The Flint Sit-down Strike

Flint, Michigan 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy new Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Anniversary of
the Flint sit down strike is this month. That's marked

(00:21):
as starting on December six, But that name and they
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

(00:44):
United States. And while the major strike activity in Flint
started on December, it also followed earlier strikes in other
parts of Michigan and in other states. So this name
and date, as they're commonly known, it's really a little
bit broader than that. We have talked about several strikes
on the show before, including strikes in the United States, Canada, England,

(01:07):
and Ireland, but this one in particular has been cited
as one of the most significant and influential strikes in
United States labor history, 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

(01:29):
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. But even people who had steady work
at GM during the Great Depression didn't really have a

(01:50):
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 was especially
true in places like Flint, where GM was by far
the biggest employer. The US government took various steps to

(02:12):
try to bolster the nation's economy during the depression. One
was the National Industrial Recovery Act of ninety three. This
was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and
he signed it into law during his first one hundred
days in office. This was an act quote to encourage
national industrial recovery, to foster fair competition, to provide for

(02:35):
the construction of certain useful public works, and for other purposes.
The National Industrial Recovery Acts 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

(02:57):
were meant to apply across whole end streets, 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 we're making it harder for struggling businesses to
stay afloat during the crisis, so things like undercutting competitors

(03:19):
prices to the point that they just could not go
that low. Section seven A 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

(03:41):
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. Too,
That no employee, and no one seeking employe meant, shall
be required, as a condition of employment, to join any

(04:03):
company union, or to refrain from joining, organizing, or assisting
a labor organization of his own choosing. And three that
employers shall comply with the maximum hours of labor, minimum
rates of pay, and other conditions of employment approved or
prescribed by the President. This Act contained lots of provisions

(04:25):
that we haven't gotten into here, including authorizing the presidents
to establish a federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. But
in terms of the Flint sit down strike, Section seven
A was key. It protected employees right to organize and
bargain collectively, and this was a huge deal. Although the

(04:46):
term collective bargaining had been coined by British social reformer
Beatrice web In, workers have been trying to work together
to secure better pay and working conditions for centuries, and
in the US trade unions, other efforts to collectively bargain
had been illegal. They were treated as criminal conspiracies. The

(05:06):
National Industrial Recovery Act was the first federal law legalizing
union membership and collective bargaining, 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

(05:28):
justify their non compliance with the law, and they kept
working directly against their employees legal right to unionize. 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 nineteen thirty three, Roosevelt

(05:52):
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.
But the board really didn't have much enforcement power. Companies

(06:12):
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
NLB could really do when companies stopped following the rules
was to make them take their eagle down. In May
of ninety five, the Supreme Court issued its decision in
Scheckter Poultry Corps versus United States, which did indeed find

(06:35):
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. A big
reason behind that decision was that this Act delegated a

(06:59):
lot of legis aative power to the president without really
setting guidelines on how the president could use that power. Uh.
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,

(07:20):
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 on some of
the competitive practices that were undermining the economic recovery, but

(07:43):
it was also blamed for things like making various goods
more expensive and slowing the pace of production. The government
still had a vested interest in this idea of removing
obstructions to interstate commerce, including obstructions that stemmed from labor disputes,
and of her activists were advocating for the protections that
had been part of the National Industrial Recovery Act to

(08:05):
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 six. 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. The Act

(08:29):
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 burgaining as the cause of industrial strife
leading to strikes and other unrest. The Act also noted

(08:52):
that companies have a lot more of power than their
employees do especially when those employees aren't protected by a
fair contra act or allowed to collectively bargain. It once
again legalized employees right to organize an outlawed employers interference
with that right, and it also empowered the National Labor
Relations Board to oversee this whole process and mediate disputes.

(09:16):
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,

(09:37):
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. So this brings
us to the US automotive industry and specifically to Flint, Michigan,

(09:58):
which we will get to after a spot a break.
The American Federation of Labor was established in the late
nineteenth century to bring craft and trade unions together under
one umbrella. It's first member unions represented people like tailor's,

(10:22):
iron molders and carpenters, and in its early years, the
a f L 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

(10:45):
the time the Wagner Act was passed, the a f
L established a Committee for Industrial Organization. This committee soon
split off from the a f L and it re
established itself as its own organization was the Congress of
Industrial Organizations. United Auto Workers was established in Detroit, Michigan

(11:06):
in ninety five, and at first it became part of
the a f L, and like the a f L,
its initial focus was mainly on the automotive industry skilled workers,
not the people who worked on assembly lines in factories.
But when the CIO split off from the a f L,
the United Auto Workers went to Soon the u a

