Gigantic struggles: the battle to build the United Automobile Workers after the sit-down strikes, 1937–1945

ABSTRACT

This article examines the struggle to build the United Automobile Workers in the years after the sit-down strike of 1936–37 in Flint, Michigan. The strike, which historian Sidney Fine has called ‘the most significant American labor conflict in the twentieth century,’ has secured the lion’s share of scholarly attention. While it was very important, much remained to be done to make the UAW an institution that represented almost all American autoworkers. At the time of the strike, only 10 percent of GM’s 47,000 Flint workers belonged to the UAW, while much of the industry was unorganized. This article changes the focus, examining the struggle to build the union after the strike. In this period, the union faced bitter internal divisions, ongoing corporate opposition, patchy membership levels, and economic instability. It struggled to establish itself, and internal records – especially overlooked executive board minutes that are mined here – reveal considerable vulnerability and instability. While the UAW made progress between 1937 and 1941, it was in World War II that it solidified itself nationally, helped by favorable bargaining conditions. Even then, it faced ongoing leadership divisions and rank and file disaffection. Building the union took time and deserves closer interrogation.

KEYWORDS:

• United Automobile Workers
• automotive industry
• U.S. history
• union organizing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For studies focused on autoworkers’ experiences on the job, including in the period covered here, see Asher and Edsforth (1995); Lichtenstein and Meyer (1989), and Widick and Ginzberg (1976). In contrast, the UAW’s international executive board minutes (see below) provided a broader, national perspective.

2. Other important works on the industry’s problems, especially the social tensions arising from its decline in Michigan and the impact on the UAW, include the vivid memoirs by Young (2013), a study of Flint, and Clemens (2005). For a more scholarly perspective on these problems, see Highsmith (2015).

3. During World War II, to facilitate union security in the context of a controlled economy, the federal government inserted a ‘maintenance of membership’ clause in its procurement contracts with unionized companies. This usually meant that union shops were established in organized plants, with workers only able to withdraw straight after starting work. Few did, and the UAW, who had virtually all of its members working under government contracts, gained a lot. See Barnard (2004), p. 184; Lichtenstein (2003), pp. 78–81.

4. The UAW initially belonged to the AFL but joined the CIO in April 1936.

5. The 1948 GM-UAW contract, for example, pioneered cost-of-living allowances and annual improvement factor increases, as well as establishing a landmark impartial umpire system to resolve disputes. See ‘Public Hearing,’ (1951), pp. 5, 13–14.

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council, DP220100838.

Notes on contributors

Timothy J. Minchin

Timothy J. Minchin is a professor of North American History at La Trobe University in Melbourne. He has written widely on labor and civil rights history. His previous books include Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), and Empty Mills: The Fight against Imports and the Decline of the U.S. Textile Industry (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). His most recent book is America’s Other Automakers: A History of the Foreign-Owned Automotive Sector in the United States (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021).