signed into law on July 6, 1935. This was an act to, quote, "diminish the causes of labor disputes burdening or obstructing interstate and foreign commerce, to create a National Labor Relations Board and for other purposes."

• 11:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  The act applied to all employers involved in interstate commerce, with the exception of airlines, railroads, agriculture, and the government. It framed employers' refusal to respect their employees' right to unionize or to accept collective bargaining as the cause of industrial strife, leading to strikes and other unrest. The act also noted that companies have a lot more power than their employees do, especially when those employees aren't protected by a fair contract or allowed to collectively bargain. It once again legalized employees' rights to organize and outlawed employers' interference with that right. And it also empowered the National Labor Relations Board

• 11:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  to oversee this whole process and mediate disputes.

• 12:02Holly Frey?

  But since the Supreme Court had overturned the National Industrial Recovery Act, many employers expected the National Labor Relations Act to be struck down as well. Even though the law barred employers from interfering with employees' right to unionize, many employers kept doing exactly that. Things like hiring detectives to investigate, spy on and harass union organizers and members, establishing company unions that really represented the interest of the business rather than its employees, and firing or demoting people who were suspected of organizing or joining a union.

• 12:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this brings us to the US automotive industry and specifically to Flint, Michigan, which we will get to after a sponsor break.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.

• 13:19Speaker 05

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• 13:22Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:42Speaker 05

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• 13:50Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:57Speaker 06

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• 14:03Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:14Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 16:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  The American Federation of Labor was established in the late 19th century to bring craft and trade unions together under one umbrella. Its first member unions represented people like tailors, iron molders, and carpenters. And in its early years, the AFL did not work with industrial unions at all. Craft unions, representing people like carpenters, were considered to represent skilled workers, while industrial workers, so people who worked on factory assembly lines, were thought of as unskilled. But around the time the Wagner Act was passed, the AFL established a Committee for Industrial Organization.

• 16:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  This committee soon split off from the AFL, and it reestablished itself as its own organization, which was the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

• 16:53Holly Frey?

  United Auto Workers was established in Detroit, Michigan, in 1935, and at first, it became part of the AFL. And like the AFL, its initial focus was mainly on the automotive industry's skilled workers, not the people who worked on assembly lines in factories. But when the CIO split off from the AFL, the United Auto Workers went to. Soon, the UAW was trying to organize factory workers, especially at the big three automakers, GM, Ford, and Chrysler. GM was the largest auto manufacturer in the world at the time, with 69 plants in 35 cities, many in the Midwest.

• 17:33Holly Frey?

  Initially, the UAW focused more on GM and Chrysler because Henry Ford was vehemently anti-union.

• 17:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  GM actively worked against these unionization efforts. According to information unearthed in Senate committee hearings, between 1934 and 1936, GM spent more than $839,000 on labor detective services. More than half of it paid to the Pinkerton's. This detective work involved everything from investigating union organizers to planting spies within the union to harassing and threatening workers. This congressional committee described GM's spy work as, quote, "a monument to the most colossal super system of spies yet devised in any American corporation."

• 18:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are also reports that GM conscripted an organization known as the Black Legion to intimidate and threaten its employees. The Black Legion was compared to the KKK and was aggressively anti-union.

• 18:38Holly Frey?

  And this went beyond targeting the union itself and the workers at the factories. Part of GM's union busting effort involved telling male workers' wives that their husbands' union activities were going to get them fired, as well as convincing women that their husbands were up to no good, suggesting that they were out late partying or soliciting sex workers, or that they were lying about the union and that they were really spending their after-work time having extramarital affairs.

• 19:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  As UAW organizers tried to unionize GM's factories, they were working against all of this, and they were finding common themes among the workers' grievances from plant to plant. A lot of it was in line with what we already discussed, like firings that seemed arbitrary or retaliatory. The factories were also poorly ventilated and during periods of hot weather, workers passed out or even died from overheating, with their coworkers expected to keep working until someone came to remove the body. Many of the jobs were dangerous, including working around dangerous substances with no ventilation or protective equipment.

