Workers resist state oppression

In the current political climate, many union activists want the Democrats back in the White House. They believe that the Democrats are the party of the working class. Others more critical of the Democratic party leadership even want a return of Roosevelt's 'New Deal'. A look back at the role of the state in the 1930s paints a different picture.  

No doubt the Roosevelt administration has introduced a number of bold progressive measures. However, Roosevelt was able to do this through the breakdown of the capitalist system at the time. The context for his legislation was a rebellious working class. This manifested itself in an unprecedented way. This was in accordance with the revolutionary struggle of the working class in Europe. Roosevelt's policy was to urgently address the economic situation and the militancy of the workers.

The National Recovery Act, the cornerstone of New Deal politics, alone could not stop the capitalist state's violence against the working class. Large groups of strikers were killed by the police or by thugs while the police looked the other way. Countless numbers were beaten, shot at, injured, arrested or even set on fire, even their children were terrorized. 1937 was the worst year.  

During the Flint strike, the unarmed workers were confronted  with a military alliance of GM, the city government, the judges, the police, National  guard  and armed vigilantes. During the 'Battle of the running bulls', 14 strikers and supporters were injured by the retreating officers. Union leaders Bob Travis, Victor and Roy Reuther, Henry Kraus and three others were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly and malicious destruction of property, charges that were later dropped. An order of 2 February demanded the evacuation of the factories but also an end to the demonstrations outside the factories.  

GM strikers in Anderson, Indiana, had to fight in a total police state. The Citizens League of 300 local businessmen told local leader, Hugh Thompson, he'd better get out of Anderson quickly while he still can. A union meeting had to be canceled after threats from the League.  Later that evening, GM foremen beat up union members and besieged the union hall. Thompson and 13 others were arrested. Thompson fled the city. Also in Saginaw  the union leaders were beaten and expelled. Here too, GM foremen were recognized in the thugs.

Where were the Democratic friends of labor? Why couldn't they take legal action? Isn't it illegal for the government to deny people their constitutional rights? Only a handful opposed the 1938 bill to declare sit downs illegal. Roosevelt signed the bill.  

The 'Mohawk Valley Formula'

Class struggle is a science. Working class strategists learn to expect the unexpected and to remain flexible with their tactics. Capitalist theorists are never afraid to formulate rigid formulas that make them appear more powerful  than the workers.

At the time of the Flint sit downs, the Mohawk Valley Formula was in vogue. It was developed by James H. Rand Jr., head of Remington Rand,  in 1936. He sold it as the anti-strike plan companies had hoped for. Rand won approval from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).  

Step 1 out of 9 was: 'If a strike is imminent, label the union leaders as rioters'.  

The LaFolette Commission, Formed Over Illegal Interference  of companies in organizing the workers exposed the vast propaganda machine of the NAM. NAM provided ready-made radio speeches, news cartoons, editorials, commercials and short films to the media who were only too willing to hide the sponsorship. Newspapers received editorials equating unions with communism.  

Rand was obviously not the inventor  of the crushing of communism. Communists were blamed for the 1934 San Francisco strike.  This General Strike, along with the Toledo Auto-Lite strike led by the American Workers' Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters strike led by the Communist League of America, was a major catalyst  before the rise of the industrial trade union movement in the 1930s. Many were organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).  

The war of words had little effect on the morale of the strikers. Hence the use of point 4: 'Use the local police, gendarmerie, vigilante and special deputies'. The Mohawk Valley Formula was just a way of turning laws into a system about tactics. GM followed the formula. She formed a citizens' committee or trade union movement, the Flint Alliance, led by former Flint mayor and Buick 'paymaster' George Boysen. They hired a New York PR agency to spread propaganda that a radical minority wanted to impose a labor dictatorship on the  American citizenship.

"Sounds like communist talk," Judge Black shouted. He referred to his inability to enforce an injunction against the sit down strikers after the UAW revealed he owned 3,665 shares of GM.  

