June 28, 1998

"Battle of Bulls" Run in First GM Strike Rout Police

FIRST OF TWO PARTS

The prolonged strike against General Motors probably will conclude a crucial labor-management battle that began 61 years ago at Flint, Mich. It was job security then, and is now.

I relate the issue with a humbling realization. What is memory to me has become history to most everyone else. I was there -- a 16-year-old reporter for the Central High School bi-weekly newspaper "Arrow Head."  The Great Depression in 1936 had the nation in tight grip. The demoralizing effect this had on unskilled workers was indescribable. Unemployment hovered at 17 percent. This was down from the 1933 high of 25 percent, but the outlook was uncertain. Indeed, the jobless rate did not drop below 15 percent until World War II started.

 Four of every five wage earners in Flint worked for Chevrolet, Buick, Fisher Body or AC Spark Plug. The average hourly pay rate for unskilled auto workers was 36.5 cents -- on a par with Ford and Chrysler but skimpy for family necessities.

The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and enactment of the Wagner Labor Relations Act -- encouraged John L. Lewis to found the Committee (later Congress) of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He turned over the task of recruiting auto workers to Walter Reuther and his brothers Roy and Victor.

It was slow go at first. A majority of Flint auto workers were loyal to GM. The company did provide employment and subsidized sweetheart unions under an International Motors Association banner.  Workers' biggest beef was the intense pressure to churn out cars fast, followed by long "lay offs" for model changes or excess inventory.

Thus, there was more animosity than acceptance when in June 1936 United Automobile Workers trouble shooter Wyndham Mortimer arrived in Flint to challenge the country's largest auto maker. Five, tiny UAW locals there had a rundown office and a combined membership of just 122 members.

Mortimer checked into the Dresden Hotel. Before his bags were unpacked he received a telephone call warning him to "get out of town before he was carried out in a wooden box."  GM's spy network was awesome.

Nevertheless, Mortimer began mailing 5,000 letters to Fisher Body  workers inviting them to join the UAW for better wages and working conditions. GM thus became aware that a major organizing drive was underway. More significantly, the UAW drive alarmed the large number of  conservative workers from the south who had emigrated to work in the Flint factories. They voted Democrat, but were intensely patriotic and grateful for GM jobs. Mortimer was distrusted because of his previous involvement in communist causes.  

GM, anticipating a long strike, began moving stamping dies from its Flint factories to plants elsewhere. This especially alarmed Fisher Body workers dependent upon the largest dies most difficult to replace.

Walter Reuther, busy with organizing Kelsey-Hayes Wheel at Detroit, sent Bob Travis to lead a strike at Flint. Walter's brother, Roy, was Travis' chief aide.  

Travis exhorted small groups of GM workers: "The situation is comparable to a vast army on one side with all the hideous advantages of modern warfare -- poison gas, machine guns, cannons and their secret service. On the other side we see scattered battalions -- unskilled, armed with bows and arrows."

After months of effort, only 1,000 out of 47,000 GM workers at Flint had been persuaded to join the UAW.  The spark that exploded a tense situation occurred Dec. 29 when GM began removing key Buick dies from Fisher Body 1 on South Saginaw St.  Workers there, led by Bud Simons, sat down the next day. An avowed communist, Walter Moore, was elected "mayor" of the plant to keep order.

Strikers locked plant protection men into the restrooms for a few hours then asked them to leave quietly, which they did. Doors were welded shut. Travis, Roy Reuther and Mortimer had introduced a new technique to the American labor movement -- the "sit down" whereby strikers occupied company property.  Now the strike took on a Constitutional dimension. Do workers have a right to "trespass" and deprive owners of the lawful use of their property?

A Gallup poll indicated a majority of Americans thought the strikers should leave the plants but force should not be used to evict them.

Judge Edward D. Black, of the Detroit Circuit Court, granted an injunction ordering the strikers to vacate the plants. CIO lawyers appealed on the basis Judge Black owned $215,000 worth of GM stock. The injunction was canceled.

Frustrated by the stalemate, General Motors President Alfred P. Sloan demanded that Flint police and Genesee County sheriff deputies help company guards evict strikers at Fisher 2 on Chevrolet Ave. It was considered the union bastion.

An assault was launched Jan. 11, 1937, with billy clubs, cudgels, and sawed-off shotguns.

The sit-downers were prepared. They had welded the doors shut, barred windows with steel dollies, coiled fire hoses at vantage points, and stacked heavy car-door hinges on the roof.  A sign over the main door proclaimed  THEY SHALL NOT PASS.  

As  the attackers hacked vainly at doors and windows they were sprayed  with freezing water.  Outside temperature was 16 degrees.  Hinges were hurled down on them with deadly force. Amidst the din, Victor Reuther, another brother of Walter, shouted over a loudspeaker mounted atop an old Chevrolet: "We want peace. General Motors chose war. Give it to them!"

The police withdrew, regrouped and advanced again -- this time firing shotgun pellets at roof tops and broken windows. Thirteen strikers and pickets received painful wounds, and the police were drenched again. The latter retreated to the company personnel office across the street to dry their clothes and plan another strategy.

Late that night, the police advanced on Fisher 2 behind a cloud of tear gas. Unhappily for them, the wind shifted and blew the gas back. Blinded and choking, the attackers fled to shouts of, "Run, bulls, run."  The effort to dislodge the sit-downers was abandoned. The strikers gave voice to a parody of a famous Civil War fight and to the taunt for company guards.  Flint old-timers still recall the confrontation as the Battle of "Bulls" Run.

With thanks to Jason Austin of Davison, Mich.

For Lindsey's comments on the 1998 GM strike, see the Editorial "The UAW Strike Against General Motors Is Showdown"

NEXT ARTICLE --  Decoy Provides Winning Edge for a UAW Contract

Author: Lindsey Williams

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cutline -- crowd at overpass

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Photo courtesy of Flint (Mich.) Daily Journal  

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[ UAW sympathizers gather at Flint Fisher Body 2 factory for a rally in January 1937. Note strikers on roof. ]

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