Flint Sit Down Strike, Part II

The importance of the new governor, Frank Murphy, would become evident when GM chose to change tactics. Murphy, the former mayor of Detroit, took office on January 1, 1937. Because the situation in Flint remained peaceful, Murphy resisted pleas from Flint officials (particularly the mayor and police chief) and GM officials to mobilize the Michigan National Guard to remove the strikers from the plant. The situation remained peaceful for nearly two weeks--GM allowed the union to supply the strikers with hot food, the building remained heated, and the company security force made no move to attempt to interfere with the strike. The situation was relaxed enough that a number of strikers inside began to slip away to visit their families and sleep in their own beds, rather than on the car seats that served that purpose inside the factory.



This situation changed dramatically on January 11, 1937. Plant security turned off the heat, and prevented the delivery of a hot meal. By early afternoon, the Flint police force had massed in front of Fisher Body plant #3 (which supplied bodies for the Chevrolet factory across Chevrolet Avenue). The police began firing tear gas into the factory in preparation for their entry.

At this point, the Women's Auxilary Brigade (WEB) sprang into action. The WEB had provided support for the strike since the beginning, cooking meals and staffing a first-aid station; the group had also been enthusiastic picketers.
When the police began their attack, the women used the wooden handles of the picket signs to break the ground-floor windows of the factory to ventilate the building--which also allowed the men to throw the gas cannisters back out of the building. With the assistance of a fortuitous change in wind direction, the use of freezing water from the fire hoses and the prodigious use of door hinges from the roof of the factory, the Flint police withdrew from the "Battle of the Running Bulls" after a six-hour battle.

This changed the dynamic of the strike. Word of the battle was quickly relayed to Gov. Murphy, who was driven to Flint witha state police escort.

To be continued

The Flint Sit-Down Strike

Today is the 71st anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike, begun December 30, 1936. This strike flung open the door that had first been cracked by workers at the Chevrolet Transmission Plant in Toledo, Ohio in 1935. Although AFL Local Union 18385 was successful in gaining recognition and a contract with General Motors, during the Thanksgiving vacation GM moved half of the machinery in the factory to another location, costing many new union members their jobs.

It became obvious to workers outside of Flint and Detroit that without a strong union presence in those two locations, their attempts to form a viable union would have little effect. During much of 1936, Wyndham Mortimer of Cleveland (another early UAW stronghold), Roy Reuther, and a variety of volunteers began quietly organizing workers in GM's hometown of Flint, Michigan. After a falling out with newly-elected UAW president Homer Martin, Mortimer was replaced by UAW Local 14 (former LU 18385, now a part of the Committee of Industrial Organizations) Robert Travis, who continued the organizing plan. A sit down strike by the UAW local in Cleveland propelled events in Flint along more quickly than planned; after GM employees were paid a Christmas bonus, Travis, with a small trusted coterie of workers employed at the huge Fisher Body No. 1 plant on S. Saginaw Street, planned to close down and occupy the factory.

On December 30, Kermit Johnson, after receiving the secret signal, made his way to the power switch that controlled the assembly line, threw it, and shut off power to the line. Silence briefly reigned on the shop floor, which was quickly overtaken by whooping and yelling as workers realized that they had seized control of the shop floor. Foremen were quickly overpowered and "escorted" from the premises. After briefly barricading office workers, the union allowed them to leave, as were workers who did not want to actively participate in the strike. Women employed in the plant were made to leave, even if they wanted to remain, in order to squelch any rumors of licentious behavior on the part of workers. Strike captains the remaining workers to squads and set up patrols, stockpiled door hinges to use as weapons, and readying fire hoses in case the factory was invaded by plant security and/or Flint police.

GM officials decided to initially downplay the situation; while refusing to negotiate with the union while the Fisher plant was occupied, the company did not attempt to invade the plant, either. Workers then settled in for a quiet New Year's Eve--and the inauguration of a new governor.

To be continued ...

More Solstice Stuff

Since I like to pretend to be a historian, let's look at the history of Christmas, to compliment yesterday's post. One of the treasured traditions of early Christmas celebrations was wassailing, when the peasants came to the lords' houses to seranade them, and then were "invited" in to partake of the lord's wine cellar (and usually whatever the lord had laying around the castle, as well). In return, the peasants were obsequious for most of the rest of the year. This kind of disorder was distasteful for our Puritan forefathers, but since they didn't control the political structure until establishing the "Citty on the Hill" in "New England", there was little they could do about it. Among the early laws drawn up in Plymouth, however, was the outlawing of public celebrations of Christmas (a law that remained on the books in Massachusetts until late in the 19th century). This new abscence of observation eventually won converts in England, as well, which provides a part of the backstory for Dicken's A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge threatens to make Bob Cratchit work for part of Christmas day.