When it came to deploying the vigilantes, the Du Ponts were specialists. Together with the Morgans, his major shareholders were and shared twelve of the fourteen seats of  the GM Finance Board. Richard Sanders (Press for Conversion) wrote: 'In the 1930s, the Du Pont and Morgan family dominated  the American elite and their representatives were central figures in organizing and financing the (fascist) American Liberty League.

GM funded a terrorist organization to stop the emerging unions. This 'Black Legion' was dressed in black robes decorated with skulls and bones. Hidden behind their hoods, these KKK-like white supremacists bombed union halls, burned activists' homes and killed 50 people in Detroit alone. Many of these were blacks who had been drawn north by positive stories about the car factories. One of the victims, Reverend Earl Little, was murdered in 1931. His son, then 6, was later named Malcolm X. His first memory was a nighttime robbery in 1929 when the legion burned down their house.  

The DuPont Co. and GM, in particular, were a major contributor to the Nazi military's efforts to wipe communism off the map of Europe. In 1929 GM bought Adam Opel AG, Germany's largest car maker. In 1974, an Anti-Trust and Monopoly Senate Committee received evidence from researcher Bradford Snell that an Opel factory was opened in 1935 by GM to build military 'Blitz' vehicles that were delivered to the Nazis. In appreciation of this help, Adolf Hitler awarded GM's head of overseas operations, James Money, an Order of Merit of the German Eagle. While GM claimed to protect its employees from a labor dictatorship, the company had  no problems with dictatorship myself.

Point 9 of the formula stated: 'Stop the publicity barrage under the guise of a factory in full operation and that the strikers are only a minority interfering with the 'right to work'. This prevented the strike and the employer won'. Like Bush's "liberation scenario" in Iraq, this superficial mathematical formula has failed to take the workers into account. It left their humanity behind and did not count on their will to resist when conditions became unbearable.  

Leaving communism for what it is, the workers came on February 11th  1937 triumphant out of the occupied factories. Lyricists Lee Hays, Millard Lampell and Pete Seeger expressed these lessons in a song 'Talkin' Union' in 1947:

That is you don't let red-baiting break you up, if you don't let stoolpigeons break you up, if you don't let vigilantes break you up, and if you don't let race hatred break you up, you 'll win!

In 1933, 1934 when the AFL crushed the spirit of the union, it was the leftists who diligently picked up the pieces and put them together. When the horrified automakers built campfires with their AFL membership cards, it was the leftists who continued to fight the workers' disillusionment. They continued to organize and organize. The leaders and organizers of the UAW group at GM were Wyndham Mortimer and Robert 'Bob' Travis. These two built the union within the great GM empire. Every place where unions were formed, communists worked tirelessly. The leading position of the communists during the strikes became clear during, for example, the strike at Midland Steel, the company that made undercarriages for Plymouth and Lincoln. The company tried to keep organizer John Anderson out of the negotiations because he was the communist party's candidate for governor of Michigan in 1934. It is widely recognized that communists had formed many unions such as the Transport Workers, United Electrical Workers, Rubber Workers etc. 60 of the 200 Steel Workers Organizing Committee organizers were members  of the communist party. Mortimer wrote in 1951: 'That there were communists among them was  beyond dispute. Had it not been for them, it was uncertain whether the forces of industrial unionization would have survived this period'.

The question therefore arises: If the communists played such a major role in this period, why did the struggle not go beyond organizing the mass production industry, however necessary it was? What  caused the once great CIO to sink into the mire of corporate unionization a generation later? Although there  There was no simple answer, but there were fundamental weaknesses within the party, the most important of which was the lack of a sincere position on the role of the state. The party failed to declare the class of the state. The CP even called for the deployment of the National Guard, the boss army, to protect the workers! Murphy and Roosevelt did nothing to hinder GM's use of armed guards, local police, the Flint Alliance, tear gas, spies, and other standard ruling class practices. It was the strikers who made the difference. The communist Daily Worker magazine said the federal government and its spokesman for  the state of Michigan had to force GM to recognize the union. Although the party's publications had warned not to rely on Roosevelt, they continued to insist that the Roosevelt administration could represent the workers if enough pressure was applied. Murphy said he was sworn to uphold the law. But which law? Most likely GM's because he felt compelled to evacuate the factories. The party could not explain the nature of the laws, at a time when 100,000s read the publications. The fact is, the sit downers had broken the rules of the ruling class by occupying the factories. This provided an opportunity to explain the nature of the law, why it was unjust and which class enacted it and for whom.