• 19:47Holly Frey?

  There was also an immense focus on speed, to the point that workers on the assembly line did not have time to go to the bathroom. There was also nobody who could cover for a person who became ill or injured on the job. Workers talked about people who got sick during the day and kept working on the assembly line even though they were vomiting. There was also speed up during peak production times, with workers expected to complete their tasks on the assembly line at seemingly superhuman speeds. If a factory was in danger of missing its daily quota, speed up would start near the end of people's shifts when they were already exhausted.

• 20:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  For many workers, take-home pay was not the biggest issue, but the way wages were calculated was a problem. Many workers on the line weren't paid an hourly or a daily rate. They were paid by the piece, and the rate for each piece didn't necessarily stay the same. It was often set at a higher amount at the start of a pay period to encourage the workers to go as quickly as possible, but then it would drop as payday approached. People wound up making less than they expected, and this whole shifting pay rate felt like a bait and switch.

• 21:00Holly Frey?

  Women working at the GM factories faced an additional layer of hostility. Some reported being sexually harassed and even assaulted by their supervisors, who would then use the assault as leverage to try to guarantee the woman's compliance at work.

• 21:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  All of these factors fed into the sit-down strike. Most of the strikes that had taken place in the United States before this point had involved workers leaving their job sites and organizing things like picket lines, demonstrations, protests, pamphleteering, and speeches. While the strike at GM in 1936 and 37 still involved things like picket lines and other activities outside the building, those were primarily the work of the striking workers' supporters, because in a sit-down strike, employees stayed inside the factory, physically occupying it.

• 21:51Holly Frey?

  This strategy had some advantages for the striking workers. A typical strike could only be effective if the vast majority of the workers participated. If only a few people walked out, the company could just redistribute their work among their coworkers or hire replacements without too much trouble. But a sit-down strike allowed a smaller number of people to take control of the whole workplace. Employers also couldn't simply hire replacement workers to take over, since the striking workers had control of the building. Remaining inside the workplace also gave the workers more protection from violence. Employers were reluctant to remove workers by force, due to the risk of damaging expensive machinery and equipment.

• 22:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  But there were also some downsides. Striking workers had to be separated from their families and their friends who didn't work with them. Depending on where the strike was taking place, striking workers didn't have access to things like bathing facilities or adequate sleeping spaces, although some of the GM strikers were able to make reasonably comfortable beds with the padding that was used to make car seats. Sit-down strikes were also questionably legal at best, since strikers were essentially trespassing. The idea that a few workers could decide to go on strike and take over the whole building also ran against the spirit of the National Labor Relations Act, which was really focused

• 23:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  on the idea of a majority of employees forming a union and bargaining, not on a smaller number of employees forcing the issue by occupying the building.

• 23:26Holly Frey?

  In the US, the first sit-down strike is generally noted as having happened in 1906, when members of the industrial workers of the world stopped working but stayed at their stations at a General Electric factory in Schenectady, New York. Workers in Europe started occupying their workplaces after World War I, including roughly half of the metalworkers in Paris in the spring of 1936, and that led to sweeping labor reforms in France. In the US, workers at a rubber plant in Akron, Ohio, sat down in early 1936 as well.

• 24:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Fisher Body was a division of GM, and Fisher Body workers in Atlanta sat down at two different points in October and November of 1936, with the November strike spreading to other plants in the Atlanta area as well. Workers at Bendix Products in South Bend, Indiana, sat down in mid-November. In mid-December, workers sat down at two GM plants in Kansas City, Missouri, and then at a body stamping plant in Cleveland, Ohio, as well as the Kelsey Hayes Wheel Plant in Detroit, Michigan. All of these were either divisions of or suppliers of GM.

• 24:37Holly Frey?

  On December 16, 1936, the UAW asked for a meeting with GM upper management, but GM refused, maintaining that any collective bargaining would have to happen at the local level from plant to plant. But the UAW argued that the issues that it wanted to discuss, things like recognizing the union for collective bargaining, a seniority system for workers, and the tremendous speeds expected of workers on the line, were things that applied for every GM factory in the nation.

