Back in the waning days of 1936, close to 50 brave employees at General Motors brought the machinery of Fisher Body Plant No. 2 in Flint, Michigan, to a standstill. These individuals were from the fledgling United Automobile Workers union, formed barely a year before. Their mission? To improve unbearable working conditions at the formidable General Motors, the globe's biggest manufacturer at the time. They also demanded that GM accept the union as the official agency for workers' negotiations. The resultant sit-down strike that spread across GM plants held for 44 days and is now hailed as the most significant work stoppage of the 20th century—an eye-opening moment for relations between corporations and employees in America. The immense achievement ushered in a new era of labor organization throughout the nation.
Fast forward to the present, the UAW has for the first time ever, initiated a strike against Detroit's automotive giants—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, a pivotal step for both a revitalized labor movement and an auto industry adapting to the dawn of the electric vehicle era. UAW's innovative president, Shawn Fain, has modernized the union's strategies. The UAW’s latest tactic is referred to as a “stand up strike,” an allusion to the historic sit-down strike from 87 years ago, and is being implemented in targeted strikes at select plants.
“Shawn Fain is leveraging the union's vast history and updating the UAW narrative," says Thomas Sugrue, a historian at New York University. "The union is deriving inspiration from the past, yet innovating to handle current challenges.”
During the turbulent 1930s, UAW workers protested the extreme pace at which they were forced to work on assembly lines, the arbitrary power GM foremen held to hire and fire at whim, and unsustainable wages. GM thwarted workers' attempts to form a union by spying on campaigns and dismissing organizers. The sit-down strikes, a revolutionary strategy largely influenced by similar endeavors in Europe at the time, marked a significant shift in the balance of power.
The swift spread of the initial strike at Fisher Body Plant No. 2 to other GM plants across various cities stifled GM’s operations severely. Following a violent encounter between workers at the plant, GM security, and Flint police, a compromise was eventually reached in which GM agreed to acknowledge the UAW as the bargaining agent for workers who chose to join the union. This agreement symbolized a landmark victory for the union.
Union leader’s quote to the New York Times signaled the broader implications of this triumph: “The workers in the other basic mass production industries will derive from the auto workers’ struggle the confidence and conviction that they, too, can win similar rights in their industries.”
The GM sit-down strike catalyzed a significant boost in UAW membership and ignited a wave of unionization and strikes across other industries.
However, unions have been in a state of decline, peaking in 1945 at 33.4% of the workforce, and dropping to just 10.1% last year. In light of the challenging times, current UAW leadership, under the direction of president Fain, is intent on regaining the momentum witnessed during the sit-down strike against GM in the 1930s. The union described their "Stand Up Strike" at three plants as strategic and a testament to the powerful Sit-Down Strikes from the past.
“The Stand-Up Strike is our generation’s response to the movement that built our union, the Sit-Down Strikes of 1937,” the UAW announced. “Then as now, our industry is rapidly changing and workers are being left behind.”
The outcome of the negotiations between UAW and Detroit’s Big Three could have significant implications for the auto industry and manufacturing jobs. “We must ask if manufacturing jobs, as they grow, will continue to serve as middle-class jobs,” says Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University.
