Sit-downers in Flint, Michigan shake the earth under the feet of General Motors and strike fear into the ruling class.

‘Auto Strikers ‘Hold the Fort’ In Flint Plants’ from Labor Action (San Francisco). Vol. 1 No. 11. February 6, 1937.

Epic Struggle Centers On Maneuvers To Eject “Sit-Down” Strikers from Occupied Plants

The publicity spotlight on the greatest auto strike in labor history this week swung back from futile Washington maneuvers to stern class struggle in Flint, Michigan. Thirty-five thousand National Guardsmen, sent in by Governor Frank Murphy, patrolled the blood-flecked streets of the nation’s key auto city.

Crucial issue of the strike remained the sit-down capture of the Fisher Body plants. Fifteen hundred new sit-downers were added to the army of occupation when they forced their way into Chevrolet Plant No. 4 in spite of company and police violence which brought injury to fifteen men.

SIT-DOWN POWER

Every test of strength during the thirty-five day old strike has centered on the question of the auto workers right to remain in the plants that they alone can operate. Every move of corporation officials has been directed toward fighting this new weapon which has tremendously increased the power of American labor. The sit-down has demonstrated its ability to bring one of the greatest mass production industries to a stand-still, and employers know that defeat in autos means cracking the iron front of the open shop and a swift march to unionism in all the basic industries.

Alone the employers would be helpless, but the courts and state and national government officials are busily testing every possible method of driving or luring the workers from their trenches.

MURPHY OFFER

Latest maneuver, according to Wednesday press reports, is a proposal offered by Governor Murphy acting under special authority from President Roosevelt. General Motors is asked to guarantee that “the United Automobile Workers will be recognized as the only workers’ agency involved in this dispute.”

The union has been asked to withdraw all sit-down strikers from plants at Flint in return for Governor Murphy’s “flat guarantee, backed by the National Guard, that General Motors will not resume production in those plants.”

REAL OBJECT

At press time neither workers or GM officials had accepted this proposal. If accurately reported, it marks a considerable retreat from former government demands that the unions abandon the plants unconditionally. Essentially, however, the proposal is as dangerous as all that have preceded it. Discrediting and outlawing the sit-down tactic is more important to employers and government than the outcome of this particular strike.

If the union consents to abandon the plants, it is admitting that there is something wrong, or legal, about the sit-down. That admission may help an immediate auto settlement but it will endanger the steel drive and weaken all future union campaigns.

WHY NOT?

After all if Governor Murphy is willing to use the National Guard to keep GM plants closed, why not save money and let the strikers do it? They’ve done very well for over a month. Actually that is what both Murphy and General Motors are worried about. Murphy, at least, is willing to concede a good deal, PROVIDED THERE ARE NO MORE SIT-DOWNS.

Some indication of the reliability of the National Guardsmen as union defenders was given in the first days of military occupation. Associated Press, not noted for over-stating violations of labor’s rights, states in a February 2nd wire, “This afternoon Michigan Guardsmen, at bayonet point pushed a small group of pickets away from Chevrolet’s motor assembly department, Plant 4–seized a union sound truck because its operators were doing too much talking, demolished a picket shanty, and detained six men.” These Guardsmen, who also shut off the food supply to sit-down strikers for 12 hours until public pressure forced a reversal, are to guarantee the plants against scabs!

SHERIFF AWED

Efforts of GM officials to oust the strikers through a vicious injunction failed when the local sheriff was overawed by popular sympathy with the strikers and by the difficulty of moving men who sang “we shall not be moved” and meant it. He announced that General Motors would have to get another court order for eviction before he would act.

Final important news of the week was the attempt of Secretary of Labor Perkins to gain subpoena power for herself so that she could compel the appearance and testimony under oath of all participants in industrial disputes.

While the immediate excuse for this request was the refusal of GM president, Alfred P. Sloan, to meet with the Labor Secretary and union officers, the legislation itself would give the government semi-fascist powers over labor unions.

PERKINS-COOLIDGE FRONT

Exactly the same legislation was proposed by Calvin Coolidge and was too reactionary for even his Republican Congress. That Madame Perkins, undoubtedly with presidential consent, uses the auto strike as the pretext for seeking arbitrary government powers of interference in labor affairs is one more indication of the totalitarian ambitions of the Administration. Despite hasty endorsement by John L. Lewis, the Perkins proposal met a cold reception in both labor and congressional circles. The legislation is apparently shelved for the moment, but the next labor show-down will see a stronger Administration effort to push it through.

In the meantime the fate of not only autos but the entire C.I.O. campaign in the mass production industries depends upon the valiant garrison who “hold the fort” in Flint.

There have been a number of periodicals named Labor Action. This Labor Action was published weekly in San Francisco in 1936 and 1937, edited by James P Cannon, as the official organ of the Socialist Party of California, then dominated by Fourth Internationalist followers of Leon Trotsky engaged in an intervention, the “French Turn,” into the Socialist Party. This Labor Action played close attention to the CIO movement and contains a wealth of information on CIO history in the West of that time. The Trotskyists were expelled in late 1937, founding the Socialist Workers Party in early 1938.

Link to PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/laboraction-ca/v1n11-feb-06-1937.pdf