Socialist Party activists were central leaders of the Flint and Detroit sit-down strikes of 1937 that brought the U.A.W.-C.I.O. to power in the central industry of the U.S., auto, and helped to ignite the most profound period of labor organizing in U.S. history with hundreds of thousands joining unions for the first time. Below is a look at the thinking of those activists as they make plans for next steps after the breakthrough in Flint.

‘Auto Strikers Take Militant Offensive’ by Frank N. Trager from Socialist Call. Vol. 2 No. 99. February 6, 1937.

Socialists Map Program In Campaign

FLINT, Mich. Under the spirited leadership of Socialist unionists, Flint auto workers this week took the offensive and, discarding the futile strategy of prolonged conference table negotiations, called the historic 5-week war into enemy territory when they successfully carried through a sit-down strike at the important Chevrolet motor plant here. Control of this plant means no production at the bottle-neck.

The tactic of the strikers was immediately met by the military forces of the state when Gov. Frank Murphy, New Deal “liberal,” ordered the militia to completely surround the plant and not allow any ingress, oven to bring food to the sit-downers.

Food Allowed in

After the men inside the plant declared that they would starve rather than relinquish their recently-won gains, Murphy relent ed and food was allowed in. The strike was called after the paralysis of negotiations which lasted more than a week. The failure of peace officials in Detroit, Saginaw and Anderson, Ind., to protect strikers and union leaders from company-inspired mobs and cheap thugs, as well as the possibility of forced arbitration by Government officials made necessary the assumption of the offensive if the splendid spirit of the strikers was not to be slowly liquidated.

To allow GM to continue the offensive, strike leaders realized, would mean slow retreat on the part of the union.

Blanket Injunction

In the meanwhile, a blanket injunction against the sit-down strikers at the two original plants was granted General Motor attorneys over the objection of union officials. Observers expect that the injunction would be used by GM as a wedge finally to force the eviction of the strikers by force.

The strike was carefully planned with all details kept absolutely secret. Monday afternoon, timed with the change of shifts, a public demonstration of union strikers and sympathizers outside Plant No. 9. While police were centered around that demonstration, the central plant, Plant No. 4, was to be struck.

Socialist Leads Women

At Plant No. 3, the police, as well as company thugs, greeted the demonstration with a shower of tear-gas inside the plant. The wives, strikers’ organized a Women’s Brigade, led by Genora Johnson, militant Socialist. A whole line of windows, the entire length of the shop was broken to permit fresh air into the factory. Several were injured during the demonstration.

In the meantime, Plant No. 4 workers, aided by men in Plant No. 6, quickly took control of the plant. They immediately began the job of barricading the walls against possible attack. Kermit Johnson was elected strike chairman.

Well-Known Socialist

With the exception of Robert Travis, militant strike leader, all of the rank-and-file leaders are well-known Socialists. They include Powers Hapgood, Roy, Walter and Victor Reuther, Merlin Bishop, Kermit and Genora Johnson.

Walter Reuther is the leader of the important Westside Local of the United Automobile Workers in Detroit and led a delegation from Detroit to Flint.

The capture of Plant No. 4 was the answer of the Flint strikers to the GM tactic of “back-to-work.” Today, the center of the strike is no longer Washington or Wall Street, it is back in Flint where it belongs.

The auto struggle is, in the most literal sense, breaking through the narrow confines of a trade dispute and spreading into a struggle of classes.

Millions of dollars, derived from the exploitation of workers in America’s greatest industries, are being placed at the disposal of the auto bosses–to break the strike.

Hundreds of workers, generally occupied in steel, rubber, chemicals, and minor industries, are reported pouring into the auto fields–to win the strike.

Both bosses and workers feel that the fight in the auto fields is the fight of a class and not just of a few workers and a few bosses. Active Socialists in the auto union have drafted a program of action, revolving around the three slogans:

More CIO organizers!
CIO to the battle-front!
Solidarity for Industrial Unionism!

The program follows:

Program of Action In Auto Strike

1. The CIO has to concentrate on autos. This means that it must put at the helm of the UAWA 25 to 50 of its trained organizers. If necessary, these men must be taken from the Steel Workers Organization Committee to do the job and the steel workers must be made to understand why. If this is done, if the CIO shows in autos, that it means to win, actually much of the fear and difficulty and doubt that it has met in steel will be overcome and thereby its chances for success in steel will be so much enhanced.

2. Flint, Michigan, should b come CIO auto headquarters with secondary offices in Detroit and elsewhere.

3. The CIO should immediately convene an extraordinary session of its national unions and publicly announce their combined, moral and financial aid.

4. John L. Lewis, chairman of the CIO should convey this message in person to gigantic mass demonstrations in the strike centers.

PUBLICITY AND PUBLIC OPINION

1. Immediate issuance of a daily strike newspaper.

2. Regular state-wide broadcasts on the progress of the strike addressed to the strikers, giving information, encouragement and directives.

3. Regular national broadcasts on the strike to acquaint the public with the real issues.

4. Nation-wide drive to enroll committees for the support and defense of the auto workers.

5. CIO publications, leaflets and pamphlets on autos, comparable to SWOC.

6. Formation of a united civil liberty and legal defense committee.

IMMEDIATE RELIEF FOR STRIKERS

1. Labor representatives on all county relief boards to insure adequate distribution to all strike families of their needed share of Federal and State relief.

2. The strikers must be informed that they have a right to relief (even the federal government said so) and the relief thus required should be regarded not as a dole but as a strike donation!

3. Local labor representatives should demand special relief set-up for strikers, distinct from the frequently disgusting red tape procedure imposed on the unorganized unemployed by county welfare and relief boards. In Flint a GMC man controls the local relief board. Demand changes of Murphy and chairman William Haber of the Michigan Emergency Relief Administration.

4. Where possible the Workers’ Alliance should be called in to assist in this aspect of the work. The Workers Alliance knows how!

5. Special strike committees should be created to set up commissaries and relief depots. They should cover the surrounding rural area to enlist the aid of the farmers. 3000 farmers were organized as a result of this work around Akron during the rubber strike.

IMMEDIATE PROGRAM

1. Establish picket lines around GM plants.

2. Solidarity demonstrations outside of sit-down plants.

3. Construct picket huts.

4. Sympathizer demonstrations outside of GM office and show rooms.

5. Regular daily strike meetings to inform the workers.

6. Fully developed educational and recreational program at all strike headquarters.

Finally, it should be clear that the outcome of the class battle will, to a large extent, determine the future of the labor movement. Nothing must be spared to gain victory. The Socialist Party will take its place in the ranks of those who will spare no effort to help workers win that victory.

Socialist Call began as a weekly newspaper in New York in early 1935 by supporters of the Socialist Party’s Militant Faction Samuel DeWitt, Herbert Zam, Max Delson, Amicus Most, and Haim Kantorovitch, with others to rival the Old Guard’s ‘New Leader’. The Call Education Institute was also inaugurated as a rival to the right’s Rand School. In 1937, the Call as the Militant voice would fall victim to Party turmoil, becoming a paper of the Socialist Party leading bodies as it moved to Chicago in 1938, to Milwaukee in 1939, where it was renamed “The Call” and back to New York in 1940 where it eventually resumed the “Socialist Call” name and was published until 1954.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/socialist-call/call%202-99.pdf