National Recovery Administration ​

In June 1933, the NRA was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The target was the cutthroat competition of the industries  to eliminate. This required industry, workers and government to work together  to rules  for fair trade and fixed prices. The NRA was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act and allowed industries to work together to create rules  to set up. these rules  were intended to reduce cut-throat competition and to set minimum wages and maximum weekly hours, as well as minimum prices at which products could be sold. The NRA was valid for 2 years and would expire in June 1935 if not renewed.  

The NRA was symbolized by  a blue eagle and was popular with workers. Companies that the NRA supported put the symbol in their windows and on their packaging, although they did not always follow all regulations. Membership of the NRA was voluntary, but companies that did not display the eagle were often boycotted, making membership almost mandatory in order to survive.

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Many companies did not complain about the NRA and joined. The new program was initially seen as a miracle. It had something to offer for both parties. Cooperation for employers and power for trade unions.  However, Henry Ford did not want to join the NRA.  The National Recovery Review Board issued 3 critical reports in which the monopolistic character was mainly mentioned. They preferred to promote capitalism.  

The American Liberty League (1934-1940) represented large corporations and was led by leading industrialists who opposed the liberalist nature of the New Deal. Its chairman, Jouett Shouse, thought the NRA had indulged in irresponsible excesses and attempts at regulation. He did, however, praise efforts to abolish child labor and the goals of minimum wages and limiting working hours.  

The New Deal was Roosevelt's program to pull the US out of the doldrums of the Great Depression. It consisted of many different good and bad attempts to reform the economy. Most attempts failed. However, there were enough successes to call it the most important event of the 20th century that led to the building of modern American society.  

In the period of  three years from the Great Krach  and Roosevelt's first hundred days saw the economy suffer from deflation. Since 1931, the American Chamber of Commerce, a mouthpiece for the country's organized companies, had been involved  urged the Hoover administration to introduce an anti-deflationary system that would allow trade associations to work together to stabilize prices. Although the anti-trust law forbade such cooperation, the businessmen of the Chamber of Commerce nevertheless found a willing ear from the Roosevelt administration.

They were very enthusiastic about the idea of collaboration. The businessmen even demanded that the government make such cooperation mandatory. In the 1920s, wages rose at a fraction of the rate at which production increased and costs fell and prices remained the same. Henry Ford ran his business in his own way and at Ford production rose, wages rose and car prices fell.  All this led to the introduction of the NIRA (National Industry Recovery Act) in June 1933. This guaranteed employees the right of 'collective bargaining' and a minimum salary. The NRA was led by the flamboyant Hugh S. Johnson. He called for a minimum wage of 20 to 40 cents an hour, a working week between 35 and 40 hours and the abolition of child labour. It would increase purchasing power and reduce unemployment.  

In 1935, the Supreme Court declared that the NIRA  was unconstitutional. NIRA was therefore quickly discontinued, but many of the labor provisions were also included in the newly created National Labor Relations Act of July 5  of that same year.

The long-term result has been an increase in union growth and power. It would continue to rule politics for the next 3 decades. But the most significant success of 1935 (and perhaps of the entire New Deal) was the  Social Security Act  (14 August), which established a system of old-age pensions, disability insurance and benefits for protected groups such as dependent children and the disabled. It established a framework that would shape the American welfare system for the rest of the century.  

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The Roosevelt administration faced heavy criticism during Roosevelt's second term as a new dip in the Great Depression began in the fall of  1937  and most of  1938  continued. It was, ultimately, the result of the government's premature efforts to balance the budget by cutting government spending. The government responded with a rhetorical campaign against  monopolistic  trading power, which was presented  as the cause of the new dip in the economy. The president appointed an aggressive new leadership of the Justice Department's antitrust division, but this effort was lost when the  WWII  erupted — that was a more important matter after all.

However, it was not until the United States entered into  World War II that Roosevelt's ideas of Keynes (British Economist who tried  Roosevelt to build up more deficit through spending)  on a large enough scale to pull the country out of the Great Depression.  Roosevelt had little choice now, after all. Even considering the special circumstances of the war mobilization, the system seemed to work exactly as Keynes had predicted, and this convinced even many Republicans.

