FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 219the group responsible for unionizing workers, committed $750,000 for union
organizing after the 1936 election, an incredible amount for a union at that
time. Not only had the CIO helped re-elect FDR but also created the SWOC
and, in 1936, convinced the United Auto Workers [UAW] to join them and
leave the AFL. The main target in the CIO’s sights was General Motors, which
had made profits of $284 million that year and had spent over $1 million on
anti-union activities such as intimidating pro-labor workers and surveillance
[spying on union meetings and reporting back to employers]. When, in
November and December, a wave of sit-down strikes occurred, it was clear
that the class conflict that had been boiling throughout the 1930s was only
going to get worse. That fall, workers in South Bend, Indiana, Kansas City,
Detroit, and Atlanta, among others, conducted sit-down strikes.
In December, at the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Company, which made wheels
and brake drums, Reuther, a toolmaker who had been fired by Ford years
earlier and traveled in the Soviet Union where he developed radical politics,
was the UAW representative and strike leader. When workers sat-in as their
shift ended, about 500 men and women who supported them rallied to the
plant to block the entrances and over a thousand more pro-labor local citizens
jointed in the picket and protest. It was impossible for the company to get
any products or machines from the plant and when it sent in spies and scabs,
they were beaten and thrown out. By this time, Ford was running low on
parts and told Kelsey-Hayes to settle. On Christmas Eve, the strikers received
a pay raise to 75 cents an hour, a UAW-elected committee to conduct labor-
management affairs, a seniority system for layoffs and recalls, and a reduction
in the speed of the assembly line. Just days later, on December 28th, over 7000
workers sat in at Cleveland’s Fisher Body Plant. The working class was orga-
nized and militant as it had not been since the 1890s, and its biggest battles
were yet to come.
Conditions at the Ford plant in Flint, Michigan were close to intolerable.
Wages were low, there was no overtime or sick pay, and if machines broke
down or the plant was changing models, it would close down and not pay
workers. There were no safety requirements, no medical help at the work site.
“Lots of workers lost fingers and hands and some were killed,” as one Flint
worker described it. For those injured or killed, there was no compensation.
In the summer, temperatures rose to over 100 degrees but the bosses refused
to slow down the production lines. “You were allowed a half hour for lunch,