Auto worker militancy 1935-1937.pdf

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utoWorker Militancy and the Structure

of

Factory

Life

937 955

Nelson Lichtenstein

In June 1944 the army s Industrial Services Division flew Major A. H. Raskin

to Detroit for a hurried investigation of the industrial unrest that plagued the

very heart of wartime America s arsenal of democracy. Raskin spoke

with

community, labor, and business leaders, visited the giant production facilities

at Ford and Chrysler, and reviewed the records of

the

War Labor Board and the

War Manpower Commission. War workers were unquestionably patriotic,

reported Raskin, a labor journalist

in

civilian life, but a perplexing, defiant

mood

of rebellion and irrationality seemed to be sweeping through the

million-strong work force of southeastern Michigan. The leadership of

the

United Automobile Workers

UAWj has

found

it

impossible to adjust the

thinking of its rank and file membership

the changed situation created by

the

war. As

wildcat strikes and shop-floor job actions became more frequent,

a breakdown of discipline threatened to shatter

the

usual pattern of factory

administration and union authority.

1

Militancy of the sort

that

so puzzled Raskin has increasingly attracted the

interest of scholars concerned with

the

changing pattern of consciousness and

activity exhibited by ordinary workers. Much research has been directed at

understanding the complex relationship between rank-and-file workers and

the production process in factory, mill, and office, especially in the early

twentieth

century when managers adopted policies of close supervision and a

rationalized work flow to win greater control of the factory work environment.

The rearguard battle waged by skilled workers against this process has received

much attention; the resistance or accommodation of the unskilled, relatively

less.

2

While historians have recently begun to probe the unionization process

Nelson Lichtenstein is assistant professor of history at Catholic University of America. He ac

knowledges the financial assistance of the American Council of Learned Societies.

1 Memorandum: Industrial Conflict in

Detroit

June

9

1944, box 1029, War Production

Board Collection, RG 179lNationai Archives).

2 For the best overall studies of the impact of the managerial offensive on the organization of

work

in

the early twentieth century, see Harry Braverman,

Labor and Monopoly Capital The

Degradation

o Work n

the Twentieth Century

(New York, 1974), and Daniel Nelson,

Managers

The Journal of American History Volume 67 NO.2 September 1980

335


2/19

336 The Journal of merican istory

of the 1930s from this perspective, little investigation of the conflict between

workers and managers over the control of production has been undertaken in

the era when the new industrial unions became a permanent fixture of factory

life.

3

In the automobile industry, day-to-day conflict over production standards

and workplace discipline permeated the very structure of work and authority

in the factory. Rank-and-file work groups often battled managers to assert a

degree of control over the conditions of their labor. In the mid-1930s this

struggle provided the essential energy that UAW activists coordinated to build

plant- and company-wide unions that could bargain collectively with the ma

jor corporations. Worker self-activity of this sort, however, soon came into

conflict with the legal and administrative framework the UAW required to

assure the maintenance of a permanent organization in the industry. This

conflict reached crisis proportions during World War

II

when industrial life in

the Detroit region underwent an enormous social and economic upheaval that

first encouraged shop-floor militancy and then called forth determined

disciplinary efforts on the part of both union and management officials.

During the 1930s the structure of work in the auto industry largely deter

mined the character of worker militancy in the factories. Although the

assembly line dominates popular images of the production process, the

majority of manual workers labored out of the reach of the coercive rhythm of

the conveyor belt. Between

15

percent and

20

percent of all production em

ployees worked directly on the assembly line, while at least twice that number

labored to manufacture parts or subassemblies to supply the needs of the final

conveyor. It was largely among this larger group of somewhat higher skilled

workers engaged in subassembly and in bench work that collective resis

tance to managerial authority centered in most plants.

4

The greatest militancy

and Workers Origins of the

ew

Factory System in the United States 188 192 (Madison,

19751

For subtle investigations

of

working-class consciousness that have done much to reorient

the study of labor history in the United States, see Herbert G. Gutman, Work Culture and Soci

ety

in IndustrialiZing America: Essays in American Working-Class and Social History (New York,

19761 and David Montgomery, Workers Control in America: Studies. in the History of Work

Technology and Labor Struggles (New York,

19801 For

a synthesis of recent literature in the field,

see Jeremy Brecher, Uncovering the Hidden History of the American Workplace, Review of

Radical Political Economics 10 (Winter 1978), 1-23.

3 Recent studies of the 1930s are Peter Friedlander, The Emergence of a UAW Local 1936 1939:

A Study in Class and Culture

(Pittsburgh 1975); Robert Zieger,

Madison s Battery Workers

1934-1952 (Ithaca, 1977); and Ronald Schatz, American Electrical Workers: Work, Struggles,

Aspirations, 1930-1950 (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 19771 For the most part, the

study of shop-floor relations in the years after 1940 has been left to the labor economists and in

dustrial sociologists who have generated a rich, but largely ahistorical and often management

oriented body of research on worker behavior in the unionized shop. The automobile industry

alone has several very good studies.

See

Charles R Walker and Robert Guest, The Man

the

Assembly Line

(Cambridge, 1952); Charles R Walker and Robert Guest,

The Foreman

the

Assembly Line (Cambridge, 1956);

Ely

Chinoy, Automobile Workers and the American Dream

(New York, 1955); Leonard R Sayles, Behavior of Industrial Work Groups: Prediction and Control

(New York, 1958); and

B

J Widick, ed.,

uto

Work and Its Discontents (Baltimore,

19761

Robert

Blauner,

Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and

His

Industry

(Chicago, 1964), com

pares the relationship of work process to consciousness in several industries, including auto.

4

Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike

of

1936-37 (New York, 19701 55-59;

Wages, Hours, Employment, and Annual Earnings in the Motor-Vehicle Industry, 1934,

Monthly Labor Review 42lMarch 1936), 549-50.


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Auto Worker Militancy and Factory Life

337

in most factories came

not

among the alienated and atomized workers of the

main assembly line,

but

among those employees who maintained a high

degree of verbal interaction and group identification and who retained a

distinctive level of skill or collective experience. Workers of this sort were free

of the harsh, impersonal discipline of the assembly line, yet they were so

situated

in

the production process

that

a rapid and continuous flow of their

work was essential to maintain overall output. 5

In this era, the labor of

metal

polishers and finishers, torch welders,

hammer

men, trimmers, and several additional occupations took place

in

a work en

vironment

that

fulfilled these criteria. Especially among

the

body workers,

who comprised about 15 percent of the workforce, each

man

or work gang

completed a substantial proportion of the production cycle on his particular

job. Paid on a piecework or group-incentive basis, these semiskilled produc

tion

workers developed a strong sense of occupational loyalty and group

solidarity. Prior to the entrance of the union, these workers efforts to limit

management s unilateral right to set production standards became nearly

synonymous with auto worker militancy. Informal negotiations, slowdowns,

and short stoppages designed to retime and reduce the pace of work were

endemic in Detroit auto factories. Although less politically engaged or union

conscious in the mid-1930s than the highly skilled maintenance and tool and

die workers, the shop-floor militancy of semiskilled workers could be more ex

plosive because of

the

key

p ~ s t o s

they occupied in the day-to-day produc

tion cycle and because of their more frequent battles with management over

the

pace and content of their work. 6

Characteristic of this strata were the

trim

shop workers, who won a

reputation for militancy in the late depression era. A decade before,

trim

work

was still task-oriented and highly skilled. A worker took a bolt of cloth, some

springs, mohair, a hammer, needles, and tacks into a car and finished the

upholstery from one end to the other. A tightly knit group capable of enforcing

a production quota to manipulate the piece rate, trimmers could earn twice the

pay of unSkilled assemblers on the line. By the mid-1930s, however, changes

in body style, a further subdivision of labor, and a tightening up of production

5

Industrial sociologists were particularly interested in the phenomenon. See Donald Roy,

Efficiency and The Fix : Informal Intergroup Relations in a Piecework Machine Shop,

American

TournaI of

Sociology

LX

(Nov. 19541,255-65; James

W

Kuhn, Bargaining in Grievance

Settlement: The Power

of

Industrial Work Groups (New York, 1961); William Foote Whyte, Men

at Work (Homewood, 111.,1961), 179-98,300-33; Walker and Guest, Man on the Assembly Line

66-80; and Sayles, Behavior

of

Industrial Work Groups 41 93.