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When World War II brought the Great Depression to an end, government spending had bolstered the business world. In  1929  government spending was only 3 percent of the  gross national product. Among  1933  and  1939  government spending tripled and Roosevelt was criticized by his critics for calling the United States a  socialist  state was making. However, spending on the New Deal was much lower than on the war effort. In the first year of peace  1946  government spending was $62 billion, about 30 percent of the  GDP. Government spending rose between  1929  and  1945  from about 3 percent to a  third of GDP.

The big surprise was the huge increase in productivity in the United States. The spending had healed the financial damage of the depression. Among  1939  and  1944  (the peak of war production) industrial production nearly doubled. As a result, unemployment plummeted,  from 14 percent in  1940  to less than 2 percent in  1943, while the labor force grew by ten million. The war economy was not exactly a model  of free enterprise, but of cooperation between government and business, whereby the government provided the business community with financial resources.

It was the  WWII  and not the New Deal that eventually brought the Great Depression to a halt. The Balance of Power in American Capitalism  also not fundamentally changed by the New Deal. Its effect on the distribution of resources among the population was also minimal.

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America faced a wave of sit down strikes from 1933 to 1937

Towards the end of 1934, workers viewed the NRA, which was introduced in 1933, very differently. The NRA should be the solution to all problems. NRA, however, was now equivalent to National Run Around. The workers, fueled largely by the unions, began to develop their own methods of winning the battle. The main weapon was the sit down strike. The starting signal was given by the workers in the rubber industry in  Akron, Ohio.  

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Around the time of the Depression, Akron was America's rubber center. Home to Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich and many smaller other manufacturers.  At its peak, more than 40,000 people worked here. Around 1933, a third  up to half of these people are unemployed. Firestone was closed along with half a dozen other businesses. Goodyear even instituted a two-day work week.  With the introduction of the NRA in 1933, many Akron rubber workers became union members. The first weeks of the new rubber union were like a big picnic combined with a religious gathering. 40,000 rubber workers collected their union cards. She expected that the union, supported by the government, would save them.  

The cry was 'join me'. What happened next, nobody knew. It was believed blindly and passionately that the union would solve all problems, make them rich through good wages and put an end to speed-ups (increases in productivity). They had no idea how the union would do this, no one told them. Somewhere it was thought that Roosevelt would raise wages and stop the speedups.  

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Disappointed for the next two years  them and the workers found that they themselves had to act to achieve something.

By the end of 1934, the NRA's labor relations board denounced the companies for refusing collective bargaining and demanded elections to elect representatives. The government  had printed ballots and set up polling stations. The rubber workers expected the government to  would force companies to recognize them. However, two days before the vote, the companies won a lawsuit to suspend the vote indefinitely. People were shocked and disappointed.

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The final disappointment came in the spring of 1935. The unions saw many members walk out and agreed to a strike on April 15. However, the government mediated and wanted to wait for a representative election. The members felt betrayed. They stood on street corners tearing up their membership cards. 'The union is there for the bosses, not for us' said one of the members. The number of members decreased from 40,000 to 5,000, mostly only members on paper. As a result, the working conditions remained unbearable.

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The men did not speak to each other in the workplace but met outside of work in cafes  and talked to each other about work or other matters. In the factories nobody cared what your name was. If you were blond you were called 'whitey', or 'blacky' if you had black hair. They were a wage slave with a complete lack of identity and rights. 

Sometimes it happened that the working days were shortened to 6 hours, but the productivity had to remain equal to 8 hours.

Combined with the bad conditions outside work such as little food, little medical care and everything else, this made the workers conclude that there was no way out except through the union. The workers therefore used a tried-and-tested but little-used tactic, that of the sit down strike. No help from outsiders was needed for this and they were in control.  

The reason for the series of  sit downs at  the  Akron Rubber Factories emerged from  a baseball game with teams from two factories. During the match it was discovered that the referee was not a unionist and the players sat on the floor and remained there until the umpire was replaced by a unionist. Not long after, arose  There is a dispute at Firestone between some employees and a foreman. The workers almost gave in until the foreman  insulted them. One of the workers then said, 'Let him choke,  we are going to sit'. They turned off the machines and sat down. Within minutes walked  the carefully planned flow in the factory in the soup. Department after department got stuck. Thousands of workers sat down, most because they wanted to and others because there was no other way. 'What happened?' some wanted to know. 'There is  a sit-down'. 'A sit-down?' 'Yeah sucker, just like at the game on Sunday'.