Despite the fact that the party had a candidate for the presidency in 1936, it actually remained behind Roosevelt. The CP clearly hinted that the Roosevelt administration would side with the workers if enough pressure was applied. The fact is that Roosevelt did not deploy the federal troops for a number of reasons:

1. The workers had indicated that they would put up strong resistance and a bloodbath would follow. This would certainly have damaged the image of the Democratic 'New Deal'  that Roosevelt cherishes so carefully to save the system during the Depression.

2. An overt interference  would set the workers against both the corporations and the government

3. These first two reactions would be a blow to the Democratic Party, and thus the two-party system. to which the workers were attached.

4. The final result could be a strong argument for the workers to use the existing  to challenge parties, perhaps even for a socialist purpose, or at least some form of public ownership of means of production.

The CP based its support for the New Deal on a united front against fascism and against monopolies. But by relying on the Democrats, it fed the illusions that a ruling class party could provide this kind of leadership. It left the working class totally unprepared for the post-World War II shift when the left-wing movement was swept away by a new big "corporation": the cold war. If the communists had developed a long-term strategy for a socialist revolution, or at the very least...  If they had stuck to the concept that the working class had to crush the ruling class, along with the establishment of a workers' state, they and thousands of workers would not have been trapped.  

The Flint strike had 8 demands. Only one of them was granted: recognition of the union. Seniority rights and minimum wage are things that are considered normal these days. However, one demand has not been met even after 75 years: the 30-hour working week.  Anything above that had to be paid out 1.5x. Even the head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), William Green,  advocated for this law. Due to high unemployment, this law was seen as inevitable by Roosevelt's predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt withdrew his support under pressure from the industries. Given the conditions in the factories, it was only natural that the workers wanted a 30-hour work week. In 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, but with a 40-hour work week instead of 30. It  Black-Connery's proposal was so "dilute" that William Connery's brother suggested that the Connery name be removed from the proposal. The Black-Connery bill of December 1932 was a proposal to lower unemployment and ban the import of products made by factories that worked longer hours. The AFL supported this proposal, which passed on April 6, 1933. When Connery held House Labor Committee hearings  about his version of the proposal, Roosevelt enlisted a team of bright minds to come up with an alternative. This alternative became the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Black-Connery proposal was therefore replaced by the NIRA.

Gospel of consumption

Managers had a plan to make workers forget about this 30-hour week. The plan was to flood the market with products and thereby create an artificial need for things that people would like to work for longer. GM's Charles Kettering noted that the key to economic growth is to create discontent.  

In the eight decades since then, the high-tech revolution has accelerated the speed of production to unimaginable levels. The number of hours it takes to produce a car has been reduced to a fraction of the time it took during the sit downs. Automation and robotics have reduced the workforce to less than half of its peak of 1.5 million in the 1970s.  The false promise of automation was more free time. Even a Senate subcommittee in 1965 projected a 22-hour workweek into the 1980s and a 14-hour workweek into the 21st century. The opposite has happened. The average American worked 199 more hours in 2000 than in 1973. Statistics from the International Labor Organization show  shows that American workers work 9 weeks longer than Western Europeans. Vulnerable workers, such as guest workers, have to work a lot and employers  use deportation as a means of pressure and often do not pay 1.5x for overtime.  

The health consequences of overtime are significant. Higher risk of injury during the drive home due to fatigue, more stress, etc., also people consume more fast food, which in turn entails more waste. Working fewer hours has a positive effect. When France introduced a 35-hour working week in 1990, 400,000 jobs were created. In 1988, a UAW study found that if the big three didn't work more than 40 hours, 88,000 jobs would be created.  