6

Joe

Brown,

Why

Auto Body Workers Are More Mil itant

Than Other

Auto Production

Workers, Brown Collection, Briggs Strike File (Archives of Labor History, Wayne State

University, Detroit, Mich.); Reminiscences of

M

Waggoner, 130 (Ford Motor Company Ar-

chives, Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Mich.). For good narrative accounts

that

reveal the power

and solidarity of these work groups and the union leadership that emerged from them, see John W

Anderson, How I Became Part of the Labor

Movement,

in Rank and

ile

Personal Histories y

Working Class Organizers ed. Alice Lynd and Staughton Lynd (Boston, 1973),37-66; and Henry

Krause,

The Many and the

ew

A Chronicle of the Dynamic

uto

Workers

Los Angeles, 1947),

48-54. Although Peter Friedlander sees

much

of the dynamic of union growth in ethnocultural

terms, his own research finds early militancy centered in certain semiskilled occupational groups,

especially torch welding. Friedlander, Emergence of a VA W Local 10 21.


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338

The Journal of American History

standards began to cut

the

high pay and autonomy of the trim shop. Cushions

and seats were now assembled on separate lines tended by lower-paid women,

while a crew of four or five divided the remaining trim work on each body. In

1935, elimination of the piece rate reduced tr im shop pay to near

the

plant

average and increased the level of direct supervision. These new circumstances

brought trimmers into repeated conflicts with management over

the

pace and

distribution of work. In both organized and unorganized plants slowdowns and

minor acts of sabotage were frequent. Although trimmers only represented

about 2 percent of factory employment, they played a prominent role

in

building

UAW

locals at Chrysler, Fisher Body at Flint, the B building at River

Rouge, and Lincoln, where they later dominated the local for

much

of the

1940s.

7

Union recognition initially increased

the

leverage of combative,

strategically located work groups like the trimmers. Few workers accepted

the

modern distinction between contract negotiation and contract administra

tion; so shop-floor assemblies, confrontations, slowdowns, and stoppaglis

proliferated after the sitdown strikes of 1937 and after

the UAW

organization of

the River Rouge and other Ford plants in 1941. Among workers, militancy

and organization were dialectically dependent, building confidence and hope

in

a new and powerful synthesis. Direct shop-floor activity legitimized

the

union s

presence for thousands of previously hesitant workers who now

poured into union ranks; such job actions established a pattern of union in

fluence and authority unrecognized in the early, sketchily written contracts.

s

Such work groups often maintained

what

one industrial sociologist termed a

strategic

attitude toward the struggle

with

management:

they

seemed to

be shrewdly calculating pressure groups which never tired of objecting to

unfavorable management decisions, seeking loopholes in existing policies and

contract clauses

that

would redound to their benefit

They demanded

constant at tention for their problems and had the ability to reinforce their

demands by group action. 9

The UAW shop steward played a key role in the life of such work groups. In

the

1930s and early 1940s an extensive steward system roughly coincided

with

the organic leadership generated by the various work groups that composed the

plant work force. Although managers recognized only a limited number of

unionists

as

official grievance representatives, the dense network of stewards

were in fact the cornerstone of union organization.

10

Elected by the rank

7 Mort Furay interview with Jack

W

Skeels, April 6 1960, transcript, 26 (Archives of Labor

History); Leon Pody interview

with

Skeels, Jan. 11, 1960, transcript, 37, ibid.; Harry Ross in

terview

with

Skeels, July

10,

1961, transcript, 6-18,

ibid.;

Brown, Auto Body Workers ;

Reminiscences of J M. Waggoner, 132-38. In the early 1950s Leonard

R

Sayles found

trimmers

the most bellicose of all work groups in the auto plants he surveyed. Sayles, Behavior of In-

dustrial Work Groups

29 32.

8 Fine, Sit Down 323-25; Friedlander, Emergence

of

a

W

Local 38-70; Monroe Lake in

terview with George Heliker, March 12 1954, transcript , Frank Hill Papers (Henry Ford

Museum .

9 Sayles, Behavior of Industrial Work Groups

9

10 William Heston McPherson, Labor Relations in the Automobile Industry (Washington, 1940),

49.


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339

and file, these stewards collected all union dues, heard rank-and-file com

plaints, and negotiated informally with immediate supervision. Their moral

authority lay in the ability to maintain a unity of purpose

with

their work

mates and win extracontractual concessions from foremen and other lower

level managers. When militancy and elan were high, as in the spring of 1937 or

the summer and fall of 1939, stewards often orchestrated the spontaneous

slowdowns and wildcat strikes that consolidated the UAW s power and

widened the area of workers control and union influence on the shop floor. At

Chrysler s Dodge Main factory, for

example, UAW stewards frequently

ignored the formal grievance procedure, but directly handled grievances over

production standards by taking an entire department off the job until foreman

and steward reached a satisfactory resolution of the problem. Such tactics

enabled many locals to secure de facto recognition of a powerful shop steward

system and win virtually joint control of some production standards.

Shop steward elan remained high in the early UAW because real power in the

union lay at the local, even the departmental, level. The sharp recession that

struck the auto industry in late 1937 disorganized the UAW and reduced its

ability to marshal forces on a multiplant basis. Meanwhile, chronic fac

tionalism at the top destroyed any semblance of centralized authority by mid

1938 and muddled the definition of legitimate strike activity. Taking ad

vantage of the union s disarray, General Motors GM and other large cor

porations virtually suspended recognition of the union, and, as a result,

contending

UAW

leaders relied with renewed frequency on rank-and-file

action to sanction their authority. Often, one group called a strike to

demonstrate its influence, while the other urged workers to ignore the picket

lines set up by the rival. In the spring of 1939, when the Congress of Industrial

Organizations

CIO

faction finally took firm control of the UAW, the union s

renaissance rested upon a relative handful of key locals in Detroit and Flint

that struck to rewin recognition from Briggs, Chrysler, Graham-Paige, and

many GM manufacturing facilities.

12

Although militancy of this sort helped advance the

UAW

during its early

months, the autonomous power wielded by shop stewards and cohesive work

groups also posed a major dilemma for the UAW. Shop-floor syndicalism un

dermined the managerial incentive to continue recognition of the union and,

during slack times, could be used by supervisors as an occasion to eliminate

militant union activists.