(11:27):
W 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
sixty nine plants in thirty five cities, many in the Midwest. Initially,
the U a W focused more on GM and Chrysler.
Because Henry Ford was vehemently anti union, GM actively worked

(11:52):
against these unionization efforts. According to information unearthed and Senate
committee hearings, between nineteen thirty four and nine six, GM
spent more than eight hundred thirty nine thousand dollars on
labor detective services, more than half of it paid to
the Pinkerton's. This detective work involved everything from investigating union

(12:15):
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 supersystem of spies
yet devised in any American corporation. There are also reports
that GM conscripted an organization known as the Black Legion

(12:38):
to intimidate and threaten its employees. The Black Legion was
compared to the KKK and was aggressively anti union, and
this went beyond targeting the union itself and the workers
at the factories. Part of GM's union busting effort involved
telling mail workers wives that their husband's union activities, we're

(13:00):
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.
As u AW organizers tried to unionize GMS factories, they

(13:21):
were working against all of this, and they were finding
common themes among the workers grievances from plants a 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

(13:45):
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. 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

(14:06):
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

(14:28):
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. 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

(14:48):
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 pay day approached. People
wound up making less than they expected. In this whole
shifting pay rate felt like a bait and switch. Women

(15:10):
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. All of these
factors fed into the sit down strike. Most of the
strikes that had taken place in the United States before

(15:33):
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 and nine six and thirty
seven 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

(15:57):
stayed inside the factory, physically occupying it. 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 higher replacements

(16:17):
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

(16:40):
due to the risk of damaging expensive machinery and equipment,
but there were also some downsides. Striking workers had to
be separated from their families than 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

(17:03):
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

(17:24):
was really focused 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.
In the US, the first sit down strike is generally
noted as having happened in nineteen o six, when members
of the Industrial Workers of the World stopped working but

(17:45):
stayed at their stations at a General Electric factory and
Schenecta in New York. Workers in Europe started occupying their
workplaces after World War One, including roughly half of the
metal workers in Paris in the spring of nineteen thirty six,
and that led to sweeping labor reforms in France. In
the US, workers at a rubber plant in Akron, Ohio

(18:06):
sat down in early ninety six as well. Fisher Body
was a division of GM, and Fisher Body workers in
Atlanta sat down at two different points in October and
November of ninety six, with the November strikes spreading to
other plants in the Atlanta area as well. Workers at
Bendix Products in South Bend, Indiana sat down in mid

(18:28):
November and 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 our suppliers of GM. On December sixty six,

(18:49):
the u A W ast 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 u A W 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, where

(19:12):
things that applied for every GM factory in the nation.
Late December also wasn't ideal for the u a W
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

(19:33):
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 organize labor than his predecessor had been, but he

(19:53):
was not going to take office until January one. However,
workers themselves took this decision out of the u a
w's hands, and we're gonna get to that after we
pause for a sponsor break. As the u a W

(20:15):
tried to organize GM workers in Flint, Michigan, GM tried
to reduce its risk in the event of a strike.
On December six, 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, the company

(20:35):
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

(20:57):
loss of leverage. If the workers took over the plant
with the dies still in it, that would stop production
on multiple models of GM cars. So when the workers
at Fisher one realized what was happening with the dies,
they immediately started a strike, taking over the building, and
workers at Fisher two started striking on the same day.

(21:21):
There are also oral history testimony 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.

(21:44):
The strikes. 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 critic goal. The Women's Auxiliary, which was organized by
twenty three year old Genera Johnson, who was later Genera

(22:06):
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 striker's 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, and they

(22:27):
picketed and did other work in support of the strike.
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 swing distrust of the union
among the workers wives who support the Women's Auxiliary needed.
In oral histories recorded in the nineteen eighties and nineties,

(22:47):
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 a ttually
going on. Whether they worked at GM or not, the
women involved in the auxiliary faced hostility from company supporters

(23:07):
and the strikes critics, including people questioning their morality and
implying that they were sex workers. We should note that
while there was not like a stereotypical screaming radical uh
conspiracy of communism happening in the strike, there were definitely
communists and socialists among the strikers and within the labor

(23:31):
movement in general. Both communism and socialism had and have
a focus on fair treatment of workers, so this is
not really that surprising. Genera Johnson Dollinger, for example, had
become a socialist at the age of sixteen. She was
one of the more radical people involved with the strike,
though many others had a general interest and communist or

(23:51):
socialist ideals while not formally being a member of either party.
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 rules or to work in the foundry. Only

(24:12):
one black employee, Roscoe van Zant, is known to have
sat down in flint, during this strike. 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

(24:32):
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,
and at first GM's response was mostly not to engage.
GM president Alfred P. Sloan stated quote, we will not

(24:54):
negotiate with a union while it's agents forcibly hold possession
of our property. An executive vice president, William S. Knudsen,
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.