Since 1938, there has not been a single law attempting to regulate working hours. What better tribute to the Flint strikers than to introduce the 30-hour week, with no cut in wages!

Despite major political differences, socialists and communists fought together to bring the heroic strike to its victorious end. Sadly, Mortimer, Travis and other able organizers were later relieved of their posts during periods of splintering and attacks on communism. Today, UAW leadership has become so entrenched with management that Flint's heroes would hardly recognize their once militant union....

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it

There is certainly some truth in it, but the history of the working class is laced with true class solidarity, examples that would still do well today, albeit with minor adjustments. It is now 75 years ago and the profits that were made then are now under great pressure. Contracts between the UAW and the big three expired in 2007 and after 4 months and several  strikes at GM and Chrysler have finally brought US automakers new employment contracts. For GM, the new contracts could save $1,000 per car, equivalent to $4 billion a year. Ford thinks it can save 2 billion annually. In general, the contracts will reduce labor costs. These are frozen at $28 an hour. Once the workers retire, employers are required to replace them, but with a maximum wage of $16 an hour.  At GM and Chrysler, new hires can choose assembly line jobs for $28 an hour. These new workers don't get a health care plan  after their retirement. At Ford, they don't even have this chance. Once GM replaces its older, more expensive employees with new hires, total costs will drop to Toyota levels. At the same time, Toyota is under pressure to raise wages.  Over the next few years, GM, which has the largest number of retired ex-employees, will pay $32 billion to the Voluntary Employee Benefit Association fund. Ford will pay $13.6 billion  and Chrysler $8.8 billion. As soon as the health care costs of the ex-employees can be deducted from the balance  the cost will drop to $250 per car. In 2003, Toyota still had a cost item of  $2,500 per car, now that's $1,400. After signing the contracts, announced  Chrysler to lay off 20% of its people, about 10,000 jobs, GM did this too and Ford is also preparing a round of layoffs.   

Only a few  workers today consciously think of their jobs as their own personal property. Yet this was commonplace in the 1930s. A journalist wrote at the time: 'During the last six months of 1937 I feel that the idea of the sit down is good, that the worker has the right to his job. I'm sure this is going to play a big part in America's future." In 1984 the now deceased Sam  Marcy is reviving this concept in his groundbreaking work 'High Tech, Low Pay'. "The right to a job is a right of ownership," Marcy said. "The right to occupy a factory is an accompanying right."  

Because the work of the activists  factory closures were not possible  prevented, the demand for a freeze on these closures was included in UAW contracts with the big three. These freezes contributed to slowing down restructuring. Every round of negotiations since 1987 has ended in more and more factory closures, and UAW membership numbers have fallen well below the peaks of the 1960s and 1970s.  a three or four year job guarantee is a lot for a worker who loses his job.

If a job as an employee's right had not been raised by the activists, would it be a  requirement during the negotiations at the table?  

Now is the time to reintroduce the idea. It is particularly topical, given the tendency among the big three to replace permanent employees with temporary workers. These workers should be hired permanently and their rights should be guaranteed, so it should also apply to workers who are not affiliated with unions. They are normally fired as soon as they even use the word 'union', examples are enough at Wal Mart, among others. Workers need to feel like they did in the 1930s, a sense of entitlement when it comes to their jobs. The idea that a job is some kind of gift or favor has to disappear.  

Management is quick to blame 'overproduction'. The unions would therefore like to introduce a shorter working week. This was a popular requirement in the 1930s. A Cadillac banner in 1937 read, "Work 6 hours, sleep 8 hours, leisure for 10 hours, union pay." This 6-hour working day is a requirement that has never been realised.  In fact, the only legal measure, the introduction of the eight-hour workday in 1938, was a step back. American workers were (and still are) well behind their European counterparts when it comes to  for hours and holidays.