• 25:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Late December also wasn't ideal for the UAW to be planning a huge strike. Most of GM's workers celebrated Christmas, so this was just not a great time for people to lose their wages or to be separated from their families. Since many of GM's factories were clustered together in the Midwest, the weather at the end of the year would probably not be all that conducive to things like the pickets and the protests that were needed to support the strike. And Michigan had elected a new governor, Frank Murphy, who was expected to be far more sympathetic to organized labor than his predecessor had been, but he was not going to take office until January 1st.

• 25:47Holly Frey?

  However, workers themselves took this decision out of the UAW's hands, and we're going to get to that after we pause for a sponsor break.

• 26:00Speaker 01

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• 26:28Speaker 00

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• 26:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesse have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends

• 27:42Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 27:58Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 28:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 Sponsored Job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. As the UAW tried to organize GM workers in Flint, Michigan, GM tried to reduce its risk in the event of a strike.

• 29:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  On December 29th, 1936, the company transferred union members out of its Chevrolet body stamping plant in Flint that was known as Fisher Body Number Two. Then on December 30th, the company started removing the dies that were used to stamp out body parts from another Flint plant, which was Fisher Body Number One. This was one of only two sets of dies that GM was using to stamp out auto bodies. And their removal from the plant represented not only a loss of jobs, because the people who did that work would not have work to do anymore, but also a loss of leverage. If the workers took over the plant with the dies still in it,

• 30:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  that would stop production on multiple models of GM cars. So when the workers at Fisher 1 realized what was happening with the dies, they immediately started a strike, taking over the building, and workers at Fisher 2 started striking on the same day.

• 30:21Holly Frey?

  There are also oral history testimonies suggesting that another factor might have been at work here as well. Flat glass workers had also gone on strike, and that was leading to a potential glass shortage for car manufacturing. If the factories in Flint ran out of glass, production would shut down anyway, so workers decided to strike before that could happen.

• 30:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  The strike's organizers decided that only men could occupy the plants during the strike. So while there were women working at GM, they could not be part of the sit-down. But women's participation in other aspects of the strike was absolutely critical. The Women's Auxiliary, which was organized by 23-year-old Janora Johnson, who was later Janora Johnson Dollinger, set up a strike kitchen to feed the striking workers and their families. They delivered food directly to the factories. The Women's Auxiliary also did the strikers laundry. And about three weeks into the strike, they started a daycare for the striking workers' children. They also brought children to the factories to visit their family members,

• 31:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  and they picketed and did other work in support of the strike.

• 31:31Holly Frey?

  It took some time for some of these efforts to get off the ground, in part because the company had put so much effort into sowing distrust of the union among the workers' wives, who support the Women's Auxiliary needed. In oral histories recorded in the 1980s and 90s, women described going to the factories after the strike started, expecting to drag their husbands out of some kind of debauchery or a radical communist frenzy, but then staying to help make food once they realized what was actually going on. Whether they worked at GM or not, the women involved in the auxiliary faced hostility from company supporters and the strike's critics, including people questioning their morality and implying that they were sex workers.

• 32:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  We should note that while there was not like a stereotypical... Screaming radical conspiracy of communism happening in the strike. There were definitely communists and socialists among the strikers and within the labor movement in general. Both communism and socialism had and have a focus on fair treatment of workers. This is not really that surprising. Janora Johnson Dollinger, for example, had become a socialist at the age of 16. She was one of the more radical people involved with the strike, though. Many others had a general interest in communist or socialist ideals while not formally being a member of either party.

• 32:57Holly Frey?

  And we should also take a moment to note that, at least as far as we know, all the women in the auxiliary in Flint were white. Although GM did employ black people in its factories, they were only hired in janitorial roles or to work in the foundry. Only one black employee, Roscoe Van Zant, is known to have sat down in Flint during this strike.

• 33:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  During the sit-down strike, workers inside the plants established rules for behavior, including maintaining order, keeping things clean and organized, and mediating disputes as people were cooped up together for weeks. Workers held lectures and classes for one another. They read and played games and sang songs in order to keep their spirits up. Songs included a union anthem called "Solidarity Forever" that was sung to the theme of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

• 33:46Holly Frey?

