By The Editorial Board
The United Auto Workers have embarked upon what they call a “Stand Up Strike,” which is in direct reference to the legendary Great Sit Down Strike of 1936-37. At first glance, the names can be a little misleading as a sit down strike means an occupation—workers encamping inside the workplace while halting production and holding pickets outside. A stand up strike is a novel thing, referencing the days when labor had teeth. But in sum it is a strike without occupation, with parts of the workforce called in waves to “stand up” and strike. The demands rising from the workers occupations were far more radical than they are today, although the rich men of General Motors are no more willing to meet the demands of the workers and their union than they ever were. As the Great Sit Down Strike proves, the boss only talks seriously about the workers’ demands when he is hit in the mouth.
Unlike a conventional strike, a sit down strike temporarily seizes the plant or factory, not only halting its operation but also preventing scabs from working the machinery. This lends it a tactical superiority over conventional strikes. While the sit down strikes never challenge the ruling class ownership over the mills, plants, and factories, and so are not revolutionary strikes, the workers did gain experience in social administration. The sit down strike offers a window view into a fleeting form of worker’s power, a temporary situation in which the workers have been able to form patrols and tribunals to conduct the occupation properly and with discipline. As such, the sit down strike represents a leap in organizational forms taken by the worker’s struggle.
The Great Sit Down Strike is one of the most important strikes in US history, and this makes the UAW one of the most important unions in American history as they led the battles that ensued. The strike broke through the walls of domination which set each worker against the other, on an individual basis, by winning collective bargaining power from GM—one of the most ruthless exploiters of the people.
Today you might work all your life and never meet a Communist. This is not how it was in the 1930s, where Communists were a fact of daily life in the factories. When some boss caused trouble, honest workers would “send for the Reds.” At this time, when the American Federation of Labor was focused on craft unionism and sought to avoid larger factories in favor of seeking workers with higher skill, Communists were organizing the unskilled workers. Such was the case in the Great Sit Down Strike where the Communist Party provided tactical and strategic leadership, not only in the strike itself but also in the building of the UAW which saw its membership greatly expand as a result of the struggle.
Flint was a company town—nearly all aspects of social life were controlled by GM. They owned the newspapers and politicians and employed the majority of the population, leaving even the small proprietors dependent on the dictates of the corporation. In many respects, Flint resembled a fiefdom dominated by a lord. It seemed impossible for the workers in Flint to bargain with or combat such a giant.
GM’s tyrannical rule meant that a huge network of company spies controlled the plants—foremen could fire workers at will and often held membership in the fascist Black Legion, an organization that would torture and murder suspected trade unionists. The workers would routinely be tossed out into unemployment, see reduced wages, or face work speed ups which would leave men unable to walk after a grueling shift.
The year 1936-1937 would mark a turning point. The UAW began launching sit down strikes in the General Motors plants, first in Georgia, then spreading to Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan.
The strikes did not begin by a large union agreement. On the contrary, it spread spontaneously. On December 28th, 1936, a scheduled conference between union leaders and management in Cleveland, OH was postponed by management. In response, the militant workers in the plant began sitting down. In total nearly three thousand sat, shutting down the entire plant of 9,000 workers.
In Atlanta, workers had been on strike for seven weeks, while in Flint, Michigan tensions escalated. In Flint, the most important strike in this sequence took place where the workers occupied the GM Fisher Plants numbers 1 and 2. These plants were some of the most important and highly controlled plants in the GM empire, producing bodies and engines for GM’s best selling automobiles. There, GM would face humiliation as the workers turned the factories into a fortress.
The Flint workers had been on strike for 15 days when, on December 30th, company guards tried to escort a large number of scabs disguised as maintenance men into the plant. The workers blocked the way and the guards responded with violence. The workers gave the guards such a beating that they ran for cover into the factory and one guard whose clothing was shredded by the workers marched nearly naked to his accomplices while clinging desperately to the rags that were once his pants.
Flint’s sit down strike began in Fisher Plant number 2 and spread to Plant 1, which was the larger of the two. By January 1st, 37 Buick and Chevy assemblies were shut down. GM still rejected the UAW demands for collective bargaining power. The sit down strike grew to 26,000 workers. Pickets were started in Cincinnati and the strike spread to many companies supplying materials to GM like cotton mills and plate glass factories in Pittsburgh.
The Flint workers demanded collective bargaining power (recognition of the union), 6 hour work days and a 5 day work week with overtime pay, the elimination of piece work and tempo increases, seniority rights and the rehiring of all workers laid off for union activity.
Life during the Flint Occupation was well-organized. The workers formed patrols and established their own order, and they set up tribunals to determine punishment for infraction of strike rules and principles. Cigarettes and other inflammable material was not allowed in the foam and textile sections to avoid fires. The workers used the radios from unfinished cars to listen to music, and live music was provided by string orchestras composed of striking workers outside the plants and played through windows to the men inside. The workers would receive visits from friends and family and be called over the loud speaker to see them. Passports were provided to the men who were sent out on assignment or given temporary leave. Small businesses and grocery stores donated food to sustain the workers and the strike. The workers serviced and protected the machinery and parts from damage, ensuring they could resume work after the strike, proving the capitalists wrong in their wide-spread claims that the workers were vandalizing the plant.