Many people finally realized how important they were to the factory. It only took a few people to shut everything down. The supervisors were furious, the managers were running stressed  round. This sudden stop of production was costing hundreds of dollars a minute. In less than an hour, the problem was resolved in favor of the workers.

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This tactic was increasingly used between 1933 and 1936. It was now generally accepted that if a small group sat down, the rest would automatically follow. It wasn't a problem for most workers either. It wasn't sabotage, most were against it. It didn't break anything. It was planned somewhat so that no products would be lost. They behaved no differently than during normal production. There was no drinking or smoking.   

Sit downs effectively and  nonviolent

The management dared  usually do not drive people apart and replace them with other workers. They were afraid that they would become angry and that machines would be damaged. There are no lines of people outside the factory where the guards and police have a great advantage. Everything takes place within the factory where the workers know every place.  

The sitters put together their own 'police units'. They were equipped with crowbars and guarded the doors with them. When needed  The police were evacuated without any problems.

The initiative  and control of the sitdown came directly from those involved. Most workers, consciously or unconsciously, distrusted union workers, strike leaders and committees, even if they had them.  self chosen. The simplicity of the sitdown is that there are no leaders or officials to distrust. Standard procedures, such as sanctions, are  hopelessly outdated when employees drop their tools, stop their machines, and sit next to them.

It is also a social event. People talk to each other. normally there is never an opportunity for that. When there is a meeting, people listen to speakers. Not now, now people listen to each other. That's how they came  found out that the man next to them  is basically the same, he has the same problems. The work is monotonous, boring and mind-numbing and every distraction is welcome.  

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At the end of 1935, Goodyear announced a move from the six-hour workday to the eight  want to switch over an hour's workday and also to lay off 1,200 men. Unemployment was already high and people were not happy.   January 29, 1936, workers in the Firestone truck tire division were due to go on strike due to a pay cut and the dismissal of a trade unionist. The first sit down group was hysterical and screamed 'It worked!'  After 53 hours, two factories were completely shut down. Management immediately relented. Goodyear employees also went on strike over pay cuts. They were forced to go back to work, after the 3rd sit down the management gave in here too. The crisis came on February 14. A few days earlier, Goodyear had laid off 700 workers, which was seen as the start of the eight-hour workday. At 3:10 a.m., 137 workers in Ward 251-A of Plant 2 turned off the machines and sat down. The great Goodyear strike had started.

The URW  (United Rubber Workers) did not support this strike. The URW leadership convinced the strikers to leave and directed them out of the factory. Goodyear agreed to reinstate the laid-offs. However, it was already too late, the workers of all the factories were getting up by the 8-hour working day. 1,500 Goodyear workers gathered and voted unanimously to go on strike. 4 days later the URW leadership still said it was not a URW strike.  

The company tried to end the strike by force. The Sheriff assembled a group of 150 men to reopen the factories, but the 10,000 workers, also from other factories, were ready to  pipes and bats. Then a group of 5,200 vigilantes called the Law and Order League, with money from Goodyear and organized by a longtime mayor, tried it. There would be an attack  are scheduled for March 18. All over the city workers were ready to be on site quickly. The Central Labor Council declared that in the event of an attack, it would go on a general strike. This undermined the plan of the vigilantes.  

Roosevelt's chief mediator, Ed McGrady, suggested that they go back to work and then submit everything. People chanted: 'No, no, a thousand times no, I would rather die than say yes'. After more than a month, Goodyear gave in to most of the demands, except union recognition.  

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Not only Americans used the sit downs as leverage. For example, the principle of the sit downs was already known from the 15th and 18th centuries in France. In 1936, a wave of sit downs also swept through France. Department stores and slaughterhouses were closed by the staff. 30,000 Workers at Renault and also Citroën went back to work after all their demands were met. The working week went from 48 hours to 40  hours and two weeks of vacation were introduced.  

The deployment of spies

Machine worker 8004 worked in the camshaft department of the Chevrolet factory  in Flint, Michigan. It produced 118 axles per shift. Obviously in the first part of the service slightly more than in the second part of the service.  

One day in 1935, management reported that  the second half of the shift had to produce as much as during the first half of the shift. As a result, 124 instead of 118 axles should be made. This increase was accepted, but the options were mutually discussed to prevent further speed-ups. As one of them said: 'Anyone who made more than 124 at the end of his day cut his own fingers'. If more than 62 axles were made in the first half of the shift, these extra axles were hidden between the machines.  