I couldn't find a good video of wassailing (maybe I could wait until someone posts on office party? ...mmm), so this video will have to suffice, since it has "Here We Come a Wassailing" with footage of Stonehedge.

Now it is time, however, to recall what Christmas is really all about--"an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and 'this thing' which tells time"

The Battle for Christmas

Since Winter Solstice is just around the corner, we should probably turn our attention to the holiday that usurped this grand celebration of the return of the sun, Christmas. Churches are now distributing signs for parishioners to put in their yards, urging their neighbors to "Keep Christ in CHRISTmas." This is certainly a noble sentiment; and indeed it would a better world if everyone kept the teachings of Jesus in mind year-round, as the clergy like to remind their audiences this time of year, as well. But I argue that is perhaps it is just as important to remember that there is only a 1 in 365 chance (or 366, if Jesus were born in a leap year) that December 25 really is his birthday.
Maybe that would assist in the effort to keep Jesus in our hearts all year long. In the meantime, let's just enjoy this little ditty from folkie Pat Godwin:

The Columbine Massacre

Yesterday, Nov. 21, was the 80th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre--not the one you remember, but the state-sanctioned and capitalist-funded murder of five striking miners in the company town of Serene, Colorado, home of Rocky Mountain Fuel Company. The strike began when the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) called for a general strike to protest the execution of Ferdinando Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in April 1927 for allegedly murdering an armored car guard during a hold-up attempt; in reality, they were probably killed for their anarchist political beliefs.

The strike was wildly successful in the coal fields of Colorado, principally because working conditions there were so poor; in the previous decade, hundreds of coal miners in the state had died in mining accidents. Conditions for a successful labor action were about as favorable as one could expect in a state that viewed the Ludlow Massacre of the decade before as a success.

The Columbine Mine was one of the few mines still open; the owner of the mine had died in the months previous, and his daughter, a social worker, had taken over much of the responsibility for operating the mine--although she had not been able to assume complete control. Which is why the Colorado "rangers," plain-clothes police recently recruited, were standing on the outskirts of Serene barring entry to the strikers. A striker determined to exercise his right of free speech approached the gate, where he was grabbed and struck with a length of gas pipe, which the rangers were using as billy clubs. When angry strikers burst through the gate, the police retreated to the entry to the mine, where they set up a skirmish line and began firing on the crowd--allegedly aided by machine guns that had been set up. In the end, five strikers were killed, and countless others, along with wives and children, were included in that total.

Nellie McKay

Just because ...

in the Bush era, we should all do the Zombie

JFK and Labor

The newspapers today will be filled with the question, "Where were you 44 years ago?" The day that the 35th president of the United States. As for myself, I was quite young, camped in front of the television, mystified as to the reason the usual fare of cartoons wasn't on the television. In fact, the assassination of Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is much more vivid in my mind than the death that preceded it.

The observance of the Kennedy assassination is a good time to consider the Kennedy legacy on labor in the United States. Like his record on civil rights, Kennedy's record on labor is worse than is remembered. One must consider, for instance, the rather cool relationship between his attorney general--brother Bobby--and the labor movement; RFK is remembered for this confrontation with Teamster President James R. Hoffa, but he was also council for the McClelland Committee, which produced some of the legislation most harmful to the labor movement of any period in the twentieth century.

JFK also began the reapproachmente with business interests, which has led to the abandonment of the working-class by the Democratic Party

Why All Workers Need a Union

Lets say that you are a high performance, high-value employee. Your contract has recently ended, but your employee places great value on your remaining with the firm, and to keep you, they pay you a substantial bonus. Three months before your contract is up again, however, you are badly injured. You are badly injured because your employer has put you in a dangerous, high-risk situation that leaves you vulnerable to such injury--in fact, a number of your comrades suffer such injuries nearly every day, and some die as a result.

As a result of your injuries, you're disabled, and have to leave your employer. But, you didn't fulfill the complete term of your contract, and now your employer wants some of that bonus money back. What kind of heartless entity would do that. The United States Department of Defense, of course. Just ask Jason Fox. That's some down home compassionate conservatism.

Labor Department

I read on the AFL-CIO blog that they are looking for a new name for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)--or, at least, in the interest of truth in advertising, that they at least remove the word "labor" from their name--because nothing the Bush NLR Board has done can be construed as assisting either labor or workers.

The same is true for the Labor Department and its secretary, Mrs. Mitch McConnell, er... Elaine Chao. Labor Secretary?--to what purpose? The Worst President Ever should just shutter the place and make her Undersecretary of Commerce. Advocate for labor (that is suppose to be her role, by the way)? Let's look at one industry--mining. Under her watch, mining accidents have reached levels not seen since 1926. When there were tens of thousands more miners than work in the industry today. Her response to this surge in mining accidents? Cutting the budget of the Mine Health and Safety Administration, so that they can inspect even fewer mines. That's the way to look out for the well-being of workers, Mrs. McConnell!