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No progress without struggle

Without a fight  the working class continue to lose ground. It may get worse before it gets better, but the rebellion is sure to happen. Automakers may not even be the first to rebel. It's possible  are preceded by other daring actions such as the guest workers' strike in 2006,  the Great American Boycott. This was a massive political strike. The directors will resort to the old tactics of divide and rule. The workers must ensure that this will not work.  

This won't be the first time, in 1937 it worked  companies not with anti-Semitism, racism, anti communism, use of goons, police etc. They failed. There are signs that sit down tactics are being revived in Canada, Australia, Spain and elsewhere. A brave battle over a daring program can revive the spirit of 1937. "Workers have a world to win," Karl Marx once said.

The war is not yet won, said one of the sit downers. If there is one lesson to be learned from the strikes in Flint, it is that workers who work together in unity and solidarity can win from the most powerful weapons the ruling class can deploy. Of course, the National Guard had overwhelming superiority in weapons. Yet the strikers won because of the great contradictions that the system itself had  created. Not only would the Guard have destroyed GM's machines when they invaded the factories, but they couldn't win by deploying weapons because the profit system depended on the thousands of workers who would destroy it all and cause it to collapse. this profit system. It remains up to the current members of the UAW-CIO, heirs to an inspiring legacy, to throw the door wide so that the workers can take charge again. This time to build a society where the workers, the workers' party and the workers' state  will dominate.

High personnel costs by the UAW

Founded as part of the left-wing Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s, the UAW grew enormously from 1936 to the 1950s. Under the leadership of Walter Reuther (1946-1970), it played a major role in the left-wing Democratic party, including civil rights and anti-communist movements. The UAW was known for 'arranging' high wages and pensions for the car manufacturers. However, they were unable to organize the factories of the foreign automakers in the south in the 1970s. Since then, membership has steadily declined. Members of the UAW work in a variety of industries in the 21st century. Not only auto manufacturing and auto parts, but also in health care, gambling industry and universities. Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, the union has 390,000 active members and more than 600,000 retired members across 750 local unions.

The 30's

After the already discussed battles at GM and the victories at Chrysler, Ford was the next target. Ford had long opposed the union. Ford safety manager Harry Bennett (adopted by Henry for his stature and fighting spirit) used brute force to keep the union out of the door. Its 'Ford Service Department' was set up as an internal  security, intimidation and espionage. He was not reluctant to use violence against the union organizers and supporters. The 'Battle of the Overpass' is a good example of this. This was an event on May 26, 1937 in which union workers got into an argument with Ford's security officers at the River Rouge factory in Dearborn, Michigan.  It took until 1941 before Ford agreed to a collective labor agreement from the UAW. Communists supplied many of the organizers and one had  including control of Local 600, the local union branch that represented Ford's factories. Walter Reuther, a rising trade unionist, sometimes worked closely with the Communists, but Reuther and his allies were two separate voices within the union. The UAW was the first major union willing to organize African-American workers as well. The UAW found that successful negotiations also depended on the union itself being able to enforce its agreements. That meant stopping wildcat strikes and disruptive behavior from members. Many members were extreme individualists who did not like to be commanded by the foremen or the union leaders. They represented a powerful, if ill-organised, group of workers focused on a  specific workplace. The UAW realized that they had to control the workplaces. Reuther said in 1939: 'We have to show that we are a disciplined responsible organization, we not only have power, we also have this power under control'.

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2nd World War

During the war there were agreements with the UAW that  the war effort would not be taxed  with strikes. After the successful organization of the car factories, bicycle manufacturers were also organized.  Oa Schwinn Bicycle Co.  

After the war

The UAW struck at GM for 113 days from November 1945. They demanded a pay rise and a bigger stake at GM. GM agrees to 18.5 cent pay rises  but no more than that. The UAW also agreed in exchange for an ever-growing package of wage changes and other rewards, including through collective bargaining without government intervention.

The UAW had founded WDET 101.9 FM in Detroit in 1948. The station was sold to Wayne State University in 1952 for $1.  