Machine worker 8004 fought this and told the others not to dwell on it. He almost got beat up for it. These ways of influencing the production rate came  sometimes, but not very often.  No. 8004 was a labor spy whose reports were published to the Senate Civil Liberties Investigating Committee.  

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speed ups

In 1934, the NRA conducted an investigation. The most  named  complaint is that  one was forced  working harder and harder, making more and more products with fewer and fewer people. The speed-ups were not only hated because of the increase in production, but also because people were not 'free'. Not as one is or was at another job. A Buick worker complained: 'You had to run to and from the toilet. If you had to go to the bathroom and you had no one to stand in, you had to stop the belt. If you did then you would get on your head for it'. The wife of a GM worker complained that her husband was worthless when he was home. Irritated and curt.  Another indicated that her husband was 30, but looked like 50. Many suffered from psychosis due to the monotonous work in combination with the overtime. The Flint workers had a peculiar gray jaundice color. In July 1936 temperatures rose to  38 degrees and more leading to hundreds of deaths at the factories in Michigan alone.  

If a worker even thought of the word 'union', he was immediately forced out of the factory by industrial spies. 

Such matters were discussed by a subcommittee of the Committee of  Education and  Labor, led by Robert LaFollette, denounced. Testimony to this commission, mostly given by workers, at the risk of their own lives, revealed that GM spent $839,000 in 1934 on "detective  work', half of which was paid to the Pinkerton firm.  Hundreds of spies worked in the factories, searching for workers with union tendencies. GM was a member of the National Metal Trades Association. A company that supplied spies to terrorize workers and replace them with workers who did work and to set up company unions to break or prevent 'illegal' unions. The commission reported that the Ministry of Justice and the intelligence service of the army and navy cooperated with this company during these "battles" against the emerging unions. Little came out of these testimonials  because the workers themselves often  terror  in the factories with the victories of the unions.   

The developments of the unions followed those of the rubber industry. After the arrival of the NRA, 210,000 automakers joined the AFL (American Federation of Labor), although this figure may be exaggerated. A vote had been taken to strike, and this was inevitable. However, the leadership of the AFL kept putting it off. Finally, AFL board member Williams Collins asked Roosevelt to mediate. It immediately suspended the strikes and gave the workers an Automobile Labor Board to hear about discriminatory cases and to legalize the unions.

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A GM president said he was extremely pleased with the outcome in Washington. When the workers in Flint heard this, they felt betrayed and they tore up the AFL membership cards, especially after they heard that  one of the representatives of the Automobile Labor Board was a member of the Black Legion (splinter organization of the KKK).

Only 528 paying members remained. In several strikes that followed, the AFL played a striker role. In addition, the AFL was run by white, male, educated American-born men. They were not interested in the requests of the NAACP (civil rights movement for the benefit of African American citizens) to also tackle racism. The AFL was still trying to connect  found in the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) founded in 1935 by 8 unions expelled from the AFL.  The CIO broke with the racism and elitism of the AFL. Refusing to be misled by the AFL, UAW leaders built their own union that had 650,000 members by the end of the decade.  

The Flint sit down strikes

By late 1936, automakers in Flint, Michigan, were taking over the sit down strikes from the Akron strikers. Especially since this was the time of new model introductions and GM was always introducing speed-ups.

Before GM, Flint was a town of 14,000 inhabitants and had a thriving carriage industry. Now, with GM in the city, there were 146,000 people living there, 44,000 of whom worked for GM. The construction of houses lagged behind the growth of the city. Many car builders lived in small shacks without sewerage. No wonder the sit downs in Flint were going to last 44 days. There was too much at stake.

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80% of residents were directly dependent on GM, 20%  indirectly. In the summer of 1936, every high-ranking official, mayor, chief of police, judge...  etc, shares in GM, or sat on the board. Sometimes even both. The only local newspaper, the Flint Journal, was 100% GM. She also checked it  radio station. For example, even paid advertising time from the trade unions could be refused. The schools, social services and all other government agencies were under the yoke of GM. Billboards all over town spoke of 'The Happy GM Family'.