In an administration of incompetents, she ranks only behind Bush himself. As the Master of Presidential Disaster would put it, "Heckuva job, Elaine."

Right-wing Racists

The publication of Paul Krugman's latest book, The Conscience of a Liberal has provoked several columns in the New York Times, and a bit of controversey in the blogosphere, as well. Many critics point to Reagan's opening salvo in Philadelphia, Mississippi, as the critical point of proof. This is, in my opinion, the apex of rightwing racism, and a critical point in convincing racist white Democrats that the new Republican party was the new political home for them. But that process began in 1948, with Strom Thurmond and his run as a Dixiecrat. Thurmond was then stroked by the godfather of modern Republican conservatism, Barry Goldwater, who helped convince Thurmond to switch parties in 1964--the same year, not coincidently, that Lyndon Johnson convinced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. There is no conservative "movement" without the support of white racists. For more information, I suggest reading Dan C. Carter's The Politics of Rage and Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm; if those two works spark more curiosity, check out Kari Frederickson's The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South.

Pinky or The Brain

Get a Cash Advance

Part of the inspiration to begin blogging again came from checking this rating for the blog posts yesterday, when the reading level was only undergraduate college level. I add one brief post, and I'm writin' like a freakin' genius. I'm going to keep this handy to show my dissertation committee.

Of course, it could also help explain why this blog has no readers. This should dumb it down sufficiently:


You'll have to excuse me now--I have to go plot how to takeover THE WORLD!

Narf!

The New UAW Contract

Much ink (and bytes) has been spilled over the newly negotiated contracts between the UAW and the Big Three automakers--particularly the two-tiered wage structure, which cuts the starting pay for new workers in half. Many of the workers are not happy with the results, either, but voted for the contract because, in their view, a job at $12 an hour, with some benefits, is better than no job at all. That is the economic reality in today's post-industrial capitalist system--those who own the means of production get to make the rules.

Sago Mine Tragedy

After the good news headlines of the morning papers, reality hits like a twelve pound sledgehammer. Twelve miners dead. Three hour delay in relaying this information to twelve families, while mine officials try to figure out how to spin reality, after relaying misinformation to those families.

I've checked numerous stories since news of this tragedy broke, but is the only one to carry the reason for these tragic deaths. The lede is buried, of course, but if you read far enough down into the story, you come to this bit: "We could get pulled over for speeding and pay more than that,'' said Smith, who said the mine was nonunion. ``The problem with the current laws is enforcement." The spokeman for the UMWA has it wrong, as well. The problem is that too many mines are nonunion. Earlier stories quoted a convenience store owner selling some cigars to a miner who didn't smoke, but was taking it up because he wasn't sure how much longer he was going to live working at the Sago Mine.

These twelve miners were killed by company negligence--of that there is little doubt, in my opinion. But they were also killed because in the last twenty-five years, protections for workers have been eviscerated; that has been the real legacy of the glorious Reagan Revolution. These men also died, however, because they did not have a union to protect them.

"An injury to One, is an injury to All"

What about Gulfport?

Most of the attention in the aftermath of Katrina has rightly focused on the horrible human tragedy that has taken place in New Orleans, and how race and class may have affected the response on the part of the federal government. Most of the rest of the Gulf Coast, as a result, has fallen off the radar screen. Take Gulfport, Mississippi, for instance.

Gulfport is a medium-sized city (71,127), whose racial make-up is roughly 62 percent white and 33.5 percent African American. According to a story in the webzine Salon nobody in Gulfport has even seen anybody from FEMA yet--13 DAYS AFTER THE EFFIN HURRICANE. Most of Gulfport was detroyed in the hurricane, and the residents there have not been happy with the federal government's response to their situation, as Dick Cheney can attest. They can be no happier with their lard-ass Republican governor (and former chair of the RNC), Haley Barbour, who, despite his close connections with the Bush administration, has not been able to get anyone to pay any attention to Gulfport except for the occassional photo op (see Cheney link above--and after his reception there, they are probably having a difficult time even getting that). Gulfport is a working-class town:

The median income for a household in the city was $32,779, and the median income for a family was $39,213. Males had a median income of $29,220 versus $21,736 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,554. 17.7% of the population and 14.1% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 25.8% of those under the age of 18 and 13.7% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.

While Gulfport has a much smaller percentage of residents living below the poverty line, there are still a substantial number--and a substantial number who will find recovery from this disaster extremely difficult.

The point of all of this is not to try and diminish the effect that race has had in this fiasco; large numbers of poor Gulfportians are undoubtedly African American. It is to argue, instead, that class plays a role just as important.

