The General Motors Sit-Down Strike: A Re-examination

Abstract

ALTHOUGH General Motors sit-down strike of I937 has been correctly described as the most critical labor conflict of nineteen thirties and as of crucial significance to subsequent growth of automobile unionism in particular and industrial unionism in general,1 a great many questions regarding strlke and role of its principal participants remain unanswered. It is still not possible to resolve all doubts concerning this greatest of all automotive strikes, but relevant manuscript collections now available, and especially recently opened Frank Murphy Papers, do permit one to speak about at least some aspects of strike with a greater degree of certainty than was heretofore possible.2 The general outlines of GM sit-down strike are familiar enough. Following outbreak of sit-down strikes at Atlanta Fisher Body plant on November i8, 1936, and Kansas City Fisher Body plant on December i6, i936, Homer Martin, president of United Automobile Workers, sought an immediate general conference with top management of GM. The corporation, however, insisted that union should discuss its grievances at local plant level, in accordance with GM's established procedure for collective bargaining. The union responded that principal issues that it wished to discuss with company-recognition for collective bargaining, seniority rights, minimum wages, and speed of production line-were national in scope and must consequently be dealt with by union and management representatives for GM as a whole. Affairs were thus deadlocked when on December 28 Cleveland Fisher Body plant