Total dominance was part of GM's system of making $173 million in net profit during the Great Depression between 1927 and 1936. 8 Shareholders became millionaires within 4 years, and this only from the dividend paid at the end of the 1920s. In 1936, GM closed a quarter of a century with a profit of $2.5 billion. A number unmatched by any company in the world at the time. In 1936 the net profit was $225 million on an investment of 945 million. 24% ROI  (return on investment)! GM employed 55% of all automakers in 69 plants in 35 states and was larger than Chrysler and Ford combined. Fixed assets were estimated at $1.5 billion. GM had a global market share of 37%.  350 directors received a combined $10 million in salary. Alfred Sloan and William Knudsen were each awarded $375,000 in 1935. The majority shareholder and thus director was still the DuPont family. They owned a quarter of the shares. This is in stark contrast to the  car builders.

In 1935, the government announced that $1,600 was the minimum income for a family of 4 to make ends meet. A GM automaker brought home just $900. His job was always precarious, the foreman could be fired for no reason and between every change of machines for the new model year was a period of 3 to 5 months without work and without unemployment benefits. To avoid dismissal, you could also have to work at the boss's house, or if you were a part-time farmer, you could bring him meat or vegetables.  GM management tried to increase productivity and decrease unit prices and wages at every start of this new model year. If you were hired again in the fall, it was often with a pay cut. GM, on the other hand, bragged that wages  were high.  

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Union contracts  were meanwhile closed at Chrysler and Dodge. At Fisher Body, union stickers appeared on the cars, showing their message along the entire production line. GM backed Landon as the new president but lost because the workers overwhelmingly voted for Roosevelt, causing the union to increasingly oppose GM.

GM had many politicians  in his pocket and kept an eye on every outsider. When Wyndham Mortimer, the UAW leader in charge of the Flint campaign, arrived at his hotel, he immediately received a call from an anonymous caller telling him he had better leave if he didn't want to be carried away in a wooden box. Mortimer did not give up and found that only 122 of the 44,000 carmakers in Flint were still members. Among them were spies and members of the Black Legion (a KKK-derived group funded by Ford and GM). The DuPont family funded this terror group that beat up activists, tarred, feathered, and even killed activists.  To work Flint it was better to skip this local union and talk to the people themselves. He looked them up at home and their names remained  a well kept secret.

Letters to GM workers explained what profit meant. It was the amount left over after deducting salaries, depreciation, overhead etc. This profit is distributed among the bosses in addition to their already high salaries. This profit was equal to the sum of all the salaries of the first 6 months of 1936 of all 200,000 workers at  GM. Each letter ended with his contact details. 

Despite their small share in the factories, Mortimer also involved the blacks in the union.

UAW head Homer Martin, an anti-communist backed by the AFL, did his best to get Mortimer transferred away from Flint. Martin saw that Mortimer was very successful and that threatened his position as president of the UAW.  In his place came Bob Travis who had established himself as an organizer in Toledo. The communist Travis is known among labor historians as one of the most brilliant strike strategists of the 1930s. Travis was in close contact with Mortimer. Both were fully committed to getting the union off the ground. Not just for  whites, but also for  blacks and immigrants.  

The union leaders who wanted a strike at GM worried whether it would work. Many members had lost their jobs in previous strikes and only a few  was a member.

People were outraged in Flint. There were 7 sit downs in the Fisher Body No. 1 factory. One time the production was stopped an hour earlier, another time the production was reduced. Another action was against a 20% pay cut.  The GM workers started to strike on their own, when it suited them and without a union. 

The unions had no control over it. Bud Simons, a union leader at the Fisher factory, went to UAW organizer Bob Travis and said, 'Jesus Bob, you've got to let me plan a strike before one comes up that we can't control.' "Are they ready?" asked Bob. 'Ready for? Like a pregnant woman in her 10th month!” Simons cried. On November 9, he spoke to 40 men in key positions within the factory to discuss what to do if something were to happen. The union thus tried to gain the trust of the employees by supporting the sit downs and by being the agency that could ensure the spread of the sit downs.

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on  November 12, 1936, for example, the number of 'bow-men' was reduced from 3  to 2. They lifted the cross from the roof. They were two brothers named Perkins and an Italian, Joe Urban. None of them were union members but had read of a sit down at Bendix. So she just stopped working. The foreman and foreman told the men to go back to work as usual. When 20 bodies had passed by, they started again because they wanted to talk about it with the day shift. The whole department followed the incident  and left the factory that night talking about the sit down. The next day, the Perkins brothers were called in and fired. With their redundancy papers they went to Bud Simons who then ran into the factory with another union leader  and shouted that the Perkins brothers had been fired and that no one should go to work. The whistle blew and everyone  was tense at his post. The foreman pressed the button and the tire with incomplete bodies started running. No one reached out and everyone looked at Simons who was in the aisle  was standing.