  And at first, GM's response was mostly not to engage. GM President Alfred P. Sloan stated, quote, "We will not negotiate with a union while its agents forcibly hold possession of our property." An executive vice president, William S. Nudson, called the striking workers trespassers and violators of the law of the land. GM also argued that the union's bargaining efforts were not legal under the National Labor Relations Act, since fewer than half of the employees had joined the union. The UAW countered that GM had illegally interfered with its effort to get workers to join, preventing it from getting a larger membership.

• 34:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  On January 2nd, GM got a court order to have the striking workers removed from the factories, but the workers refused to go. Then it became public knowledge that the judge who issued this injunction, which was Edward D. Black, owned a whole bunch of stock in GM. This was a clear conflict of interest. People pretty much dropped the subject of trying to get this injunction enforced.

• 34:50Holly Frey?

  On January 4th, the UAW submitted a list of demands, including that the UAW be given exclusive recognition as the bargaining agency for workers at GM, abolishing the piecework system, a 30-hour work week with time and a half for overtime, minimum pay rates, the reinstatement of people who had been fired unfairly, a seniority system, and a speed of production that was mutually agreed upon by managers and a committee from the union. But GM continued to refuse to negotiate.

• 35:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  On January 11th, 1937, GM turned off the heat and electricity at Fisher 2, even though the temperature that day was only 16 degrees Fahrenheit or almost negative 9 Celsius. They also locked the factory gate to stop the women's auxiliary from delivering food. Workers and their supporters broke the gate open, and that escalated into a fight between law enforcement and the workers and their supporters. The police used tear gas and they fired upon the workers, and the workers defended themselves with things like fire hoses and thrown door hinges. Women who were outside the plant were also part of this fighting. They were armed with things like homemade blackjacks and bars of soap stuffed down

• 36:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  in the toes of socks. At least 16 workers and 11 police were injured, with most of the worker injuries coming from gunshot wounds.

• 36:15Holly Frey?

  In a later Oral History interview, Janora Johnson Dollinger said of this moment, quote, "I was frightened, and you first lose all your power of thinking for just a matter of moments, and then you become terribly, terribly angry that armed policemen are shooting into unarmed men." She used the UAW's loudspeaker car to call for women to come to the factory and stand with the men, banking on the idea that police would be reluctant to shoot at a group of unarmed women.

• 36:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  The striking workers nicknamed this incident, "The Battle of the Running Bulls," or "The Battle of Bulls Run," with "bulls" being a slang term for police. And some of the more radical women in the Women's Auxiliary, including Janora Johnson Dollinger, decided to form a new organization afterward, that being the Emergency Brigade. Their job was to handle any emergency that arose during the strike. This included using their own bodies to shield the striking workers from the police, as they had done on January 11. But it included other things, too, for the remainder of the strike, including, at one point, helping a striking worker's wife give birth to a baby.

• 37:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Emergency Brigade wore red berets and armbands with the letters EB. And some members kept working with the Women's Auxiliary while also working with the Emergency Brigade.

• 37:35Holly Frey?

  After the violence on January 11, the UAW and GM reached a tentative agreement. The striking workers would leave the plants, and GM would start good-faith negotiations with the union, not restarting production until those negotiations were complete. Workers who had been striking in other cities, including Cleveland and Detroit, left their plants. But in Flint, the union heard that GM had also agreed to meet with another organization called the Flint Alliance, which the CIO and the UAW viewed as a company union. So, workers in Flint refused to leave the factories, and GM asked Governor Frank Murphy to call out the National Guard.

• 38:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, there's also some suggestion that GM, it looked like GM wasn't going to abide by the promise to not restart production until the negotiations were done. So, after they contacted the governor, Murphy did not act the way that many people would expect the governor to act during such an incident. He actually supported the workers' legal right to unionize and to strike. And he was really afraid that using National Guard troops to physically remove them would just lead to people getting killed. So while Murphy did call out the National Guard, their task was to keep a buffer between the workers on one side and GM, GM's security guards and police on the other.

