With the Union's Inspiration

The 1930s were hard times. After the 1929 stock market crash, plants closed and millions were unemployed. The soup line became a common sight as families couldn’t afford to feed themselves.

The moving assembly line had changed the way work was done for millions of workers who toiled to keep up with machines in filthy, noisy factories. Managers and foremen ruled with fists and firings. Industrial workers were valued less than the machines they operated.

And in the depths of the Great Depression there was not much a worker could do to achieve dignity on the job. “They wanted a full day’s work for a half-day’s pay. We didn’t have any benefits. The only benefits we had was to work yourself to death,” said Lawrence Placer, a late veteran of the Flint General Motors sit-down strike of 1936-1937, who passed away last year.

In winter 1932, Detroit’s Unemployed Council organized a Hunger March to the gates of Ford’s Dearborn plant. They were met with tear gas and bullets from police and plant guards. Five marchers were killed.

The industrial factory system was heartless. And even if you went along with management, you got worn out trying to keep up with the speed of the assembly line. With no job security, management would toss you out for a younger worker, especially if you were suspected of union sympathies.

Even pro-union economist George Barnett in 1932 sadly announced it unlikely that labor will continue to be the “potent social influence that it has been.”

For some workers, things looked hopeless.

“It was hell in there. The employer gave no consideration toward its workers. It was nothing short of legalized slavery. We had no protections, nowhere to turn to. The company ruled with an iron hand. But as complaints grew, people began to see the need to do something together,” recalled Dave Moore, who hired in at the Ford Motor Co. foundry in 1935.

Workers learned they could only count on each other to make things better. Hundreds of thousands of workers became activists as solidarity grew among them. They set up unemployed councils, demonstrated for jobs, protested for money owed to laid-off veterans, formed soup kitchens — and organized unions.

The year Moore started at Ford was a pivotal one for workers. The United Auto Workers was founded on Aug. 26, 1935, and a revived labor movement was getting ready to take on the corporate Goliaths.

With the union’s inspiration running in their veins, the early UAW leadership — including brothers Walter, Victor and Roy Reuther — planned and organized workers to fight not just for more money but as an engine for economic and social change.

That same year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act requiring employers to negotiate with duly elected unions.

The UAW was moving full speed ahead. Using the effective sit-down strike, the union won gains for workers and eventually union recognition at Bendix Corp. in South Bend, Ind., and Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co. in Detroit.

Then workers courageously took on the world’s biggest corporation: GM. The historic 44-day Flint Sit-Down Strike established the UAW as the bargaining representative for tens of thousands of GM workers.

Just weeks later, Chrysler recognized the UAW after workers sat down at nine Detroit plants. The UAW grew from 35,000 members in 1935 to 375,000 in 1937.

Organizing workers at Ford Motor Co. proved a tougher and bloodier campaign. Organizers were brutally beaten by company thugs in what came to be known as the 1937 Battle of the Overpass. But the never-give-up force of solidarity triumphed in 1941 when workers struck and Ford, the last of the Big Three automakers to recognize the UAW, was organized.
In just four years, from 1937 to 1941, nearly all auto workers in the United States and Canada were under the protection of a union contract.

That was just the beginning. The UAW vision was a passionate belief in human dignity and social justice that included all workers and their families. Company after company ceded to workers’ demands and recognized the UAW as the workers’ representative.

Then workers and all Americans faced a new danger. Just months after Ford workers organized, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. The UAW had already advanced a plan by then-Vice President Walter Reuther called “500 Planes a Day” to convert industrial facilities to military production creating the arsenal of democracy and putting many laid-off workers back to work.

As more and more men were needed in the armed forces to defend our country, the UAW welcomed the influx of women — most known as Rosie the Riveters — into the workplace.
Pauline Teverbaugh, 86, hired in at Delco in Anderson, Ind., to build plane parts in 1943. She ended up working there for 35 years.

“That’s why I went there, to do my part for the war effort. We had to make a difference,” said Teverbaugh.

“Most of the people there were glad to have the union come in. Before the union, there was a washroom matron. She would knock on doors and make you leave. There was no smoking, no coffee, no vacation pay,” added Teverbaugh.

The UAW continued to set the standard for workers in bargaining gains after the war. We were the first to negotiate health insurance for workers and their families, paid vacation time, cost-of-living increases, company-funded pensions, Supplemental Unemployment Benefits, 30-and-Out retirement, a paid Election Day holiday and many more contractual landmarks.

The UAW grew to represent workers in aerospace, agricultural implements and other sectors. Since our first office workers were organized in 1941, we have gone on to represent academic student employees, teachers, nurses, lab technicians, police officers, state and municipal workers, brewery workers, shoemakers, zookeepers, attorneys and others.

From the workplace to the bargaining table and beyond, for 70 years the UAW has played a leading role in the fight for the progressive policies and programs that have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty and despair — and given them the opportunity to realize the American Dream.

“Those who came before us fought hard and, in some cases, put their lives on the line to create a better world for us,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. “The best way to honor them is to pave the way for those who will come after us.”