The bosses were running around like crazy. The lead took Joe Urban along because they felt it was his fault. The management brought in the branch manager and  Simons tried  prevent further problems by bringing enough people to the office. The management tried to play it off by asking the 'weaker' workers questions. Simons interrupted the conversation by answering for them. The management had never experienced this. Simons indicated that the conversation would be just as good otherwise  could be stopped. The Perkins brothers had to go back to work, Simons thought. In the end the management gave in and they were able to work on Monday, it was the late shift on Friday,  start again. Simons said the men at the factory wouldn't start until the brothers were back.  He told the workers what had happened and asked what they thought. Some leaders walked around shouting 'against' to influence the rest.  However, they were all for it.

The branch manager got wind of this conversation and called the police to look for the brothers. One was at home and the other was in town with his girlfriend. The police gave his license plate to all police cars and the local radio cut the broadcast to report the message. Coincidentally, the second brother got the message in his car. He refused to go to the factory if he couldn't drop off his girl at home and change clothes first. Thus a thousand men waited another half hour for the brother.   When they returned there was a 'hurrah' through the whole factory like it had never been heard before. Nothing like this had ever happened in Flint. The workers knew what a victory this was. Simons gave another short speech in which he carefully did not mention the union. 'Guys,' he said during a short silence, 'you've seen what you can do when you work together, don't forget this!'  

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UAW membership rose again from 150 to 1,500 within two weeks. Membership numbers from April to December 1936 were an industry average of 27,000.  The aim of the union was to be recognized as the bargaining body of the workers. Because the manufacturers did not do this voluntarily, the unions had to join the strikes. The CIO tried to prevent a strike, while the UAW thought it necessary but wanted to wait until they were better organized. John Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers and chief of the new CIO had  the plan was to organize the steel industry first, but the young UAW organizers took the lead.  

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GM wouldn't really be hit by strikes in small factories. If the Fisher plants in Cleveland and Flint could be closed, three quarters of GM production would be affected. The union therefore requested a  negotiating meeting with GM. They also announced the goals they hoped to convince workers: an annual salary that provided "health, decency and comfort", the elimination of speed-ups, seniority, 8-hour workday, overtime pay, division of labor among less  hours, security measures and a 'true collective bargaining power'. men  expected this negotiation to take place in January, when the new governor, Frank Murphy, would take office. 

The workers themselves were so worked up that they hardly wanted to wait for the correct procedures to be implemented. They wanted to strike!  

In late November, the UAW won a contract with the Bendix  Corporation after a nine-day sit down.  A sit down at the Midland Steel Frame Company in Detroit boosted pay, seniority and 150% overtime pay. In early December, a sit down at the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company in Detroit brought union recognition. GM Arbeiders wanted this too.

Stop the machines

People were so worked up about the speed-ups and then on December 28 the management of Fisher Body in Cleveland de  long-awaited negotiation  The workers of the mudguard department said 'to hell with these delays' and the machines stopped. Workers in the steel stock, metal assembly and finishing departments all stopped working. Soon, 7,000 people took part in the sit down. The management but also the union were  completely surprised. The union just wanted to start the strike in Flint.   

Meanwhile, events in Flint drew closer to the decisive battle. Two days after the strike in Cleveland started, 50 workers at Fisher Body factory 2 went on strike to transfer three inspectors who had to leave the union and they refused. Later that evening, workers in factory 1 saw molds being loaded to be taken to other factories. GM followed a policy described by Knudsen as "diversification of factories where union power is dangerous." Half of the machines at the Chevrolet factory in Toledo had been removed after a strike in 1935 that left hundreds of their jobs. The workers were furious and ran to the union hall opposite the factory. When Bob Travis  asked them  what they wanted they shouted: 'Shut her, shut that fucking factory!' They ran back to the factory and barricaded the entrances with Buicks bodies.  Doors were welded shut and everything was prepared for a possible attack. Moments later, one of them opened a window on the 3rd floor and shouted: "Hurray Bob, she's ours!".

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