13

Simply as a defensive measure, therefore, all wings

Irving Howe and B. J. Widick, The

Wand

Walter Reuther (New York, 1949), 235-38;

Edward Zeller, ed.,

How to Win

for

the Union: A Handbook for W CIO Stewards and Com-

mitteemen

(Detroit, 1945); McPherson,

Labor Relations

48-68. For discussion of the Dodge

strike, see Frank Marquart interviewwith Skeels, June 20, 1960, transcript, 26 (Archives of Labor

History); Carl Hassler interview with Skeels, Nov. 27, 1959, transcript, 22, ibid.; John Arlderson

interview with Skeels, May 21, 1960, transcript, 56, ibid.; and Slowdown, Business Week Oct.

28, 1939,46-48.

12 Jack

W.

Skeels, The Development of Political Stability

within

the United Auto Workers

(Ph.D. diss., University ofWisconsin, 19571, 102-28; Ray Boryczka, Militancy and Factionalism

in the United Auto Workers Union, 1937-1941,

Maryland Historian

8 (Fall 19771, 13-25.

3 For a spirited internal union debate over such tactics, see General Motors Delegate Con

ference Transcript, Nov.

7,

1937,27-57, in Presidential Papers, box

6,

Walter Reuther Collection

(Archives of Labor History).


6/19

340


of the UAW leadership condemned production standard job actions. Top of

ficials like UAW president Homer Martin or CIO vice-president Philip Murray,

who kept a close watch on auto union affairs, found the UAW reputation for

irresponsibility a liability upon which resurgent conservative forces

in

Washington and Lansing could capitalize. They condemned unauthorized

strikes

in

categorical terms,calling collective-bargaining contracts sacred. 14

Union radicals were more pragmatic but reached the same conclusion: Flint

Communist

warned auto workers

in

1938 that

the

new recession had cut

deeply into union strength.

Don t

be provoked into wildcat or unauthorized

actions. This is exactly what management wants. lS

Late in 1939 a reunited UAW executive board emphasized anew that all local

unions must adhere faithfully to the four-step grievance procedure in

corporated into each local contract to resolve disputes over seniority,

production standards, and other shop problems. Under this system, a worker

with a grievance first approached his steward, who in turn sought a resolution

of

the

dispute with

the

foreman.

unsuccessful here,

the

dispute

went

to

the

supervisory level of the department, then to the plant management, and finally

to a top-level company-union bargaining session. 16 This system was

strengthened during the negotiation of the UAW s 1940 contract with eM, the

first major agreement signed without a work stoppage in the industry. A key

innovation

in the

contract called for the installation of a permanent umpire to

arbitrate disputes unresolved at lower levels of

the

grievance system. Although

eM insisted that disputes over work standards would not be subject to such

arbitration, and

UAW

locals still retained

the

right to strike over such speed

up

issues, unionists like eM Department Director Walter Reuther and

the

new

UAW

president,

R.

Thomas, hoped the system would soon regularize

union-management relations to such an extent that wildcat strikes and job

actions would largely disappear

.1 7

After

the

fall of France,

the

government s new demand for full production

and social order forced

the

entire union movement to accommodate its use of

the

strike weapon to

the

increasingly powerful mediation and arbitration

machinery established

in

Washington. At

the

center of

the

new system stood

14 See, for example, Address by John 1. Lewis to Officers and Members of the UAW, April 7,

1937, box 11, Henry Kraus Collection (Archives of Labor History); Homer Martin to UAW General

Motors Locals, May 18, 1937, ibid ; Martin to William

S.

Knudsen, Sept. 16, 1937, ibid For Philip

Murray s

attack

on wildcat strikes, see editorial, Steel Labor Feb. 18, 1938.

15 Auto Workers Don t Be Provoked, leaflet

by

Flint City Committee

of

the Communist

party [early 1938], box 16, Henry Kraus Collection. For the Communist party attitude toward such

strikes, see Roger Keeran, The

Communists

and UAW Factionalism, 1937-1939, Michigan

History, 60

19761,

120-24; and Bert Cochran,

Labor and Communism: The Conflict that Shaped

the American Unions (princeton, 19771, 127-43.

16 Report of R. J. Thomas to the UAW International Executive Board, Dec. 4, 1939, box I,

George Addes Collection (Archives of Labor History); Text of Board Resolutions, United ut

Worker

Jan.

10, 1940.

17 George Heliker, Grievance Arbitration: A Comparative Analysis (Ph.D. diss., University of

Michigan, 19541, 97-98. The Reuther leadership in the United Auto Workers UAW worked

closely with Sidney Hillman and other production-minded officials of the National Defense Ad-

visory Commission in setting up the new umpire system at General Motors (GMI. Victor Reuther

interview

with

Nelson Lichtenstein, Sept. 25, 1979, Washington, D.C.


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341

the idea that the unions would subordinate their immediate trade union in

terests to the war effort and rely on a tripartite government panel first the

National Defense Mediation Board and, after Pearl Harbor, the more powerful

National War Labor Board WLB)-to resolve all disputes between man

agement and workers that threatened the social peace necessary for the

military effort. Although the

WLB

held wages below the level that auto union

leaders demanded, the new board strongly supported a stable system of in

dustrial relations in the industry. In 1942 the UAW secured a version of the

union shop maintenance of membership in most auto and aircraft factories

where the union held jurisdiction. The next year the

WLB

extended the umpire

system to Ford, Chrysler, and Briggs against management wishes, and it

established a regional office in Detroit to handle local union disputes not

within the purview of the umpire. IS

The war thus seemed to provide both the ideological justification and the

political and administrative mechanism for the routinization of shop-floor

worker-management relations.

Yet

the final thirty months of the conflict saw

the reemergence of the production-standard job action as the characteristic

form of industrial strife. Although the government and the international of-

ficers of the UAW pressed for continuous production and allegiance to the

powerfully symbolic no-strike pledge, massive changes in the composition of

the work force and in the nature of military production actually undercut both

union solidarity and factory discipline. The

UAW

then faced the most

ex-

plosive internal crisis since its formation.

In the first half of the war, a major demographic convulsion shook the

Detroit work force. About 30 percent of the half-million predominantly male

factory workers of 1940 left the area, chiefly for military service, but their

ranks were more than replenished

by

the recruitment of some four hundred

thousand new entrants into the manufacturing work force. About half these

new workers were from outside the metropolitan area, and about a third were

women or youth entering the labor force

for

the first time. Entirely new plants,

like the massive Willow Run

B 24

assembly complex at Ypsilanti or the

Chrysler Tank Arsenal at Centerline, drew tens

of

thousands

of

raw factory

recruits. 19

The massive employment boom pushed total

UAW

membership to over 1.2

million and profoundly altered the social composition of the union. The ex-

panded auto work force resembled that of the nonunion era, when the

suitcase brigade of transient workers from the rural South and upper

Midwest, attracted to Detroit by its high wages and urban excitement, made

for a volatile but not particularly union-conscious proletariat. Meanwhile, as

the draft took its toll of veteran unionists, the UAW cadre became, like the

Wobblies of old, a thin stratum, somewhat older, somewhat more skilled, than

8 For an account of these developments, see Nelson Lichtenstein, Ambiguous Legacy: The

Union Security Problem duringWorld War II, Labor History 8 Spring 1977), 214-38.

9 U.S. Congress, Senate, 79 Cong., 1 sess., Hearings before a Special ommittee lnvestigating

the National Defense Program

Part

28: Manpower Problems in Detroit

Washington, 1945),

13525-32.


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342

The

TournaI

of American History

the mass of new recruits who had

not

experienced

the

deeply transforming

process of actually building

the

unions of which they were now a part.

