Ted Selander's message to rally: "A strike won on the picket line."

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 1984 come to take for granted. He warned of the danger of complacency. He called on those present to "rededicate ourselves as union members to be willing to fight for our survival and to help those who do not work as union members to organize and become union members." He set the theme for the rally as he said, "It is only together that we will survive."

Unionists recall Auto-Lite strike A highlight of the rally was a tape by Ted Selander, one of the leaders of the 1934 Auto-Lite strike. His presentation (printed elsewhere in this issue) described the role of the courts, government mediators, and cops, and how the strikers, with the active support of the Lucas County Unemployed League, were able to win. He explained how a similar approach is needed today.

Participants in the Auto-Lite strike who spoke included Tim McCormick and Edward Lamb, the attorney for the strikers. Lamb described two significant features of the Auto-Lite strike. He said it was the first case of mass resistance to a court anti-labor injunction, and showed the potential of organizing mass production industries through rank-and-file involvement.

McCormick described the severe defeats unions had suffered during the Depression. He said that by 1934, approximately one-third of the entire AFL membership was located on Manhattan Island. He compared this to the bosses' current drive for concessions.

Ron Rinna, president of OCAW Local 7-912, on strike against Sun Oil Co., said that 50 years ago our fathers and grandfathers fought for union recognition. He said it is important to recognize the gains that were won and still exist, and to build on these gains. He The following is a transcription of a tape made for the June 3 Auto-Lite strike commemoration rally in Toledo, Ohio, by Ted Selander, a veteran of that Brothers and sisters, the key to an understanding of the magnificent AutoLite strike in 1934 is that it was a strike won on the picket line by a community uprising. I repeat: on the picket line by a community uprising. Toledo was in the grip of a tremendous popular upsurge of anger at the greedy bosses who hate to give their wage slaves a few cents more in their pay.

This was 1934 B.T.—B.T. meaning before television. As a matter of fact, it was before all the social gains which we fought for and won in the '30s—before unemployment pay, before food stamps, before social security, before the CIO, and before medicare, etc. When you lost your job in those days, the only thing you could get to feed your family were the hand-outs at a warehouse downtown where you stood in line for hours—sometimes in zero weather-and you worked one day for that. We didn't want a hand-out; we wanted jobs.

After four years of depression, the Toledo workers were in an angry mood because of the bank failures, the idle factories, the over-stocked granaries, and the 15 million unemployed. For four years we had poverty in the midst of plenty. Even the establishment was losing confidence in themselves and their system.

I don't think there Toledo 1934 strike ference between the Toledo Auto-Lite strikers and the workers involved in many of the lost strikes in the United States at that time. In practically every strike, the rank and file always displayed courage. The difference was in the leadership and their strategy and tactics. In nearly every strike the militancy of the rank and file was muzzled, many times snuffed out from the top.

The leaders are tricked by the courts, the labor boards, the mediators, the government, and the media to shift the fight from the picket line to the court and conference room. But all the while, the company keeps hiring scabs to take the strikers' jobs.

The recent series of articles in The Union Journal about the Auto-Lite strike is a good example because they are a devastating portrayal of how the company had the union leaders all muddled in a maze of hearings in the courtrooms and board rooms. They had succeeded in sidetracking the strike onto a dead end. The company was hiring scabs by the hundreds and claimed they now had 1800 workers. We understood what was happening. We knew that the strike was dying and doomed. Only some bold, dramatic action could revive it, and even then it would have to be followed up with plenty of action and support to give the company an all-out fight. And nothing short of an all-out

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How strike was won: