Almanac When I Damn Well Feel Like It-GM Workers Mark White Shirt Day
Veterans of the Flint Sit-Down Strike donned their white shirts, and held hands for the singing of Solidarity Forever at a 2009 celebration of White Shirt Day at UAW Local 561in Flint, Michigan.
Production workers at General Motors plants mark February 11, the date that the great Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1937 ended with recognition by the company of the United Auto Workers (UAW) by wearing white dress shirts to work.
The Sit-Down strike was the great heroic event in organizing the auto industry. Previous attempts by AFL craft unions and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had failed to make permanent inroads. The new UAW, an industrial union like the IWW and backed by John L. Lewis’s militant Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), had built scattered locals but made no real headway at cracking the industry. Some thought its efforts would again fail.
The union decided to target General Motors for a major organizing drive by striking its two Fisher Body plants in Cleveland, Ohio and Flint, Michigan. By cutting off the supply of auto bodies, they could quickly shut down all GM production. Besides, the union had its strongest support at Fisher. When the company got wind of plans to strike after New Years 1937, it started stripping it essential stamping dies from the Flint plant to be sent to Cleveland. On December 30 local leaders at the Flint #1 plant called a hasty lunch-hour meeting and decided to launch a sit-down strike, occupying the plant and preventing the dies from being moved. The IWW had pioneered the sit-down strike at Briggs Auto and Murray Body in 1933, so the workers were aware of the tactic.
Workers set up cots, elected a “mayor” and council to run things, and got support from wives and family members who passed food through the plant windows. The union governing committee ignored repeated injunctions to end the strike and repelled an attempt by police to re-take the factory on January 11 by turning fire hoses on them. The strike spread to Chevrolet #4 and was attracting national attention. Newly inaugurated Michigan Governor Frank Murphy, a New Deal Democrat elected with strong labor support, called up the National Guard not to attack the strikers, but to defend them from scabs and goon squads being organized by the company,
As production at all facilities ground to a halt, the company was forced to enter negotiations with John L. Lewis speaking for the UAW since the company refused to be in the same room with UAW leaders. On February 11 the company signed a one page agreement recognizing the UAW as the bargaining agent of its members for the next six months. On the strength of his victory the UAW signed up more than 100,000 more GM workers and enforced conditions by local grievance walkouts across the country. Eventually other automakers, including highly resistant Ford recognized the union.
Eleven years later, in 1948 the giant auto maker was making its transmission from World War II defense contractor to producing automobiles for the stored-up demand of the domestic market. The result was speed-up on the line, unsafe practices, and excessive forced over-time. Bert Christenson, a member of Local 598 came up with the idea of White Shirt Day to commemorate the victory in 1937. The idea was simple-to demonstrate to the company that production workers deserved the same respect and dignity as white collar personnel and executives. It was also suggested that workers get those shirts no dirtier than did executives-an unspoken virtual slow down.
The idea of White Shirt Day caught on and spread in subsequent years to many GM plants as an annual event. During the post war years the UAW helped move production workers into the solid middle class based on their shop floor strength as demonstrated in creative shop floor militancy.
White Shirt Day continues to be observed in at GM plants.