As

a

frustrated officer of the UAW's 42,OOO-member Willow Run local put it,

At

the bomber local the majority are paying 1 a month for the privilege of

working. They have no understanding at all of the union and are probably a

littlemystified as to how they ever got into it. 21

While this great influx of

new

workers was taking place, the conversion of

the

auto industry to critical aircraft, gun, and tank production set

the

stage for

a substantial decline

in

factory discipline. Production for the war effort

necessitated a modification of

the

technology of manufacture so as indirectly

to enhance the relative degree of control that auto workers held over their shop

routine. Most military

production-especially that

of such labor intensive

items as heavy artillery, tanks, aircraft parts, engines, and airframes-was

not

fully adaptable to prewar conveyor-line technology. Instead,

much

war work

was individually paced, task-oriented, small-batch production. Airframe

workers labored

as

a team, building-not assembling-each fuselage and wing

section. In aircraft engine plants a large proportion tended grinding machines,

drill presses, or other operator-controlled machine tools. The actual assembly

of the engines-conveyor-line work-required about 50 percent less personnel

than did the prewar auto engine. Such changes

in

organization and

technology did much to enable war workers to set informal production quotas

and work norms on a group or individual basis.

The

change in production

technique largely accounted for management's wartime campaign to abandon

daywork and restore incentive pay. Plant supervisors recognized that, with

the

assembly line

in

relative eclipse, only a return to some form of piecework

Proportion ofWorkers in

Aircraft Engine Industry,

August 1943

7.4

12.2

5.5

12.2

Drill Press Operators

Grinding Machine Operators

Milling Machine Operators

Assembly

20 For a critique of the union movement

that

rests heavily on this social transformation, see

Joshua Freedman, Delivering the Goods: Industrial Unionism during World War II, Labor

History

19 (Fall 1978), 574-91.

21 Report of William McAulay, Administrator of Local 50 (Willow Run), June 3, 1942, box 7

R.

J.

Thomas

Papers (Archives of Labor Historyl. For a detailed statist ical survey of the social and

geographical origins of the Willow Run work force, see Lowell Juilliard Carr and James Edson

Stermer, Willow Run: A Study Industrialization and Cultural Inadequacy (New York, 1952),

359.

22 Testimony

of H.

W.

Anderson,

Manpower Problems

in

Detroit

13782-84;

Tom

Whelan,

editor,

UAW

Local 887

Propeller

(North American Aviation), interview

with

Lichtenstein, Feb. 12,

1978; Edwin Bauer, former chief steward, UAW Local 306 (Budd Wheel), interview

with

Lichtenstein, Aug. 12, 1978; Anthony Plasenti, grievance committeeman UAW Local 927 (Fisher

Body, Columbus), interview with Lichtenstein, March 12, 1979. The shifting character of war

time

work is reflected in the following data:

Proportion of Workers in

Automobile Industry,

June 1940

2.6

1.9

1.0

18.0

Data calculated from Hourly Earnings in Aircraft Engine Plants Monthly Labor Review

(March 1944), 583-84; Wage Structure of the Motor Vehicle Industry,

ibid

54 (Feb. 19421

300-01.


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Auto Worker Militancy and Factory

Life

343

could eliminate

the

need for stepped-up supervision and spur workers on to

greater effort. 23

The changing political economy of the war era also enabled workers to

enhance their relative control

of

the shop-floor work environment.

the

first

several months of

the

war, managers found

the

wartime incentive toward low

cost production greatly reduced, and the maintenance of the new and un

familiar production schedules established by the military all important. Since

no one in top management or government really knew the cost of a piece of

war material rushed into production, labor costs were relatively uncontrolled

in

either Washington or Detroit. Meanwhile, a tight labor market gave in

dividual workers unprecedented market power, which was soon reflected in

the growing black market for some forms of skilled labor and by the steadily

upward drift of wages, a consequence of the easy promotion and outright

misclassification of workers into higher pay categories. Real auto wages in

creased by almost 20 percent in the forty months after Pearl Harbor. Daily

absenteeism, which rose

in

response to the good job market and decline

in

plant-level labor discipline, doubled in the converted auto plants and tripled in

the new airframe factories that employed a large proportion of the women,

teenagers, and rural migrants who flocked to the industry. 24

The alienation of the foreman from the ranks of factory supervision proved

another key element

in the

decline of factory discipline. Since early

in the

century, this front-line lieutenant of management had lost

much

power and

prestige, as corporate personnel and engineering departments assumed more

and more of the foreman s traditional control of hiring, wages, and production.

the late 1930s, the

UAW

further restricted the foreman s authority when

grievance procedures and seniority rules limited and regulated his unilateral

disciplinary power. Caught between management s drive to maintain

ef-

ficiency and increasingly strong pressures from the rank-and-file work group to

get along, foremen had become the marginal men of industry by the early

1940s.

25

The war itself produced an additional, major drop in the t t ~ and

managerial elan

of

this key figure in the factory hierarchy. The dramatic ex

pansion of wartime industry forced managers quickly to recruit thousands of

ordinary workers into the supervisory ranks. At GM, 42 percent of its 19,000

foremen had been on the job less than a year in 1943. They complained that

23 Robert M. Macdonald,

Collective Bargaining in the Automobile Industry A Study

ge

Structure and Competitive Relations (New Haven, 1963), 128-29; r Labor Reports 3 (1943),

383-84.

24

F

D. Newbury, Wages and

Productivity-the

Problems Involved, American Management

Association Personnel Series 105 (1946), 5-6; Money and Real Weekly Earnings during Defense,

War, and Reconversion Periods, Monthly Labor Review 63 (June 1947), 989; Manpower

Problems in Detroit 13332-34, 13251-55.

25 For a description of the vast powers of the foreman before the rise of scientific management,

see Nelson,

Managers and Workers

34-54. The declining status of the foreman in the late 1930s

and early 1940s is recounted in

r LaborReports

26(1946), 666-67; Fritz Roethlisberger,

The

Foreman: Master and Victim of Double Talk

Harvard Business Review

XXIII (Spring 1945),

283-98; and Donald E Wray, Marginal Men of Industry: The Foremen, American Journal

Sociology LIV Jan 1949),298-301.


10/19

344

The

Journal of American History

without

overtime pay for themselves their average wage hovered little above

that

of the workers they supervised, and since foremen lost their union

seniority when promoted from the ranks, they feared that without their own

grievance procedure and seniority system they could be demoted to

the

production line or unemployment roll

when

postwar layoffs began.

26

They

have not been properly trained or instructed in order to function efficiently,

complained a middle-level supervisor at Packard,

nor

have they the proper

viewpoint of management toward their jobS.

27

The

Foremen s Association of America built its spectacular wartime growth

on this disenchantment. Beginning among veteran foremen at River Rouge

shortly after the

UAW

success there

in

April 1941, the association signed up

more

than

33,000 by mid-1944, about

80

percent in Detroit area auto and

aircraft plants. In

the

face of adamant opposition from management and am

biguous administrative rulings from the National Labor Relations Board and

the

WLB

the ability of foremen to maintain their organization became

dependent upon

the

friendly neutrality of

the UAW

and

the

active goodwill of

the

rank-and-file workers they supervised. 28

Taken together,

the

conversion of

the

factories to high-cost military

production, the new demand for labor, and the defection of the foremen

created an environment on

the

shop floor that contributed to an erosion of

traditional factory discipline and the rise

of

worker control of the production

process far beyond

that

formally outlined

in

wartime contracts. At Packard,

union

committeemen

prevented managers from making any new time studies

in the

naval engine department and reached an agreement

with

foremen in

the

overstaffed aircraft engine division that, once the work quota for the day had

been fulfilled,

the

men

could doze or play cards until quitting time.

