Labor Organizations and Reform Movements

Source: Hillstrom, Laurie Collier. 2006. Labor Organizations and Reform Movements. The Industrial Revolution in America, Vol. 4. Edited by Kevin Hillstrom and Laurie Collier Hillstrom. ABC-CLIO. Labor Organizations and Reform Movements Lourie Collier Hillstrom hen automobile and truck manufacturing emerged as the nation's newest major industrial enterprise in the early twentieth century, the relationship between corporate owners Wand management and the workers who actually created the vehicles was a one-sided one. As masters of the factories that contained numerous high-paying jobs, management enjoyed considerable leverage in its dealings with workers, especially in rapidly growing northern cities where competition was fierce to find and hold jobs that could support a household. Early automobile companies used this dynamic to great advantage, insisting that their workforces put in long hours in bleak and sometimes hazardous workplaces. As in other mass-production industries of the era, automobile workers obliged, in large measure because weak labor unions were unable to make any appreciable inroads in this environment. Indeed, while the automobile industry professed its allegiance to the "open-shop" philosophy meaning that it did not officially discriminate between nonunion workers and union supporters-in reality it resortedto all manner of industrial espionage, intimidation, and discrimination to turn away unionization efforts. These efforts were largely successful until the Great Depression and the arrival of New Deal legislation designed to revitalize the 103 104 • Automobiles Labor Organizations • 105 American economy. The New Deal measures gave previously weak mers, sheet-metal workers, woodworkers, and upholsterers in 1913. unions in the auto industry and other manufacturing industries the It was initially affiliated with the American Federation of Labor legal standing to flourish as never before. From the mid-1930s to the (AFL), but its insistence on adhering to an all inclusive membership beginning of World War II, therefore, management-employee rela philosophy led the AFL to cut off ties to it in 1918. At that time the tions underwent convulsive and profound changes. The United Au union reorganized as the United Automobile, Aircraft and Vehicle tomobile Workers (UAW) came to prominence during this time, ris Workers of America (UAAVW) and initiated vigorous membership ing from obscurity to a place of enormous national power and drives in northeastern cities. By 1920 its membership had jumped to influence in the space of a few short years. By 1941, when the UAW 45,000, and it had even established a beachhead of sorts in Detroit, and its single-minded leader, Walter Reuther, reached a labor agree the center of the automobile universe, by targeting city paint shops. ment with Ford-the last of the Big Three automakers to succumb to But a disastrous 1921 strike action against the Fisher Body Company, unionization-the union stood as one of the most powerful indus the principal auto body supplier for General Motors (GM also own trial unions in the nation. ed a 60 percent share of the company), proved a major setback to the union. Badly wounded, the UAAVW fell under the influence of com munist organizers who renamed it the Auto Worker Union (AWU) (Gall 1990). Early Unionization Efforts The Auto Worker Union never succeeded in attracting large num Unionization in the automobile manufacturing industry actually bers of workers. In fact, although several important union leaders got dates back to the industry's inception, when the need for skilled their start in the AWU, the organization never claimed more than a workers forced some automakers to hire members of craft unions. few thousand members. In most cases, its anticapitalist message was But early efforts to organize the unskilled workers that toiled on the simply too strident and radical for rank and-file workers. But while assembly lines and in other corners of the big factory complexes the AWU failed to take advantage of the industry's demanding and foundered. In June 1913, for example, organizers hailing from the In paternalistic attitude toward its workforce to become a viable orga dustrial Workers of the World (IW W)-a radical labor union that en nizing body, its efforts increased workers' awareness of-and unhap joyed a brief period of popularity at the turn of the century-con piness with-the myriad ways in which management dictated their vinced 6,000 workers at three Studebaker plants to launch a strike. lives. "In the last analysis," wrote one historian, "the greatest orga But the strike proved to be a colossal failure, as angry company exec nizers