832 ★ CHAPTER 21 The New Deal
economy. It aimed, said Lewis, at nothing less than to secure “economic free-
dom and industrial democracy” for American workers—a fair share in the
wealth produced by their labor, and a voice in determining the conditions
under which they worked.
In December 1936, unions, most notably the United Auto Workers (UAW),
a fledgling CIO union, unveiled the sit-down, a strikingly effective tactic
that the IWW had pioneered three decades earlier. Rather than walking out
of a plant, thus enabling management to bring in strikebreakers, workers
halted production but remained inside. In the UAW’s first sit-down strike,
7,000 General Motors workers seized control of the Fisher Body Plant in Cleve-
land. Sit-downs soon spread to GM plants in Flint, Michigan, the nerve center
of automobile production. When local police tried to storm the Flint plants,
workers fought them off. Democratic governor Frank Murphy, who had been
elected with strong support from the CIO, declared his unwillingness to use
force to dislodge the strikers. The strikers demonstrated a remarkable spirit
of unity. They cleaned the plant, oiled the idle machinery, settled disputes
among themselves, prepared meals, and held concerts of labor songs. Workers’
wives shuttled food into the plant. “They made a palace out of what had been
their prison,” wrote one reporter. On February 11, General Motors agreed to
negotiate with the UAW. Not until 1941 would the bitterly anti-union Henry
Ford sign a labor contract. But by the end of 1937, the UAW claimed 400,000
members.
The victory in the auto industry reverberated throughout industrial Amer-
ica. Steelworkers had suffered memorable defeats in the struggle for unioniza-
tion, notably at Homestead in 1892 and in the Great Steel Strike of 1919. U.S.
Steel, the country’s single most important business firm, owner of an industrial
empire that stretched across several states and employed more than 200,000
workers, had been among the strongest opponents of unionization. But in
March 1937, fearing a sit-down campaign and aware that it could no longer
count on the aid of state and federal authorities, the company agreed to rec-
ognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (forerunner of the United
Steelworkers of America). Smaller steel firms, however, refused to follow suit.
On Memorial Day, 1937, company guards and Chicago police fired on a picnic
of striking Republic Steel workers, killing ten persons. Not until 1942 would
Republic sign a labor contract.
Union membership reached 9 million by 1940, more than double the num-
ber in 1930. The coming of the union, said a member of New York City’s transit
workers’ organization, enabled workers “to go to our bosses and talk to them like
men, instead of... like slaves.” Unions demanded and won a say in workplace
management, including the right to contest the amount and pace of work and
the introduction of new technology. They gained new grievance procedures and
seniority systems governing hiring, firing, and promotions. The CIO unions