29

Rate

busters who violated informal work norms were formally expelled by a New

Jersey Ford local, while unionists at River Rouge warned reactionary

foremen

that

the local would veto their readmission if and when they were

demoted during

the

postwar layoff.

Auto industry executives complained in

early i945 that such conditions had generated as much

as

a 39 percent decline

in unit

productivity of factory workers.

31

26 U.S. Congress, House,

78

Cong., 1 sess., Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs.

Full Utilization of Manpower (Washington,

19431

375-78; Earnest Dale, The Development of

Foremen in Management,

AMA Research Report

no. 7

19451

9-59; Herbert

R.

Northrup,

The

Foreman s Association ofAmerica, Harvard Business Review XXIII (Winter 1945 187-91.

Manpower Problems in Detroit

13730.

28

Charles P. Larrowe, A Meteor on the Industrial Relations Horizon: The Foreman s

Association of America, Labor History 2 (Fall

19611

259-87; War Labor Reports 26

19461

655-66; Testimony of Edward Butler, Full Utilization

of

Manpower 91.

9

Manpower Problems in Detroit 13576 609.

30

Local 600 Resolution [19451] box 2 Ford-UAW Collection (Archives of Labor History). For

discussion of Edgewater

UAW

Local 906 s expulsion of the two

rate

busters, see Umpire s

Decision A-74 (March 29

19441

UAW Ford Motor Company Umpire Decisions (privately printed,

19451.

In this widely reported and precedent-setting case, umpire Harry Shulman reinstated the

employees over the strong objections of the local on the grounds that the union could

not

use its

contractual right to determine membership in good standing to enforce work norms in violation

of managerial efforts

to

increase the pace of work.

Manpower Problems

in

Detroit 13540. Manufacturers recorded the ratio of employment to

unit production as measured by the consumption of electrical power. Although crude, the figure

illustrates the general trend.

An

internal Ford memorandum comparing prewar and postwar labor


11/19

Auto Worker Militancy and

Factory

Life

345

As long as production remained paramount and labor scarce, there was little

factory managers could do about their loss of shop control. Depending

on the

company, however,

the

opportunity for tightening up on discipline and

abandoning the policy of making concessions to guarantee uninterrupted

production came somewhere between mid-1942, when conversion problems

were generally resolved, and the end of 1943, when output reached a high

plateau and some layoffs began at individual factories. At GM top management

quickly recognized

that

the war put them on a more favorable ideological

ground in their effort to reassert lost prerogatives. GM voiced management s

new mood by repeatedly demanding that UAW locals discontinue in official

union papers, handbills and other literature attacks and accusations of speed

up on management efforts to increase production of war materials. 32

At companies like Chrysler and Ford, where labor relations were often

conducted in an erratic and opportunistic fashion, efforts to

maintain

discipline and managerial authority also increased noticeably.

At

Ford a fresh

group of managers reorganized and centralized labor relations late

in

1943.

Clearly defined policies were set out, reported a key executive, particu

larly with reference to meting

out

of disciplinary action and enforcement

of company rules, handling of unauthorized work stoppages and enforcement

of production standards and other similar items. 33 Leaders of the UAW lo

cal at River Rouge found evidence that mid-level managers consciously

procrastinated on grievances to discipline strike ringleaders and blacken the

union s image with a patriotic public. Similarly, at Briggs a supervisor in

creased production of some items to the prewar standard

only

after successful

application of disciplinary action and after a strike.

Workers

met

this

new

managerial toughness

with

a dramatic increase in the

number of strikes over production standards and workplace discipline. By 1944

one of every two workers in the auto industry took part in some sort of work

stoppage, up from one in twelve in 1942 and one in four in 1943.

5

A GM vice-

input for

the

manufacture of virtually the same

motor

vehicle parts also indicates a decline in the

level of work efficiency. See Accession 157, Harold Martindale Papers (Ford Motor Company

Archives).

32H. W.

Anderson to Walter Reuther, Aug. 31, 1943, box

1

UAW-GM Collection (Archives of

Labor History). For a close analysis of managerial ideology and politics during the war, see Howell

John Harris,

Getting

Everybody Back on the Same Team: An Interpretation of the Industrial

Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1979).

Malcolm Denise, Labor Relations and Implementation of Policy-1943, 1944, 1945, as

quoted in George Heliker, Report, 303, Frank Hill Papers. See also Richard Deverall s 1943

series of Office of War Information reports on Chrysler labor relations in Richard Deverall

Notebooks, vol.

2

pp. 102-47 (Catholic University Archives, Washington, D.C.I.

34

Joseph

Twyman,

The

President s

Column,

ord

Facts

Nov. IS, 1943; Ringwald

Criticized, ibid Dec. IS, 1943; Ford Provokes Strikes, ibid March I, 1944; S. Evans, Labor

Relations Department, to all building superintendents, Rouge Plant, April

4

1944, box 13, R.

J.

Thomas Papers. For a general overview of the stormy wartime labor relations at Ford, see Heliker,

Report ; Allen Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, ord

Decline and Rebirth

1933-1962 (New York,

1962), 228-51; and Keith Sward, The Legend

o

Henry ord (New York,

19481

422-50. The

quotation is taken from Manpower Problems

in

Detroit 13558

5 Data compiled from Strikes in 1942,

onthly

Labor Review 56 (May 1943), 964; Strikes

in 1943, ibid 58 (May 1944), 934; Strikes and Lockouts in 1944, ibid 60 (May 1945), 961;

Work Stoppages Caused by Labor-Management Disputes in 1945, ibid 62 (May 19461 726. In

1945 about 75 percent of all auto industry workers were involved in a strike, but this includes the

official GM work stoppage as well.


12/19

346


president reported

that most

of the 1944 strikes

in

the corporation s plants

were caused by the refusal of small groups of workers to meet production

standards. Almost 83 percent of lost man-hours involved disputes over

discipline, compared to 4 percent in 1940.

36

Almost all of the strikes over production standards were so-called quickie

stoppages, involving anywhere from half a dozen to a few hundred employees

who halted work for a shift or less. Resembling the work stoppages that flared

in the auto industry during the organizational era of the mid-1930s, they

typically began when management retimed an operation or changed a job

assignment and then insisted that employees meet the new standard or duty. If

they refused or proved sluggish, managers took disciplinary action by firing or

suspending those who declined to

meet the

new level of work intensity. At

this point the issue in the strike became less the original grievance than the

discipline itself, and an entire department might go out in solidarity

with

those penalized.

Although frequently instigated by stewards or popular union militants,

the

character of these work stoppages often reflected

the

heterogenous and

sometimes backward consciousness

of the

swollen wartime work force

itself. Violence was

not

uncommon, and supervisors were on occasion

terrorized, assaulted, and even stabbed.38 Illegitimate in terms of

the

patriotic,

productionist ideology advanced by the wartime VA

W

these job actions often

lacked

the

overall leadership and union strategy

that

had given prewar strikes

of this sort a more consistently progressive character.

As

a consequence, the

wartime surge of shop-floor syndicalism could easily coincide

with

a deter-

Manpower Problems in Detroit 13563. All statistics

on

such unauthor ized strikes are

necessarily imprecise, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for auto,

which

only capture

the

larger and longer strikes (at least a shift in duration), show the same trend. Work stoppages to

protest discipline, work assignments, and working conditions increased from 205 to 452 between

1943 and 1944 and increased as a portion of all stoppages from 30 to 45 percent. Strikes

in

1943,

934; Strikes and Lockouts in 1944, 961; Jerome F. Scott and George C. Homans, Reflections

on

the

Wildcat

Strikes

merican Sociological Review 54 (June 1947l, 278-87.

