A new union flexes its muscles

Wisconsin has become a symbol of working-class resistance. Mass rallies and occupations, in defense of collective bargaining, are displaying the kind of militancy that first won that right. Until the upsurge of the 1930s, U.S. workers did not have collective bargaining.

In 1934 autoworkers and the unemployed joined forces against a notoriously anti-worker company — Electric Auto-lite, a major Ford supplier and one of Toledo’s largest private employers.

Just 60 miles south of Detroit, already known as “Motor City,” Toledo, Ohio, was home to a number of auto parts suppliers as well as Willys-Overland (now Jeep) and a General Motors transmission plant.

The Depression hit this industrial city hard. Capitalist overproduction, the collapse of Toledo’s largest banks and a real estate bubble that burst destroyed the tax base and drove unemployment to 70 percent. Not that the workers didn’t know, but Auto-lite management reminded them how easily they could be replaced.

Yet these workers risked their jobs and their lives, fighting cops, goons and the National Guard, for a union. Why?

With the introduction of the moving assembly line and the expansion of mass production during the Roaring ‘20s, a science of exploitation came into vogue. “Scientific” production systems were designed to raise worker output. Under the Taylor system, once assembly line workers were used to working at a certain speed, the line speed would be increased, incrementally, over and over again.

Another system, Bedeaux, was based on production quotas set by management. Those who failed to meet the quota were disciplined or fired. Those who exceeded it got a proportional bonus. There were two catches: one, supervisors kept part of the bonus for themselves; and two, the quota kept increasing.

Both these systems, developed to accommodate an economic boom, remained in effect at Auto-lite years after the boom collapsed. Yet rarely did workers see a 40-hour paycheck. Their curse was “the bench.” The standard workweek was 48 hours, but, on any given day, a worker could be told to sit until a job was available. Only then could he or she clock in. After the job was finished, the worker clocked out and went back to the bench, sitting hours or even days in a row without pay. Imagine being in the plant six days a week and being paid for only two or three days.

A worker might be fired for just about anything, certainly for union organizing. However, with the National Recovery Act’s passage in 1933 — section 7(a) gave workers the right to organize on paper — union supporters felt they were exercising their legal rights. The United Auto Workers union had not yet been founded. Line workers joined “federal labor unions” affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.

Thousands of workers sign up to fight back

The AFL practiced craft unionism as opposed to industrial unionism, organizing workers by their skill and only reluctantly taking in more exploited industrial workers. AFL President William Green was for peace between labor and capital. Nevertheless Federal Labor Union Local 18384 signed up thousands of workers — who wanted to fight — at Willys-Overland, City Auto Stamping, Logan Gear, Bingham Stamping and Tool, and Spicer Manufacturing. At Auto-lite, the local’s only strength was in the punch press department, but a strike in Department Two would halt production.

On Feb. 23, 1934, workers at Bingham, Logan and Spicer walked out in large numbers, but only a handful walked the picket line outside Auto-lite. They called themselves “the unholy 13” as they huddled around blazing 55-gallon drums for five days in the frigid Ohio winter. They had to demonstrate the union’s resolve to the rank and file. They were fired, but not for long.

Local 18384 saw that a sympathy strike — like the one on April 4 by International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 in solidarity with Wisconsin workers — could be a powerful weapon. Even after Spicer workers won their demands for recognition and a pay raise, they refused to go back to work until the 13 were reinstated at Auto-lite. In a conversation at an exclusive club, Spicer President Charles Dana is said to have persuaded Auto-lite President Clement O. Miniger to take the workers back. Many workers at Auto-lite joined the union after this symbolic victory.

The big fight was coming.

The writer has been a longtime Chrysler worker and UAW member. Email: [email protected]

Sources: “I Remember Like Today: The Auto-Lite Strike of 1934” by Philip A. Korth and Margaret R. Beegle. Michigan State University Press, 1988.

Next: The Battle of Toledo