New leader

Walter Reuther won election for president of the UAW in 1946 and served until his death in 1960 from a plane crash. Immediately after the war, leftist groups demanded '30-40'. In other words, work 30 hours with pay for 40 hours. Reuther rejected '30-40' and wanted to focus on annual wages, abandoning the old ideas that a 30-hour week would increase wages and decrease unemployment.  The UAW always delivered contracts for its members through brilliant negotiation tactics. Reuther chose one of the big three, and if they didn't comply, he would go out of business there and the other two would get the sales. In addition to high hourly wages and paid vacations, Reuther negotiated with GM in 1950 for a contract that would become known as the 'Detroit Convention'. The UAW negotiated five-year contracts with GM, and eventually Ford and Chrysler, which protected the automakers from strikes and gave them the right to negotiate a number of issues in exchange for health care, unemployment, pensions, extended vacations and inflation adjustments. This contract shaped labor management relationships for decades and was even applied in other industries. Reuther also negotiated lower consumer prices for the cars, but that did not always work out. A profit-sharing agreement with American Motors came to nothing because profits were small at this small player in the market.  

The UAW had split from the AFL-CIO in  July 1968 after Reuther and AFL-CIO director George Meany could not agree on a wide range of reforms. On July 24, 1968, days after secession, Reuther and Frank Fitzsimmons, general chairman of the Teamsters, formed the Alliance for Labor Action. This was to be a new American and Canadian union that would pursue left-wing political and social projects. The two main members were the UAW and the International Brotherhood of Teamsterd. The Teamsters were expelled from the AFL-CIO in 1957 for corruption. Although Fitzsimmons was seen as the mouthpiece of imprisoned Teamsers boss Jimmy Hoffa, Fitzsimmons had taken a more leftist stance than Hoffa. Reuther was impressed that Fitzsimmons was the only other national union leader at Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral. Reuther remained active within the ALA while Fitzsimmons appointed Harold J. Gibbons as his union liaison.  Meany denounced the ALA as a double union which, according to Reuther, it was not. The program was ambitious. Reuther's death in 1970 was a major blow to the Alliance, and operations were halted in July 1971 after the Auto Workers were unable to fund their operations due to a prolonged strike at GM. The ALA was dissolved in January 1972. The UAW joined the AFL-CIO on July 1, 1981, followed by the Teamsters on October 24, 1987.

Politics

It  UAW leadership was a major force in the liberal wing of the Democratic party, but its members supported both Democrats and Republicans. The UAW  supported the New Deal coalition, supported human rights and supported Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. which, like the New Deal, aimed to improve the country. It was about ending poverty and apartheid. The UAW had become strongly anti-communist after it had to let the communist leaders go in the late 1940s. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders not to  were communists. Many CIO leaders refused to comply with that demand, later this demand became  declared unconstitutional.  All this was the result of the amendment of the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act of 1935). The law was promoted by the National Association of Manufacturers, among others.  

70s

The changing global economy, competition from European and especially Japanese car manufacturers and decisions by American car manufacturers had already significantly reduced the profits of the major manufacturers. The arrival of VW, Honda and other foreign brands threatened the American industry. When they opened factories in America, they did so in the south, far away from the unions. The market situation was worst in 1973, during the oil embargo. Rising fuel prices drove down market shares for US manufacturers because they hadn't emphasized fuel economy, as the foreign brands did. This was the beginning of years of wage cuts and layoffs. The UAW had to give up many of the advantages it had built up over the decades. By the late 1970s, auto-producing states had suffered major economic losses due to high unemployment and loss of income. This peaked with the near bankruptcy of Chrysler. In 1985, after a dispute over tactics, the Canadian division was separated and the Canadian Auto Workers was formed. The UAW has seen a decline in membership since the 1970s, reaching 1.5 million in 1979 and just 540,000 in 2006. Due to the 2008/2009 crisis, GM and Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 reorganization. Membership declined to 390,000 in 2010 with more than 600,000 retired members with pensions and healthcare.