7

Manpower Problems

in

Detroit

13619, 13624; Bauer interview

with

Lichtenstein.

strikes

such as those described above,

the

wage issue was not of paramount concern, except insofar as in

plant wage inequalities exacerbated an already difficult situation. Conversely, among workers

where production standards were not a pressing issue, but where wages were felt to be unsatisfac

tory, wildcat strikes were infrequent. In the relatively low-wage airframe plants of California and

the Midwest, there were few quickie walkouts over production standards or shop discipline,

chiefly because aircraft assembly work was for the

most

part individually paced, construction-like

labor that was extremely difficult to supervise closely or to

time.

Because of a complex pay scale

imposed by the War Labor Board, all airframe plants generated an enormous number of individual

wage grievances, but these disputes usually involved individual skil l reclassificat ions that

provided

little

basis for collective action. In short,

the

basic response of this heavily female

work

force to

their

low rate of pay was either to move up or move

out.

Since relatively few could do

the

former, the turnover rate in these factories was extremely high.

Clark

Kerr and Lloyd H. Fisher,

Effect of Environment and Administration on Job Evaluation, Harvard Business Review

XXVIII

(May 1950), 77-96; Wartime Development of the Aircraft Industry Monthly Labor Review

(Nov. 1944), 917-29; Illia Edder, Proposed

North

American Contract Would Hurt Unions

Labor ction

June 21,1943; Tom Whelan interview.

38 See, for example, Complete Report of March 7 and March 14 Incidents,

UAW

International

Executive Board Minutes, Sept. 7-8, box 5 United Auto Workers-International Executive Board

UAW-IEBI Collection (Archives of Labor History); Council Upholds Aircraft

Dismissals

Ford

Facts April 1 1944.


13/19


347

mination

by some workers to retain a discriminatory racial or sexual division

of labor. Certainly this was the level of consciousness of many in Detroi t s

white male work force who feared that factory managers would use the influx

of black workers to erode work standards and dilute job security. the first

half of

the

war, wildcat strikes to protest

the

upgrading of blacks were

frequent, and in June 1943 they were climaxed by the week-long hate strike

of 20,000 Packard workers, followed within a fortnight by the explosive

Detroit race riot itself.

39

Under such conditions, a union-organized factory could degenerate into a

balkanized set of rival work groups, each of which sought to make the best

deal that reflected its own specific importance in the production process or its

own particular degree of ethnic or sexual combativeness and solidarity. Un

coordinated and unpredictable-even to many local

officials-quickie

strikes

made it difficult for the unions as a whole to formulate a general strategy

toward management. Disputes over production standards and factory

discipline were among the

most

difficult grievances to define and quantify.

Because of the unequal and imprecise distribution of work and authority in a

factory, these issues were intensely felt by some workers and not at all by

others.

40

Disaffection of this sort

put

the union-conscious secondary leadership of

the

UAW

under enormous pressure. These were the individuals of a somewhat

broader and more political

vision-committeemen,

department chairmen, and

local

officers-who

had

built

the union in the 1930s and who remained its key

organizational cadre for many years thereafter. Given the heterogenous

character of the new work force and

the

growing management offensive,

many

of these unionists recognized that strict adherence to the no-strike pledge

could easily turn to apathy or outright antiunion sentiment. As one local union

official put it, Workers begin to ask each other, What good is our union?

What are we paying dues for, anyway? Why

do

our leaders let us down like

this? 4

Beginning

in

early 1943, a growing

number

of secondary UAW leaders

sought to restore meaningful unionism to the shop floor,

not

by championing

these quickie strikes themselves, but by channeling the unrest they

represented into a more unified and powerful movement. Especiallywhen key

union activists were fired, the locallea


14/19

348


had guts enough to stand up and face the people we had directing things in

Region

2A

and tell them I didn t give a damn what they done, I was sticking

with mymembership.

43

Although

in

clear violation of the wartime strike prohibition, these larger

stoppages escalated in frequency and duration throughout 1943 and 1944. Such

factory-wide, even company-wide walkouts were often well-led affairs con

ducted with all the apparatus of the traditional strike. In May 1943, for

example, a city-wide Chrysler work stoppage swept Detroit when manage

ment

at the Dodge Main plant violated the seniority list and fired a stew

ard. To protest this contract violation and break a grievance logjam

that

had kept the plants in turmoil for several months, officials of UAW Chrysler

locals called mass meetings on May 20 to explain the issues, shut down the

plants, and organize effective picket lines.

It

was just like old times,

reported one worker,

the

stewards walked through the plant and announced

the meeting, and in five minutes the plant was dead. Despite appeals by top

UAWofficials, 24,000 strikers stayed out for four days, returning to work only

after the WLB offered assurances

of

a timely hearing on their grievance

problem and a rapid decision in the long-pending Chrysler-UAW contract

dispute. 44

The wartime struggle over factory discipline seemed to lay the basis for a

decentralized system

of

postwar industrial relations

in the

auto industry

that

would incorporate both effective shop-floor bargaining over production

standards and company-wide negotiations over pay and other benefits. This

system would not have been far different from that which in fact came to

characterize large sections

of

British industry in the postwar era. There a

militant, semiautonomous shop stewards movement won a central role in the

life of

the

unions representing car workers. While

the

Amalgamated Union of

Engineering Workers and other national organizations still negotiated periodic

pay adjustments, these company-wide agreements were lit tle more than a

platform from which stewards could legitimately seek to win improved

conditions in direct confrontations with plant management.

45

43

Meeting

of the International Executive Board, UAW-CIO, for the Purpose of Requiring

Officers of Local

91

to Show Cause Why They Should Not Comply

with the

Provisions of Article

12 of the

Constitution,

Cleveland, July 14-15, box 3, UAW-IEB Collection.

The

strike began

after management fired a popular inspector who refused a work assignment.

44

The

tense background to the Chrysler situation is reported in War Labor Reports 3 19431

451-64, and

ibid

10

19441

552-56. Between December 1941 and January 1943, some sixty-six

work

stoppages took place in the corporation s plants. See also Deverall to Philo Nash, Dec. 23,

1942, Richard Deverall Notebooks; Nash to A. H. Feller, Jan. 26, 1943, ibid ; Deverall to Clarence

Glick, May 24, 1943, ibid

On

the strike incident of May 20, see Jack Webb,

The

Whole Set-Up

Has to

Be Changed -Dodge

Worker, Labor Action May 31,1943. There is considerable evidence

that

where a strong union-conscious leadership conducted these wildcats,

the number

of quickie

strikes dropped off. Among Chrysler Corporation plants, the older and more

militantly

led locals,

at Dodge Main, Jefferson Avenue, and Dodge Truck, were the scene of relatively few quickie

strikes in the latter half of thy war. In contrast, the war-born locals, such as the Tank Arsenal and

Dodge Chicago aircraft engine plant, were plagued

with

numerous short stoppages. Data based on

an analysis of 157 Chrysler Corporation strikes between July 18, 1944, and March 22, 1945, in

Robert W. Conder, Chrysler Labor Relations, to Thomas, Dec. 13, 1944, and March 22, 1945, box

5 R. J. Thomas Papers.

45

Don

Ryder,

British Leyland: The xt Decade

(London, 1975); H. Beynon,

Working

or or


15/19


9

the United States, however, the raw power exercised by rank and file

workers under favorable wartime conditions left little institutional legacy, and

worker control of production standards never became a permanent part of

the

postwar collective-bargaining agenda. Three elements explain this failure:

the

rigid system of industrial relations that evolved in the late 1940s and early

1950s; the effective centralization of authority

that

took place

in the UAW

during

the

same period; and the changing structure of work

in

the auto in

dustry itself.