of the coming automobile workers' unions were the executives utives took advantage of the presence of a large supply of replace and owners of the industry" (Alinsky 1949). ment workers to quickly resume operations at prestrike levels. Elsewhere in Detroit, where the national automobile industry was increasingly centered, the organizing efforts of the IW W and other The Great Depression and the NIRA union leaders from socialist or communist organizations were re buffed. Auto workers of the day disliked many aspects of their In the early 1930s the grim economic circumstances of the Great De workplaces, such as production line speedups and capricious work pression abruptly and decisively changed worker-management rela place favoritism, but they recognized that they were unlikely to find tions in industries across the United States, and the automobile in matching pay and benefits elsewhere, and so they were reluctant to dustry was no exception. The tough economic times prompted many disrupt the status quo. automobile workers to reassess their previous passivity regarding One of the first unions to gain any sort of meaningful traction in their livelihoods and gave union organizers an important opening. As the automobile industry was the Carriage, Wagon and Automobile automakers shut down factories and pursued other cost-cutting mea Workers (CWAW), which began organizing skilled painters, trim- sures, workers increasingly came to see labor unions as a viable shield 106 • Automobiles Labor Organizations • 107 from e e e conomic downturns and managem nt d crees that placed sands of machinists and tool and die workers under a single banner, profit e e e e abov work r w lfar . but its radical rhetoric and violent character gave it limited appeal to e Efforts to organiz the factory floors of Detroit and other auto rank-and-file workers who were simply interested in seeing the otive e e e e e � manuf�cturing c nters w r greatly aid d by the administra New Deal's fragile promise of increased economic s curity fulfilled. tion of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in January 1933. Mere e had some success in single factory firms on the e Organiz rs also months aft r his inauguration, Rooseve e e e ee e e _ lt sign d th National Indus margins of th Big Thr -dominat d auto�obil industry, such �s trial e e e _ R cov ry Act (NIRA) of 1933, a bold piec of legislation that South Bend's Studebaker, Cleveland's White Motor, and Detroit s sought t galvanize the moribund e e e e e e e � American economy by ex mpting K lsey-Hay s. But th Big Thr� of �ord, Chrys� r, and G�n ral U.S. e e e e _ _ business s from f d ral antitrust laws. Und r NIRA, govern Motors presented a united and imposmg front against umomst m- e e e e e m nt ag nci s w r directed to help various industries develop and e . e e curs10ns. s t pnc l vels and other codes of fair competition. Significantly, the eed, the automotive giants flexed their formidable musc�e e Ind act also inclu d a e e e e ? provision-section 7(a)-that xplicitly granted against unionism from th outs t. When an ffort to organi�e Electric work e e �rs the ngh� to organize �nd bargain coll ctiv ly through repre Auto-Lite, an independent car parts manufacturer based m T le�o, e e e � s ntativ s of th ir own choosmg. From this moment forward, trade escalated into a citywide general strike in 1934, one of the v1cttms unionists saw union organ�zing drives as essential e e e e e e e ed to _ "not only to th was G n ral Motors' Ch vrol t transmission plant. D t rmin prote e ction of workers agamst autocratic mployers, but also for a resume production at the plant, General Motors consented to a vari more e e e e e quitabl r distribution of national incom and the increase in ety of concessions demanded by union representatives. But when th working-class e e e purchasing pow r essential to a consumption-driven strike ended, the company punished the strikers and sent a cl ar m s economy" e e e (Licht nstein 1995 ). sage to would-be union members by transferring half of th Ch vy Embolde e e e e e e e n d by this br akthrough, organiz rs d scended on em plant's work to other facilities.This reallocation of r sourc s r sulte? e e e . ploy es of th automobil and other industries and made immediate e loss of hundreds of pnz_ ed 1obs and signaled the company s e in th �trides in furth ring their goal of industrial organization. But e e mean . e "if th willingness to r sist unionism by ruthless � id a of mass e e e unionism was in th air, its r ality was but fragmentary In Detroit, meanwhile, Chrysler sought to fmess sect10n 7(a) of and e e e e e pisodic," obs rv d one historian.

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