Sit‐down Strike, Flint

Sit‐down Strike, Flint. The sit‐down strike of 1936–1937 pitted General Motors (GM), the world's largest manufacturing corporation, against the fledgling United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). After GM refused a UAW request for a conference to discuss outstanding grievances, a small group of workers, adopting a tactic the UAW had first used in November 1936, occupied the Cleveland, Ohio, Fisher Body plant on 28 December 1936. Two days later, strikers occupied the two Fisher Body plants in Flint, Michigan, heart of the GM empire. Eventually the strike spread to GM plants nationwide, idling 136,000 workers.

GM secured a court injunction on 2 January 1937 ordering the sit‐downers to evacuate the two Flint plants. The union ignored the injunction, and Michigan's Governor Frank Murphy delayed its enforcement. Flint police made a futile effort on 11 January to dislodge the strikers in the No. 2 plant. Responding to the request of Flint officials, Murphy then sent the Michigan National Guard to Flint to preserve order but not to take sides. While the sit‐down strikers carefully protected company property, wives and others on the outside supplied food and otherwise supported the cause. In a daring maneuver on 1 February, the UAW enlarged the strike by seizing the Chevrolet No. 4 plant, the sole producer of engines for Chevrolet cars.

Governor Murphy played the crucial role in resolving the dispute. The strike ended on 11 February, when GM agreed to recognize the UAW as the bargaining agency for its GM members. Arguably the twentieth century's most important labor conflict, the GM sit‐down proved a boon not only to the UAW but to mass‐production unionism in general during the 1930s.
See also Automotive Industry; Congress of Industrial Organizations; Labor Movements; National Labor Relations Act; New Deal Era, The; Reuther, Walter; Strikes and Industrial Conflict.

Bibliography

Henry Kraus , The Many and the Few: A Chronicle of the Dynamic Auto Workers, 1947.
Sidney Fine , Sit‐Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937, 1969.

Sidney Fine