By the end of World War

II

auto company executives largely accepted the

UAW as a permanent part of their entire employee relations picture, but they

were equally determined that managers

must

manage

the

production

process

in

each of their manufacturing facilities.

At Ford, for example, the

company sought to reimpose a uniform level of discipline throughout all its

plants.

the

1946 contract negotiations the new Ford management team

readily agreed to

match

the best contract the

UAW

could secure from

strikebound GM, but insisted upon a company security clause codifying

management prerogatives in elaborate detail, including the virtually unlimited

right to set initial production standards and discipline those it considered

guilty of unauthorized work stoppagesY

1947 Ford further increased its

ability to enforce a greater level of work intensity when

it

broke the foremen s

association established at River Rouge during

the

war. the next few years

management increased

the

loyalty of the several thousand foremen there

through a program

that

drew a sharp line between their status and

that

of

the

men

they supervised. Foremen were

put on

salary, told to wear ties and white

shirts, given desks and special parking privileges, and indoctrinated in

management-oriented

human

relations. 48

Implementation of this new policy significantly weakened the union in

frastructure at its lowest level. The transformation of the foreman into a

simple disciplinarian and grievance buck passer necessarily diminished the

independent leadership role of his counterpart,

the

union steward, who

became at best a referral agent frequently bypassed in the actual working of

the

grievance procedure.

9

Once shop disputes were reduced to writing and

began to make their way up

the

grievance ladder, they were

out

of the

steward s control and subject to a body of lockstep precedent

that

increasingly

(London, 1973); Richard Hyman, Industrial Relations A Marxist Introduction (London,

19751

150-84.

46

See, for example, Robert M. C. Littler, Managers Must Manage,


XXIV (Spring 1(46), 366-76, and Henry Ford

II The

Challenge of Human Engineering: Mass

Production, a Tool for Raising the Standard

of

Living,

Vital Speeches o the Day 12 Feb.

IS,

1946), 271-74.

47 John

S.

Bugas to Richard T. Leonard, Dec. 12 1946, box I, United Auto Workers-Ford

Collection (Archives of Labor History); Benjamin M. Selekman, Sylvia Kopald Selekman, and

Stephen H. Fuller,

Problems

n

Labor Relations

(New York, 1958), 361-80.

48 Larrowe, Meteor on

the

Industrial Relations Horizon, 287-99; Heliker,

Report

345-51;

General Motors Teaches Foremen Humanics,

Industrial Relations S

(April 1947), 34-37.

49

Leonard

R.

Sayles and George Strauss,

The Local Union Its Place n the Industrial Plant

(New

York, 1953), 27-42; B.

Widick interview with Heliker, March 6 1954, Frank Hill Papers;

Plasenti interview; Richard Herding, o

Control and Union Structure

(Rotterdam, 1972),

142-212.


16/19

5


defended management rights. As one chief steward summarized his dilemma

in the early 1950s, f you

can t

win

it

on the shop floor-this is our way of

looking at it-you can t win it. 5

But when stewards or committeemen, who stood just above

them in the

union s grievance hierarchy, led actions not sanctioned by the contract, they

found themselves subject to an increasingly severe level of discipline. Under

the negative leadership doctrine evolved by grievance umpires in the mid

1940s, local officials were held directly responsible for work stoppages and

slowdowns even when they played no role in sparking the contract violation

itself. The elementary links of solidarity that

put

shop-floor leaders on the side

of their rank and file during unauthorized stoppages were now declared, in the

words of the Ford Motor Company umpire, a romantic expression of a per

verse and debasing view of the committeeman s obligation. 51 The systematic

application of this doctrine and the progressive routinization imposed

on

all

shop-floor bargaining relationships helped accelerate the demise of the steward

system at GM and Ford

in

the early postwar era and helped transform com

mitteemen and other local officials into virtual contract policemen. 52

Political developments within the UAW itself reinforced the tendency

toward a rigid collective-bargaining regime. During

much

of the war a bitter

factional fight rent the national UAW leadership. A broad caucus led by Walter

Reuther battled a Communist-backed coalition headed by

UAW

Secretary

Treasurer George Addes. Although Walter Reuther had begun to distance

himself from a blanket defense of the no-strike pledge late in the war, both

factions found the wildcat strike movement itself dangerously centrifuga1.S

3

By the spring of 1945, initiative in the UAW had shifted down to the local,

even the shop steward, level. There were some ninety unauthorized strikes in

the summer; the Reuther brothers feared the union was coming apart at the

seams. S4

C. Wright Mills once called the trade union leader a manager of discon

tent, and Walter Reuther s conduct of the GM strike in the fall and winter of

1945-1946 offers graphic testimony to the validity of that aphorism.

55

Perhaps

more than other leaders of the UAW, Walter Reuther understood the tension

50

Widick interview.

5l Harry Shulman and NeilW Chamberlain,

Cases on Labor Relations

(Brooklyn, 1949), 434.

52 Orme W Phillips,

Discipline and Discharge

in

a Unionized

irm (Berkeley, 1959), 115-35;

Proceedings

U

W 14th Convention

1953. 320-22.

See

also Leonard

R

Sayles, Wildcat

Strikes,


32 (Nov.-Dec. 1954), 42-52; and Garth

1.

Mangum, Taming

Wildcat Strikes,

ibid.

38 (March-April 1960), 88-96. At Packard and Studebaker the steward

system remained intact until these firms went out of business in the mid-1950s. At Chrysler the

stewards retained

much

of their strength until the recession of 1957-1958. Throughout the indus

try the stewards were replaced by committeemen, part- or full-time union officials, who serviced

up to 500 workers in several departments.

53

Among the most recent of the several accounts

of

UAW factionalism in the war are Cochran,

Labor and ommunism 166-95, 206-27; Roger Keeran, Everything for Victory: Communist

Influence in the Auto Industry during World War II,

Science and Society 43

(Spring 19791 1-28;

and Nelson Lichtenstein, Defending the No-Strike Pledge: CIO Politics during World War II,

Radical America

9lJuly-Aug. 1975), 63-68.

54 Victor Reuther interview.

55 C. Wright Mills,

The New Men

of

Power: America s Labor Leaders

(New York, 19481,9.


17/19


351

under which

the

rebellious locals functioned, and he sought to diffuse

it

through an early company-wide strike against GM. The success of this strategy

lay in its ability to harness the restless energy of the auto workers, restore a

measure of stability to the local unions, and at the same time advance

Reuther s own fortunes in the internal scramble for office. The key GM strike

demand-a 30 percent wage boost without an increase in the price of cars

boldly questioned management prerogatives. in determining the relative

distribution of its profits, but

it

ignored the intractable disputes over company

discipline and production standards that had kept the union in turmoil for

much

of

the

war.

