Auto Worker Militancy and the Structure of Factory Life, 1937-1955

Abstract

In June 1944 the army's Industrial Services Division flew Major A. H. Raskin to Detroit for 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, labor journalist in civilian life, but 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 (UAW) has found it impossible to adjust the thinking of its rank and file membership to 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. ' 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 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