Meanwhile, GM lead the formation of the Flint Alliance, an organization of vigilantes armed to break the strike, including Black Legion fascists and scabs as well as the larger heads of commerce in Flint.
The anti-union assault was imminent. The workers inside the plants began defensive preparations. In early January, GM began their escalation by cutting off the heat to plants. The workers turned it back on. On January 11th, GM cut the heat again, trying to freeze the men out. The company guards removed the ladder that the men were using to get food deliveries. At the same time, workers observed the police amassing forces outside. The guards locked the front gate preventing anyone from bringing food. The strikers, who had until then been on fair terms with the guards, offered the guards three minutes to open the gates or to hand the gate keys over to the workers. The guards claimed to have lost the keys, then barricaded themselves in a restroom. The workers forced open the gates.
The police outside were already prepared with helmets, shields, and tear gas which they immediately deployed against the striking workers. The men in the plant responded by hurling bolts, steel hinges, rocks, and glass bottles at the police, fighting back with clubs, and turning the fire hoses loose on them. The police opened fire on the workers with rifles.
When the men inside came under attack, the pickets outside and the people of Flint took action and large groups rushed to defend the strikers from eviction. The masses flipped over police cars for barricades and the fighting continued into the night. In the end, the police fled, unable to conquer the plant. Some police reported having their firearms seized by the striking workers during the battle.
In response to the successful defense, the governor called in the National Guard. The District Attorney issued over 1,200 unnamed warrants for the men inside along with 21 warrants naming known leaders and the workers who were injured in the battle and taken to the hospital. However, knowing this would only increase the fighting nerve of the workers, the governor intervened and asked that the sheriff not enforce the anonymous warrants and that the men in the hospital have their warrants withdrawn. Nevertheless, 7 of the striking workers were arrested upon leaving the hospital.
One of the weaknesses in the governor’s plan to use the National Guard was that many of them were union men, some of whom stopped by the union offices on their way to their billet and assured their comrades that they would do no strike breaking, even asking for union pins to give to the guardsmen. When news of this reached the plants, the workers erupted in applause.
The striking workers wrote to the governor demanding withdrawal of the troops from the strike area and demanding that the local police who escalated to rioting and violence be held accountable. The governor was forced to ask GM to the negotiating table. Up to this point, GM had refused to talk to the UAW while the buildings were occupied.
After pressure from the governor, GM agreed to talks, however they extended these talks to include the Flint Alliance. This was not acceptable to the men on strike—one does not negotiate an end to a strike with the strike breakers. For the UAW this was in violation of their demand to be the sole representative of the collective bargaining power of the workers in the factories. The workers’ representatives in the meeting with GM had agreed to vacate the factories upon agreement that GM would not attempt to re-open them until the negotiations were completed.
Behind the backs of the union, though, GM was making other deals with the Flint Alliance. GM thus sought to circumvent the workers by creating their own organization in the plants and then sought to recognize their own organization in bargaining.
The men were prepared to end the strike but upon hearing of GM’s double crossing with the Flint Alliance, they resolved to continue to the very end in spite of the hunger, cold, and discomfort of the occupation. While the first talks were taking place, 900 more national guardsmen were moved into Flint. This amassing of troops served as a threat that if the workers do not accept GM’s bad deal, they would face even greater violence and terror. The Chief of Police ordered all leaves of absence for his officers canceled and called back to duty all those who were off, further bolstering the forces of reaction. The governor declared that drastic action would be taken if the strike was not resolved.
In response to these mounting threats, the strikers fortified the factories and increased the pickets outside. The workers took up the slogan “We have just begun to fight.” The UAW declared that it would maintain occupation of the plants and had no interest in negotiating with GM until it agreed not to recognize the Flint Alliance. The union made it clear that the Flint Alliance in no way represented the workers, but in reality represented the company. They insisted that the strikebreaking and vigilante activity was inspired by GM, pointing out that the leader of the Flint Alliance was a former GM payroll boss who was by then the owner of a spark plug factory. As the workers knew, it was the foremen and bosses who passed out the Flint Alliance membership cards.
On January 19th in Detroit, 3,000 UAW workers at a Briggs Manufacturing Co. Plant, where bodies for Lincolns were made for Ford, began an early morning picket. As the picket grew, the police responded with tear gas, forcing the mass of workers to disperse, but as the wind cleared the smoke, the ranks swelled once more. At the head of this picket was the Women’s Auxiliary, an organization of women workers and the wives of striking workers that took charge of the action. Militants in the crowd hurled tear gas back at the police forcing them to disperse. Unionists warned the police that if they continued assaulting the picket they would face a defeat like the one inflicted on them in Flint the week before.
