Bosses buckled, fearing general strike

The Ohio National Guard is often associated with the 1970 murder of four students — two antiwar protesters and two bystanders — at Kent State University. Yet their role as a violent suppressor of dissent did not begin there. They killed two Toledo workers during the 1934 Auto-lite strike.

Electric Auto-lite was a major parts supplier to Ford and one of Toledo’s largest employers. The strike for union recognition, which began on April 13, was still not settled when the Guards were deployed on May 24.

In the wee hours of the morning the Guardsmen were able to temporarily disperse a crowd of 10,000 workers and supporters who had surrounded the plant long enough to escort away the hundreds of scabs and supervisors huddled inside. But by afternoon the strikers and their mass of supporters confronted the Guardsmen. Taunting was followed by rock throwing. The troops responded with tear gas.

What became called the “Battle of Chestnut Hill” ensued, with soldiers and workers throwing rocks and canisters of gas back and forth at one another. Bayonet charges did not intimidate the strikers or their supporters, who included family and community members, members of other unions, and a large contingent from the Lucas County Unemployed League. The Guard fired, first into the air and later at the crowd. Frank Hubay and Stephen Cyigon, neither of whom worked for Auto-lite, were killed. Four others were wounded.

Women, who comprised more than 70 percent of the Auto-lite workforce and an equal percentage of those on strike, fought fiercely. After the scabs were taken out of harm’s way, production stopped, but an unfortunate fate befell a scab attempting to collect his paycheck. A group of women seized him and dragged him to an alleyway, where he was stripped naked except for his shoes and necktie. They paraded him around town to send a message that scabbing doesn’t pay.

Threat of citywide general strike worked

The plans of the company, backed by the city’s Merchants and Manufacturers Association, to break the union — a “federal labor union” of the American Federation of Labor, Local 18384 — were falling to pieces. So were the plans of AFL President William Green, who set up the FLUs as temporary organizations to pull autoworkers into the AFL, with the intent of then parceling them out to the federation’s conservative craft unions.

Green had been opposed to the strike. In fact, he generally opposed strikes, much like his successor, George (“I never walked a picket line”) Meany.

This wasn’t just a strike. It was a community uprising, and the tide was turning in the workers’ favor. The Auto-lite workers weren’t the only ones fighting Toledo’s moneyed establishment. There were disputes at other plants like Toledo Edison and elsewhere.

Despite Green’s pressure on the city’s Central Labor Union to “use influence to prevent strike action,” it voted 68-35 to call a general strike. The number in favor increased with each subsequent meeting, and by May 31 nearly 100 delegates voted for the general strike. It was the big topic at a march of 12,000 the next day. The mass rally that followed drew 25,000. Even more people were talking about shutting Toledo down.

If there was any lingering intransigence on the part of Auto-lite executives or the MMA, the threat of a citywide general strike was enough to bring the company to the table. The bosses, confident they could crush Local 18384, had scoffed at mediation. Now it was the union that turned down the newly created Auto Labor Board’s offer to hammer out a compromise. Local 18384 negotiated directly with Auto-lite as the sole bargaining agent, freezing out the company union known as the Auto-lite Council. By June 4 the strikers were going back to work.

This early victory turned the tide in favor of Toledo’s working class and paved the way for the United Auto Workers, founded a year later. One of the first locals chartered was Local 12, the former FLU 18384.

A memorial park, dedicated to the heroes of 1934, now occupies the site of this historic turning point.

Martha Grevatt has been a UAW Chrysler worker for 23 years. Email [email protected].

Source: “I Remember Like Today: the Auto-lite Strike of 1934,” Philip A. Korth and Margaret R. Beegle, Michigan State University Press, 1988.