The

GM strike was designed to take

the

ball out of the

hands of the stewards and

committeemen,

recalled Victor Reuther,

and put

it

back in the hands of the nationalleadership. 56 The wage demand unified

rather than divided the work force;

it

provided a readily available channel into

which

the

pent-up shop-floor grievances could be poured, as well as cutting off

opportunities for their direct local expression. In later years the Reuther

leadership

put

forward a continuing series of

UAW

demands: for pensions,

health

and welfare benefits, cost of living protection, and

the

guaranteed

annual wage. Every worker could clearly and equitably benefit from these

contract innovations, but only the top leadership could effectively negotiate

with management about themY

The renewal of company-wide collective bargaining after the war coincided

with

the centralization of power in the

UAW

itself. Walter Reuther s popular

leadership of the GM strike provided the political basis

for

his election to the

UAW

presidency in early 1946, and in the eighteen months

that

followed his

aggressive caucus eliminated all serious internal union opposition. Walter

Reuther s politics in this era have been the subject

of much

scrutiny, but the

real significance of his victory lay

not so much

in the anti-Communist social

democratic program his forces advanced as in their transformaton of the

UAW

in to an effective one-party administrative regime. 58 The elimination of union

wide opposition substantially reduced

the

relative freedom local union of-

56 Barton Bernstein, Walter Reuther and the General Motors Strike of 1945-46, Michigan

History 49 (Sept. 1965), 260-77. For Walter Reuther s assessment of the union s internal crisis,

see

UAW

Executive Board Minutes, Sept. 10-18, 1945, pp. 18-45,

UAW IEB

Collection; and Vic

tor Reuther interview.

57 For a perceptive interpretation of the function of the wage demand, see Alvin W Gouldner,

Wildcat Strike

(Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1954), 32-37. The elaborate UAW-GM contract of 1950

proved to be a model for the sort of agreement that emerged under postwar collective-bargaining

circumstances.

The

UAW secured a wage escalator clause and an annual improvement increase

that

guaranteed year-by-year growth in real pay, but in

return

agreed to an unprecedented five-year

contract that made predictable GM labor costs during its mammoth expansion program of the

early 1950s. This kind of collective bargaining, observed the respected labor economist

Frederick Harbison, calls for intelligent trading rather

than

table-pounding, for diplomacy rather

than

belligerency, and for internal union discipline rather than grass roots rank and file activity.

Frederick H. Harbison,

The

General Motors-United Auto Workers Agreement of 1950, ourn l

of Political Economy LVIII (Oct. 19501,408.

58 Howe and Widick, U Wand Walter Reuther 149-71, 187-204; Cochran, Labor and om-

munism 248-68, 272-79; Sheels, Development of Political Stability Within the UAW,

275-349; Frank Emspak, The Break-up of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),

1945-1950 (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972), 159-82; William D. Andrew, Fac

tionalism and Anti-Communism: Ford Local 600, Labor History 20 (Spring 1979), 227-55.


18/19

352


ficials had enjoyed when two factions competed for their allegiance. Although

UAW

locals still held the formal right to bargain and strike on work standards,

the Reuther leadership approved stoppages over such issues only with the

greatest reluctance, especially when they threatened to upset the union's

national bargaining strategy or drain its limited resources. As a consequence,

stewards, committeemen, and other local officials became far more cautious

in handling speed-up grievances in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

59

The new power that management won on the shop floor gave corporate

engineering staffs the freedom to increase the intensity and efficiency of the

work performed there. At Ford higher production standards and line speeds

were initially imposed directly on the work force, but of greater long range

importance was Ford's incremental reorganization of production technology

that took place as part of the company's multibillion-dollar revitalization. As

early

as

1946, machine tool operations, which had been a center of worker

militancy at River Rouge, were linked together through the use of transfer

devices to create an assembly-line effect, which Ford engineers labeled

automation

in one of the earliest uses of the word. the next decade the

corporation refined and deployed this technology in a new generation of highly

integrated production facilities constructed

far from the traditional center of

union strength at Dearborn. 60

The renewed effort to eliminate worker-paced operations spread rapidly

throughout the industry, especially in labor-intensive sectors such as found

ries and engine plants. With the return to mass automobile production in

1947, the proportion of workers who labored on assembly-line jobs began a

gradual increase that continued throughout the postwar era, and except for

maintenance and

tool-and-die

personnel, the

number

who

labored

as part

of

a

distinct occupational work group declined.

61

cumulative fashion, the

59 Jack Stieber, Governing the UAW (New York, 1962), 131-57; William Serrin, The Company

and the Union (New York, 1974), 303-33; Herding, b Control and Union Structure 131 59;

Widick interview.

An

indication of the disruptive effect that local strikes could have on national

bargaining came in May 1949, when the Ford local at the Rouge conducted a lengthy strike over

speed-up issues, nearly sidetracking Walter Reuther's effort to secure company-wide pensions

in the national Ford-UAWnegotiations that began the following month. See' 'Chronology of Labor

Disputes which Culminated in the May 1949 Strike, box 204, Harold Martindale Papers; Robert

West, Labor Control of Production Standards

Is

Needed to Fight Speedup, Labor Action July

4

1949.

60 Selekman, Selekman, and Fuller, Problems in Labor Relations 391-97; James R Bright,

Automation and Management

(Boston, 1958), 59-64; Report of National Ford Department, Dec.

IS, 1947-Nov. I, 1948, box

2

UAW-Ford Collection.

6 Macdonald, Collective Bargaining 91-105; Julius Rezler, Automation and Industrial Labor

(New York,

19691

81-91. The decline in the proportion of tr immers and metal finishers, oc

cupations traditionally associated with autoworker militancy, in the auto industry is as follows:

Metal Finishers

Trimmers

1934

4.2

3.6

1940

3.2

2.3

1950

1.4

1 1

1957

1.0

1 7

Data calculated from Wages, Hours, Employment, and Annual Earnings, 549; Wage Structure

of the Motor-Vehicle Industry, 301; Wage Structure in Motor Vehicles, February 1950,

Monthly Labor Review

71

(Sept. 1950), 353; Wages in the Motor Vehicle Industry, 1957, ibid.

80 (Nov. 1957l, 1325.


19/19


353

changing work environment further undercut worker efforts to informally

retard the pace of production or collectively resist management authority.

one of the few contemporary studies. of the changing content of work

in

an

automated factory, a sociologist who surveyed employees at Chrysler s new

Detroit engine plant in the mid-1950s found that social interaction among

workers took place less frequently than in their old workplace, and employees

reported

that much

of the informal pattern of worker-foreman contact had

given way to amore authoritarian relationship in the new factory. 62

The shifting power balance in postwar auto plants reflected both the

limitations inherent in shop-floor syndicalism and the pressures generated by

the larger labor relations system. Although rank-and-file militancy was rooted

in the concrete social and technical structures of the factory workplace, this

activism could

not

transcend its inherently parochial and localistic focus

without a leadership cadre capable of giving

it

a broader political and

organizational perspective. UAW shop stewards and local officials were the

natural leaders of this movement, but their independent power threatened the

very foundations of the larger collective-bargaining regime the

UA

Wsought to

build in the early postwar era.

most plants the aggressive shop steward

system of the union s first decade atrophied, while the strata of full-time local

officials adopted a more bureaucratic orientation toward the mass of in

creasingly atomized workers. With shop-floor channels of resistance and

protest thus progressively narrowed, rank-and-file workers fell prey to an

alternating pattern of apathetic resignation and episodic militancy

that

provided little basis for a sustained challenge to the managerial offensive of the

early postwar era.

6 William A Faunce, Automation in the Automobile Industry, American Sociological

Review

23 Aug

19581,401-07.

See

also Rezler, Automation and IndustrialLabor 110 17.

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