(25:16):
The U a W countered that GM had illegally interfered
with its effort to get workers to join, preventing it
from getting a larger membership. On January second, 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,

(25:38):
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 um injunction enforced. On January fourth, the u a
W submitted a list of demands, including that the u
a W be given exclusive recognition as the bargaining agency

(25:58):
for workers at GM, abolishing the piece work system, a
thirty 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.

(26:22):
On January eleven, ninety seven, GM turned off the heat
and electricity at Fisher two, even though the temperature that
day was only sixteen degrees fahrenheit or almost negative nine 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

(26:45):
enforcement and the workers and their supporters. The police used
tear gas and they fired upon the workers. The workers
defended themselves with things like fire hoses and thrown door hinges.
Women who were outside the plan were also part of
this fighting. They were armed with things like homemade blackjacks
and bars of soaps stuffed down in the toes of socks.

(27:07):
At least sixteen workers and eleven police were injured, with
most of the worker injuries coming from gunshot wounds. In
a later oral history interview, Genora 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

(27:29):
are shooting into unarmed men. She used the U. A
W'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. 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

(27:53):
and some of the more radical women in the Women's Auxiliary,
including Genera 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,

(28:13):
as they had done on January eleventh, 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. The Emergency Brigade were red berets and
arm bands with the letters EB, and some members kept
working with the Women's Auxiliary while also working with the
Emergency Brigade. After the violence on January eleven, the U

(28:37):
a W 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 plans, but in Flint,

(28:57):
the union heard that GM had also agreed to meet
with another organization called the Flint Alliance, which the c
i O and the U a W 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. Yeah, there's also some suggestion that GM. It

(29:18):
looks 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 didn't 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 them to strike, and he was

(29:40):
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 security guards and police on the other.
About twelve undred National guardsmen arrived in Flint on January twelve.

(30:04):
On February one, U a W striker 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 nine.
Police and security guards from other plants, including Chevy four,
converged on Chevy nine after hearing this rumor. Police through

(30:27):
tear gas grenades into the plant, and women outside broke
the windows to try to clear the air. Meanwhile, workers
took over the real target of Chevy Flour, and another
group from the Emergency Brigade locked arms across the gate
and stood guard. The governor called in an additional National
Guard troops, which surrounded Chevy four and nearby Chevy to

(30:50):
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 some billions who had been
deputized for this purpose. Chevy four built the engines for
all Chevrolet vehicles, so this effectively stopped Chevrolet production throughout
the company. At this point, the strike was seriously affecting

(31:13):
GM's production. In December of nineteen thirty six, the company
had built about fifty thousand cars. In February of ninety seven,
that number was only one d twenty five. The strike
grew to involving about one hundred thirty five thousand workers
in plants from thirty five cities in fourteen states. President

(31:35):
Franklin D. Roosevelt urged GM to start seriously negotiating. On
February two, another judge, Paul Godola, who did not have
a bunch of stock in GM, issued another injunction, this
one to take effect in twenty four hours, again ordering
the striking workers to leave the factories. He also find
the union fifteen million dollars. Thousands of supporters started gathering

(31:59):
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. There's 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 strikers side, it

(32:19):
wouldn't have had the same connotations as Judge black stock ownership.
Even if it had been known. 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

(32:43):
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. Insteady contacted

(33:04):
the President, again, encouraging Roosevelt to order GM to the
bargaining table. Alfred P. Sloan delegated GMS, negotiating to executive
vice president William Knudsen, along with representatives from the company's
finance and legal departments. On the workers side was CIO
President John L. Lewis, previously of United Mine Workers, and

(33:25):
U a W Vice President Windham 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 Francis
Perkins updated on their progress. Although Murphy tried to get

(33:46):
Judge Godola to delay the removal of the workers. On
February five, 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 in to court
to face charges of contempt. But like the governor, Sheriff
Thomas Walcott had some serious reservations about doing this and

(34:08):
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. This was on a Friday, and the governor

(34:30):
tried to get everybody to just hold tight till after
the weekend, but by Monday, February eight, GM and the
U a W 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

(34:51):
everything I have ever stood for in my whole political life.
An agreement between GM and the U a W finally
came on February eleventh, nineteen thirty seven, forty four 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.