• 38:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  About 1,200 National Guardsmen arrived in Flint on January 12.

• 39:04Holly Frey?

  On February 1st, UAW strikers strategically took control of the Chevrolet engine number four factory. To do this, they staged a diversion, telling a company stool pigeon that a strike was being planned at another factory, Chevy 9. Police and security guards from other plants, including Chevy 4, converged on Chevy 9 after hearing this rumor. Police threw tear gas grenades into the plant and women outside broke the windows to try to clear the air.

• 39:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Meanwhile, workers took over the real target of Chevy 4, and another group from the emergency brigade locked arms across the gate and stood guard. The governor called in an additional 2,200 National Guard troops, which surrounded Chevy 4 and nearby Chevy 2, once again establishing a barrier around the striking workers and separating them from a force that now included police, private security guards, sheriff's deputies, and civilians who had been deputized for this purpose.

• 40:03Holly Frey?

  Chevy 4 built the engines for all Chevrolet vehicles, so this effectively stopped Chevrolet production throughout the company. At this point, the strike was seriously affecting GM's production. In December of 1936, the company had built about 50,000 cars. In February of 1937, that number was only 125. The strike grew to involving about 135,000 workers in plants from 35 cities in 14 states.

• 40:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged GM to start seriously negotiating. On February 2nd, another judge, Paul Godola, who did not have a bunch of stock in GM, issued another injunction, this one to take effect in 24 hours, again ordering the striking workers to leave the factories. He also fined the union $15 million. Thousands of supporters started gathering outside the occupied factories out of fear that this injunction would inspire vigilantes or hired security to try to remove the striking workers by force.

• 41:09Holly Frey?

  As a random side note, the governor actually did own stock in GM as all this was happening, although that was not known at the time. And since he was generally on the striker's side, it wouldn't have had the same connotations as Judge Black's stock ownership, even if it had been known.

• 41:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  This new injunction put the governor in a pretty precarious position. He was required by law to honor it, but he still really feared that doing so would lead to a loss of life. This was not an unreasonable fear. Similarly to how businesses had thought the Supreme Court might overturn the National Labor Relations Act, he also noted that the court had not weighed in on the legality of sit-down strikes, so he tried to delay. He made some public statements calling the strike an unlawful seizure of property, but he still didn't take steps to actually clear the factories. Instead, he contacted the president again, encouraging Roosevelt to order GM to the bargaining table.

• 42:10Holly Frey?

  Alfred P. Sloan delegated GM's negotiating to Executive Vice President William Nudson, along with representatives from the company's finance and legal departments. On the worker's side was CIO President John L. Lewis, previously of United Mine Workers, and UAW Vice President Wyndham Mortimer. The negotiations were held in the office and jury room of Judge George Murphy, brother of Governor Murphy, and Governor Murphy acted as a mediator. Murphy kept both President Roosevelt and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins updated on their progress.

• 42:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Although Murphy tried to get Judge Godola to delay the removal of the workers, on February 5th, the judge issued a writ of attachment, which ordered the sheriff to arrest all the workers that were occupying GM buildings and to bring them into court to face charges of contempt. But like the governor, Sheriff Thomas Walcott had some serious reservations about doing this, and he would only agree to do it if he were explicitly ordered to do so by the governor. He asked Murphy for National Guard support. Murphy, of course, was not going to directly order him to do this. He thought it was going to get people killed. So Murphy informed the judge that he thought they were really close to an agreement.

• 43:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was on a Friday, and the governor tried to get everybody to just hold tight till after the weekend.

• 43:34Holly Frey?

  But by Monday, February 8th, GM and the UAW still had not reached an agreement. Murphy kept trying to reassure everyone that one was imminent, and he was later quoted as saying, "If I sent those soldiers right in on the men, there'd be no telling how many would be killed. It would be inconsistent with everything I have ever stood for in my whole political life."

• 43:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  An agreement between GM and the UAW finally came on February 11th, 1937, 44 days after the start of the strike and after zero people getting killed. Under the terms of this deal, the strike would end, and the striking workers would stop occupying the plants. Those plants would resume operation. GM agreed not to discriminate or retaliate against the employees for joining a union or for having participated in the strike. GM also agreed to start collective bargaining on February 16th, and that bargaining was meant to address the grievances that the union had presented to the company back in January. The union agreed not to implement any more strikes or work stoppages while that negotiation

• 44:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  was taking place.

• 44:43Holly Frey?

  Although it was not officially part of the agreement, GM also announced a pay increase of five cents an hour. And in a separate letter, Nudson informed Murphy that for a period of six months, GM would negotiate only with UAW, not with any other union. Strikers in Chevrolet Plant Number Four voted to have Roscoe Van Zant lead them out of the building.

• 45:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  I'm trying to track down whether that five cents an hour pay increase affected people who were being paid by the piece, and I don't know. But there were people that were not paid by the piece, a lot of times not working directly on the assembly line, so... This first agreement between GM and the UAW was not one that addressed all those demands that the UAW had submitted back in January. Some of those demands later became part of federal law, including the Fair Labor Standards Act that was first passed in 1938. Others were demands that the UAW kept working toward at GM and at other auto manufacturers for years. They weren't things that were just quickly wrapped up in a round of collective bargaining

• 45:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  that started on February 16th after the strike was over.

• 45:51Holly Frey?

  Instead, this agreement's major accomplishment was GM's recognition of the union and its promise to participate in collective bargaining. And in that, it was enormously influential. It established the UAW as a legitimate union in the auto industry, and its membership grew from about 98,000 to nearly 400,000 in 1937 alone. UAW started bargaining for workers for many other US auto manufacturers, including Studebaker, Hudson, Packard, and Chrysler, and, four years after the Flint strike, at Ford.

• 46:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  The success in Flint also sparked an enormous increase in union membership overall in a wave of sit-down strikes as people tried to get better pay and working conditions. There were 150 sit-down strikes in the United States in 1937 alone, about 100 of them in the area around Detroit, Michigan. About half a million workers across the country went on strike, and about 2 million joined a union between 1937 and 1938.

• 46:55Holly Frey?

  These were not confined to the auto industry or to industrial jobs. On February 27, 1937, clerks at Woolworth stopped working and took over stores for a week, winning a 20% pay increase and union involvement in hiring decisions. In March, workers at four locations of the H.L. Green department store chain in New York City implemented sit-down strikes. Incarcerated people in Illinois and Pennsylvania went on strike as well, although these strikers' demands were not met.

• 47:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  In April of 1937, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in National Labor Relations Board versus Jones and Lachlan Steel Corporation, which upheld the National Labor Relations Act. But over the course of the year, public sentiment really turned against the proliferation of sit-down strikes. I mean, the public had not overwhelmingly supported sit-down strikes in the first place, but became a lot more critical. In the words of the Detroit News, quote, "Sitting down has replaced baseball as a national pastime, and sit-downers clutter the landscape in every direction." In late 1937, a Gallup poll found that about 70% of Americans disapproved of sit-down strikes.

• 48:12Holly Frey?

  Then, in 1939, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling in NLRB versus Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., which found that Fansteel had violated the Wagner Act, but also that the practice of the sit-down strike was, quote, "a high-handed proceeding without shadow of a legal right." So, labor organizers largely moved away from sit-down strikes, but they have been cited as an inspiration for sit-ins during movements for equal rights.

• 48:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, when we did that episode that sort of rounded up, like, the "sit-in" movement and the "fish-in" movement and all of those things, the first one that we talked about was the Alexandria Public Library sit-in, which was originally called a "sit-down strike." Also, we are not going to try to recap then the next 85 years of labor history.

• 48:58Holly Frey?

  Well, there are lots of stories within it that we can tell at later times.

• 49:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I mean, stuff that's been in the headlines within the last year about everything from workers' rights to organize to, like, a big corruption scandal at the UAW. All of that is out of the scope of this podcast. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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