This marked a turning point in the overall strike, as it showed that workers in Detroit at Ford and the other auto manufacturers would come to the aid of those striking in Flint at GM. After the police exhausted themselves throwing over 45 tear gas bombs, unable to arrest anyone and suffering injury themselves, they gave up the fight against the massive picket. The crowd was dismissed, leaving small guard pickets to prevent scabs from entering.
As GM continued planning violent strikebreaking, they also strategically pretended to care about the workers’ lost wages, putting the Flint Alliance to work in holding a large rally in Flint supporting GM’s “return to work” platform. GM’s strategy was to do everything possible to wear at the morale of the men inside the plants. The implementation of the plan set police and strikebreakers into motion who began clubbing picket lines and attacking union offices by January 27th.
The workers had a plan to take down another plant. GM operated an extensive network of spies in the remaining Flint plants and had increased security at their most important operational plant, Chevy 4, in which the union was not as strong as it was in the others. Union militants were not discouraged in the face of this problem and instead worked to turn the weakness into a strength. Utilizing the network of spies, the militants spread false plans to take down Chevy 9, a plant that had more union sentiment among the workers, making it more believable to the company’s spies and diverting GM’s attention away from Chevy 4, the real strike target.
By February 2nd the plan was in motion. The call for a sit down at Chevy 9 was issued and the company’s security and police force began their attacks on the workers of the plant. The guards from Chevy 4 left the plant vulnerable and went to back up the reactionary forces attacking Chevy 9. The workers inside were tear gassed. In response, the Women’s Auxiliary, in red berets and bearing red arm bands, began a vigorous defense of the workers inside, using clubs they defended the gates from the armed police and vigilantes who opened fire. The women militants smashed the plant windows to vent the gas. The diversion was successful, and the workers at Chevy 4 took the plant, adding to the sit down strike and bringing GM to its knees.
The response of the state in collaboration with GM was to surround all the occupied plants with overwhelming forces of police and national guard while waiting for the final injunctions to allow forceful evictions on February 3rd. In response, the union pledged to hold their positions in the plants and vowed not to go down without a fight. Nonetheless, the writing was on the wall for GM with their whole operation crippled by the loss of Chevy 4 and they slumped back to the negotiating table.
Throughout February, debates between the left and the right inside of the union intensified. On one side the plan was to promote passive resistance by having the workers lay down and be dragged out of the factory. On the other side, the plan was to turn the factories into fortresses and prepare to defend them at all costs. The left’s plan of active resistance won out. The majority of workers signed up for a “Fight to the Death Committee” which stored two weeks of canned food in the upper floors and planned to fight tooth and nail, floor by floor, all the way to the roof. The workers outside the plants were called into action as well and began preparing for battle. 5,000 women in red berets and red arm bands armed with red flags, clubs, pipes, and crow bars began to amass around the plants. Workers arrived from all over the area numbering tens of thousands in solidarity with the men inside. Taking the plants by force meant war and nothing less.
On February 11th, the militant workers inside and outside resolved to fight to their deaths in defense of collective bargaining rights. Facing this great force arrayed against them, GM gave up and agreed to recognize the UAW as the sole collective bargaining agent for the workers at the effected plants. The success of breaking GM would be followed by masses of workers joining the union and spreading their bargaining rights to other GM plants. GM further conceded to hiring back all the fired union workers without retaliation. Workers in mass numbers flocked to join the fighting union.
GM instituted raises in an attempt to bribe workers away from the union, but the workers knew fully well that these raises were due to the union and the struggle they had just won, and not the good graces of the company. While language around tempo speed ups and the reduced working days did not make it into the contract, workers understood that their ability to fight with a recognized union only meant persisting in the fight for these demands.
After spending 44 days in the embattled plants, the workers left the plants in a victory parade to the union hall. At 5pm the plant whistle blew and the men marched out to greet their friends, families, and fellow workers, marching under a banner reading “Victory is ours!” The fight was won, but the war was far from over. The victory at GM triggered a wave of sit down strikes across the country.
The workers of the UAW, the Communists in the plants, and the class more broadly showed the tenacity and militancy it takes to pull off such a victory. It would not be GM which would break the UAW into the more conservative force it is today. Indeed, in today’s terms such fighting spirit is the material of workers’ dreams, while over time the union itself grew more and more gripped by bureaucrats and purged the Communists, it seems only fitting that as the bureaucrats bargain today on the backs of the men and women of the Great Sit Down Strike, they do so with consideration of the Big Three’s ability to continue reaping profits during a self-repressed strike, and with the pre-mature call for Ford workers to end their strike before the tentative deal reached by the UAW bureaucracy and Ford is even voted on. The militancy of 1936-37 won collective bargaining rights, but not everywhere, and these rights have not been used to the full advantage of workers even where they exist. As President Biden “credits” the workers of the UAW for willingly going without to “save the company” in 2008-2009 and expects the company to return the favor now, we choose to invoke a different moment in labor history, a moment where the fight was long, bloody and carried out to the finish. This is how we got our rights. We will not forget it, and we can get more and better by taking lessons from Flint. History is not a thing of idle curiosity, but a process of becoming. It is time to decide what we want to become.
