Early UAW Struggles Won: Major Gains for Autoworkers

by Bill Onasch / December 2007 issue of Socialist Action newspaper

[This is the first installment of a two-part series of articles. The entire article, in an expanded version, can be found at the www.kclabor.org website.]

Whether or not you’re a United Auto Workers member, if you work for a living in the USA you are going to feel the impact of the recently ratified contracts with the Big Three automakers.

Many pundits have labeled these agreements “historic.” Indeed they are. They signify a historic defeat of immense proportions for the entire American working class.

For nearly a century auto has been the engine of the U.S. economy. There are more cars, light trucks, vans, and SUVs on the road than there are licensed drivers to operate them. Auto is by far the biggest customer for steel, plastics, and rubber.

American cars have an insatiable thirst for fuel and lubricants. They must be sold, maintained, repaired, insured - and eventually junked out. This enormous economic weight is what led a CEO, Charles Wilson, to once proclaim, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”

It took a while for unionism to take root in this industry. Early organizing efforts by the old AF of L craft unions seldom got beyond agreeing to the jurisdictions of a dozen or more unions within assembly plants. In the early 1930s “federal labor unions,” directly affiliated to the federation, were chartered in a few cities to try to organize auto workers.

The first major successful efforts came on the periphery of the industry with the Toledo Auto-Lite strike in 1934, led by an AFL federal labor union, and sit-down strikes at Goodyear in Akron in 1935-36, establishing the United Rubber Workers.

The AFL finally granted a charter to the UAW in August 1935. Less than a year later the union joined in the establishment of the CIO as a rival to the craft unions. The new formation was enthusiastically received by autoworkers, and the UAW was on the cutting edge of the turbulent upsurge that organized much of American manufacturing in the late 1930s and immediately after the Second World War.

Solidarity trumps the law

Though they were not the first to use the tactic of the sit-down strike, the UAW took it to the highest level in this country. The first UAW sit-down victory came at parts-maker Bendix in South Bend, Ind., in November 1936, winning union recognition.

Two days after Bendix, workers sat down at Midland Steel in Detroit, a supplier of frames to both Ford and Chrysler. After eight days they not only won recognition but a substantial raise as well. Then another key supplier, Kelsey-Hayes Wheel in Detroit, capitulated after a brief sit-down, granting a contract, a raise, and equal minimum wages for men and women. These actions set the stage for the legendary Flint plant occupations, a defining moment in class-struggle history. For 44 days sit-downs on the inside, and thousands of picketers on the outside, shut down GM’s massive complex in Flint. The settlement resulted in the first national contract with GM.

The Flint victory inspired sit-downs at Chrysler, winning a contract there two months later. The combination of the sit-down and mass picketing kept scabs out and ensured there would be no production during the strike. These combined tactics generally proved unbeatable wherever tried during this period.

Of course, these actions were all illegal. The Supreme Court soon reaffirmed that plant occupations were a violation of sacred property rights. The Taft-Hartley Act later outlawed mass picketing to block plant gates as well. But the workers in those Depression days didn’t care about that. They were focused on the battle with the employer and they did what they had to do. Injunctions were flouted. Cops and the National Guard were resisted.

This defiance was only possible because some of the CIO unions effectively presented their fight as a struggle for all workers. Many unemployed, and workers not directly involved, joined in these big class conflicts. Public sentiment was overwhelmingly on the side of the workers.

Fearful these struggles could get out of hand, threatening their class dominance, most bosses reluctantly decided they had to deal with these new insurgent unions. (But not all. Little Steel and Ford fought on much longer than most.) That’s what finally, decisively established the power of industrial unions. Within this new movement the UAW became recognized as the strategic union in the United States, becoming the pace setter for the rest of the labor movement.

Postwar gains and setbacks

The militant class confrontations were largely suspended during the wartime mobilization of industry. Most unions accepted a no-strike pledge - with the important exception of the United Mine Workers. A War Labor Board supplanted collective bargaining. The WLB held a tight line on wages and working conditions but through their maintenance of membership rulings union membership greatly expanded. When the auto industry went back to building cars in 1946 it was pretty much wall-to-wall UAW organized.

The WLB also facilitated the introduction of “fringe benefits.” Looking for ways to compete for workers during a time of both labor shortage and a wage freeze, the employers got the blessing of the WLB to offer non-wage incentives such as paid vacations and health insurance. Considered a minor temporary expedient at the time, this later opened up a vast new front in U.S. collective bargaining.

After the war, instead of a return to depression, as many had feared, American industry was launched in to unprecedented growth. They would rebuild the war-shattered economies of Europe and Japan. They became dominant in the collapsing colonial empires. And there was tremendous pent-up domestic consumer demand for housing, appliances - and cars.

The employers initially challenged the unions, as they had done with some success after the First World War, but were met with the biggest strike wave in history and had to beat a hasty retreat. Part of that surge was a 113-day strike at General Motors, launched in November of 1945.

At the same time, in Britain, a Labor Party government swept in to power and established socialized medicine, launched a massive program of public housing, opened the road to college education for working-class youth, and nationalized a number of key industries. As mass worker parties were reorganized in Europe they went even farther than the British, also establishing laws guaranteeing minimum vacation, sick leave, and degrees of job security for all workers.

But neither the AFL nor CIO postwar leaders were interested in fighting for such sweeping reforms in this country. They rejected the very idea of a Labor Party in favor of working with their Democratic “friends.”

And, instead of fighting for universal health care provided by government for all, they adopted a strategy of negotiating such benefits just for their own dues-paying members. In so doing they sacrificed the broad support once enjoyed among the as yet unorganized and allowed themselves to be cast, not as advocates for the working class as a whole, but as a narrow interest group.

It must be acknowledged, however, that significant gains were won for the organized sector of the American working class from the end of the war into the 1970s. The UAW was the trailblazer for much of these achievements. These included:

-In 1948 the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) was won, protecting wages from inflation. Rolling COLA in to the base wage rate led to autoworkers becoming the best paid in American manufacturing.

-In the same year the first health insurance plan was won at Ford, and later extended to the rest of the industry. Eventually it would be expanded to cover dependents as well, with few out-of-pocket expenses. Retirees were added in 1953.

-Employer-paid pensions were first obtained in 1949. In 1973 retirement after 30 years of service - regardless of age - was negotiated. This meant many workers in their late forties or early fifties could hang it up, drawing up to 3000 dollars a month in pensions and maintaining health-insurance coverage that included their spouses and dependents.

-In 1955 supplemental unemployment benefits were first established to cushion the impact of layoffs.

Eventually, this evolved into the Job Bank, providing nearly normal pay for the duration of joblessness. These and many other breakthroughs were often secured by lengthy strikes, including 104 days at Chrysler in 1950, as well as a number of shorter ones over the years.

Once the UAW got the wedge in on these transformations of living standards and working conditions, other unions could often use their pattern to make gains of their own. But, even at the peak of union “density” in the 1950s, no more than a third of the working class was covered by union agreements. And the boats of the unorganized did not rise nearly so high on this tide of union improvements.

(Part II continues in next month’s issue of Socialist Action newspaper.)