The UAW, 1936-'37 Flint Sit-Down Strike

[Ptah]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Sit-Down_Strike


The 1936-'37 Flint Sit-Down Strike changed the United Automobile Workers
from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into
a major union and led to the unionization of the United States automobile industry.


The UAW had only been formed in 1935 and held its first convention in 1936.
Shortly thereafter the union decided that it could not survive by piecemeal
organizing campaigns at smaller plants, as it had in the past, but that it
could organize the automobile industry only by going after its biggest and
most powerful employer, General Motors Corporation, focusing on GM's production
complex in Flint, Michigan.

Organizing Flint was a difficult and dangerous plan. GM controlled city politics
in Flint and kept a close eye on outsiders. As Wyndham Mortimer, the UAW officer
put in charge of the organizing campaign in Flint, recalled, when he visited
Flint in 1936 he received a telephone call within a few minutes of checking
into his hotel from an anonymous caller telling him to get back where he came
from if he didn't "want to be carried out in a wooden box."

GM also maintained an extensive network of spies throughout its plants.
Mortimer concluded after talking to Flint autoworkers that the existing locals,
which had only 122 members out of 45,000 autoworkers in Flint, were riddled with spies.
Accordingly, he decided that the only safe way to organize Flint was simply
to bypass those locals. Mortimer, Eric Branoff, Roy Reuther, Henry Kraus and
Ralph Dale began meeting with Flint autoworkers in their homes, keeping the names
of new members a closely guarded secret from others in Flint and in UAW headquarters.

[papau]

1. large corporations - the rich - were willing to and did kill union folks to stop unionization n/t

n/t