Sit-Down Strikes of 1936 and 1937 stood at the heart of the social movement that enabled the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) to unionize hundreds of thousands of workers in that era's industries. CIO rubber workers briefly deployed the sit-down as part of a recognition strike in February and March 1936, but this union stratagem did not rivet the nation's attention until late in the fall of that year. CIO organizers met fierce resistance from the nation's leading corporations, many supporters of the anti–New Deal Liberty League, which expected the Supreme Court to declare the Wagner Act unconstitutional. This growing polarization made Franklin Roosevelt's landslide reelection as president seem a referendum on the industrial New Deal, especially in working-class communities. "You voted New Deal at the polls and defeated the auto barons," organizers told Michigan workers late in 1936. "Now get a New Deal in the shop."
In November and December 1936, sit-down strikes took place at Midland Steel and Kelsey-Hayes in Detroit, Michigan, and at Bendex in South Bend, Indiana. During the week after Christmas, sit-down strikes occurred at General Motors (GM), the most important at the Fisher Body and Chevrolet Motor plants in Flint, Michigan, the center of GM production. The strikes were not "spontaneous," neither were they planned by top union leaders. Socialists, communists, and other shop radicals led the way, then leaders of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and the CIO took command. The factory occupations stopped production even though only a minority of the workforce participated. Supported by thousands of unionists on the outside, the Flint sit-downers organized food deliveries, policed the factories to avoid damage, and conducted classes and plays to sustain morale during the six-week stay-in. They won favorable press because of the legitimacy of their cause. The strikes were designed to force management to obey the labor law and to recognize the stake workers held in a secure and humane job. Frank Murphy, the New Deal governor of Michigan, kept the National Guard at bay. Backed by Roosevelt, Murphy sought to avoid a bloody confrontation and refused to enforce an antistrike injunction secured by GM. Although the sit-downers and their allies fought several celebrated battles with the Flint police, the unionists outnumbered their foes, and they were never dislodged from the factories.
GM reached a settlement with the UAW on 11 February 1937. The corporation recognized the union as the sole voice of its employees and agreed to negotiate with UAW leaders on a multiplant basis. Thousands of heretofore hesitant auto workers poured into the UAW. Across industrial America the settlement transformed the expectations of workers and managers alike. There were 47 sit-down strikes in March, 170 in April, and 52 in May. In Detroit, workers occupied every Chrysler factory, twenty-five auto parts plants, four downtown hotels, nine lumberyards, ten meat-packing plants, twelve laundries, and two department stores. To avoid such an upheaval, U.S. Steel and scores of other big firms agreed to recognize CIO unions during the next few months.
Although the sit-down strikes violated corporate property rights, many workers justified them as an ethical counter to management's failure to recognize the Wagner Act and to bargain with the unions. Given the industrial crisis of early 1937, such sentiments may well have contributed to the Supreme Court's 12 April 1937 decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation to hold the Wagner Act constitutional. But in the more conservative climate that prevailed two years later, the Court declared sit-downs illegal in National Labor Relations Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation (1939).
Bibliography
Fine, Sidney. Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969.
Pope, James Gray. "The Thirteenth Amendment versus the Commerce Clause: Labor and the Shaping of American Constitutional Law, 1921–1957." Columbia Law Review 102 (January 2002): 3–122.
Zieger, Robert H. The CIO: 1935–1955. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