(35:13):
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, and that bargaining was meant
to address the grievances that the union had presented to

(35:33):
the company back in January. The union agreed not to
implement any more strikes or work stoppages while that negotiation
was taking place, 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, Nudsen informed
Murphy that for a period of six months, GM would

(35:54):
negotiate only with U a W, not with any other
union strikers, and chev lay Plant number four voted to
have Roscoe van zandt lead them out of the building.
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 UH a lot of

(36:16):
times and not working directly on the assembly line. So
this first agreement between GM and the u a W
was not one that addressed all those demands that the
u a W 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. Others were

(36:37):
demands that the UAW kept working towards 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 that started on February six after the strike was over. Instead,
disagreement's major accomplishment was GM's recognition of the union and
its promise to participate in collective bargaining, and in that

(37:00):
it was enormously influential. It established the u a W
as a legitimate union in the auto industry, and its
membership grew from about ninety eight thousand to nearly four
hundred thousand in ninety seven alone. U a W started
bargaining for workers for many other US auto manufacturers, including Studebaker, Hudson, Packard,

(37:21):
and Chrysler, and four years after the Flint strike at Ford.
The success in Flint also sparked an enormous increase in
union membership overall and a wave of sit down strikes
as people tried to get better pay and working conditions.
There were a hundred and fifty sit down strikes in
the United States in nineteen thirty seven alone, about a

(37:42):
hundred of them in the area around Detroit, Michigan. About
half a million workers across the country went on strike
and about two million joined a union between nineteen thirty
seven and ninety eight. These were not confined to the
auto industry or two industrial jobs. On February seven, clerks
at Woolworth stopped working and took over stores for a week,

(38:06):
winning a twenty 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.

(38:28):
In April of ninety seven, 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 down strikes in the first place,

(38:51):
but became a lot more critical. And the words of
the Detroit News quote, sitting down has replaced baseball as
a national pastime and centered downers clutter the landscape in
every direction. In late nineteen thirty seven, a Gallop poll
found that about sevent of Americans disapproved of sit down strikes.

(39:12):
Then in nineteen thirty nine, the U. S. Supreme Court
issued a ruling in N L r B. Versus Fan
Steel Metallurgical Corp. Which found that Fan Steel 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

(39:32):
away from sit down strikes, but they have been cited
as an inspiration for sit ins during movements for equal rights. Yeah,
when we did that episode, that sort of rounded up
like the sipp In movement and the fishing movement and
all of those things. The first one that we talked
about was the Alexandria Public Library sit in, which was
originally called to sit down strike. Also, we are not

(39:53):
going to try to recap the the next eighty five
years of labor history. Well, there are lots of story
eas within it that we can tell it later times. Um,
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 U A

(40:14):
w all of that is out of the scope of
this podcast. Do you have a listener mail for us?
I do I have listener mail friend Tony. Tony says Hi,
Holly and Tracy, longtime listener, first time writing in. I
was so excited today during part one of the Tarbell
versus Rockefeller when you started talking about the discovery of
oil drilling and Titus Bill that I pause the episode

(40:34):
to call my mom and tell her about it. My
entire family is from that area in Oil City, very
near Titus Bill. My mom took me to Drake's well
when I was little and pointed out that the picture
of Drake standing in front of the well in eighteen
sixty six is also a picture of my ancestor, my
great great uncle Peter. I've attached to the picture below

(40:55):
and standing on the right and the top hat is
Drake and the man on the left next to him
is Peter Wilson. According to our genealogy findings, Peter Wilson
owned a successful apothecary in the area and helped bank
roll Drakes drilling. There's very little mention of Peter Wilson
outside of the picture at the well, so we don't
know a lot about his life aside from that, but
I'm hoping one day I can go dig through city

(41:17):
records and find more. There are still oil wells all
over the area, and unfortunately still a lot of issues
connected to them. Cancer rates in the area are higher
than in other areas of the state, and several of
my family members and friends have suffered from issues with
water quality on their land. It was really cool to
hear a lot about the history of the area my
family is from, especially since many of my ancestors, including

(41:40):
my grandfather, worked for Standard Oil and other oil companies
in the area. Western Pennsylvania is very beautiful and some
of the oil money mansions still exist in Oil City,
and I wish there was a bit more visibility for
the area in its history. Uh. Tony then apologizes for
the email running a bit long, but I don't find
this to be long at all, and Tony says, I'm

(42:03):
in the process of applying for graduate schools, and I
have to say a big part of that decision was
realizing how much I loved history from listening to this podcast.
Thank you for all you do. My husband and I
look forward to new episodes and listen every week. Have
a great day, Tony. Thank you so much, Tony for
this email. I had seen that picture of the well
when I was doing my research, and it's so cool
for somebody to right in and be like, that's my

(42:25):
ancestor in that picture. That has become like a historical touchstone.
I love it. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast, were history podcast
that I heart radio dot com and we're all over
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(42:48):
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