New Orleans levees

Michael Ledeen early this afternoon from his cave at NRO:

Rich: you are quite right to ask 'how come it was the new, reinforced, federally funded levees that failed?' and it is entirely plausible that the materials used were inferior. If NOLA were Naples (and you know that NOLA is 'our Naples') everyone would know, intuitively, that the levees were inferior because a lot of the money had been pocketed by the local pols and mafiosi. Maybe that's worth looking into?

Maybe Ledeen's daughter can debrief him on the nine billion dollars that "local pols and mafiosi" (also known as contractors) in Iraq skimmed while the Coalition Provisional Authority, with the assistance of the best and brightest from the Heritage Foundation, was in charge of the country.

The New New Orleans

After yesterday's post on the faults of the Toledo Blade, today I have come to sing their praises--or, at least, the praises of one of their reporters. Jenni Laidman reports on the science beat for the paper, and her article this past Sunday, "Raising New Orleans," lays out the options for what should be done in the city as rebuilding starts. The key is overcoming the man-made problems that created the susceptibility in the first place.

"Experts in coastal geology, storm surge behavior, levee engineering, and other disciplines who focus on the unique coastal region of Louisiana point to the critical work that mud, sand, and river sediment must play in creating a city that would be able to withstand another devastating natural disaster."

In other words, the levees that have protected the city from flooding have also contributed to the city sinking below sea level. After raising most of the city above sea level, the levees must also be raised to levels that can withstand a Category 5 hurricane--but even that is not enough:

Mr. Suhayda envisions a rebuilding plan that begins with levees that are higher than the 14-foot levee needed for a category 3 storm. On Wednesday, he said he stood in the gap of one of the broken levees.

“The water that came through this spot flooded 80 percent of the city,” he said. “Let’s build a category 5 levee, but let’s assume it will fail,” said Mr. Suhayda. “We have to have back-up plans B and C.”

Plan B, in Mr. Suhayda’s view, would prevent the near total inundation of the city by a single levee breach, as happened in Katrina.

“We have to compartmentalize the city like waterproof chambers in an ocean liner,’’ he said.

“A majority of the levees performed exactly as they should,’’ he said, but that didn’t save the city. Compartmentalizing would allow the good levees to do their protective job.

Plan C, according to Suhayda, is for essential buildings like hospitals--which were never part of the evacuation plan--to get their generators out of the basement and above the possible flood.

A step that should be taken in conjunction with this is restoring wetland areas south and east of New Orleans, which would act as a buffer for New Orleans:

While improved levees seem a nearly inarguable condition for a rebuilt New Orleans, others see protection against future storm surges as a far more practical solution than raising a sinking landscape by filling in the lowlands.

“Geologically, it makes more sense to me to think about protection of New Orleans, rather than try to fill New Orleans with sediment,’’ said Mr. Roberts.

It’s a matter of restoring lost friction. Hurricanes slow when they cross land, and for centuries Louisiana’s 7,000 square miles of coastal wetlands acted as a natural brake on raging storms. But the processes that built the marshlands over 5,000 years are gone, victims of human settlement. The river no longer floods, and it was flooding that released sediment into the ever-renewing delta wetlands. Much of the sediment that would have maintained the wetlands now jets into the Gulf of Mexico.

Activities like oil and gas exploration and canal dredging compounded the sediment loss. So does the natural subsidence of the watery marshlands in an era of rising sea levels.

As a result, Louisiana lost 1,900 square miles of wetlands from 1930 to 2000. If nothing changes, another 700 square miles will disappear in the next 50 years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report issued in 2003.

The problem, of course, is that all of this will cost hundreds of billions of dollars--and the political will to follow this course over the next ten to twenty years. Expecting this kind of leadership from the present Republican leadership, however, is about as intelligent as spitting into Katrina-force winds.

Jack Kelly--A National Disgrace

In the past year, the Toledo Blade has earned a Pulitzer Prize for its series on the atrocities committed in Vietnam, and put themselves in consideration for another such award with their top-notch reporting on the still developing Coingate scandal. Why they still feel the need to carry the rantings of a fourth-rate Republican hack like Jack Kelly is beyond reason.

Kelly was a minor political appointee in the Reagan administration. He has been able to parlay that into a position on the national board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade, with a weakly (no, that is not a typo) column in each paper. This week's
topic was the Bush administration's (non)response to Katrina. Kelly cites an expert, Jason van Steenwyk, a "Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:'The federal govern­ment pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne.'”

At first glance, this Steenwyk guy seems to have a lot of experience in hurricane response--until you do a little research. See, Hurricane Iniki occured in Hawaii in September 1992. Do you remember another big hurricane that occurred late in August of that year? Hint: it was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season. That's right--Hurricane Andrew. Don't worry if you got it wrong; so did Kelly
--"For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla., after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002 [emphasis mine]. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three days.

The point here is, you can't cite Steenwyk as a source of firsthand knowlege for both Iniki and Andrew, because he could not have been at both. To his credit, Steenwyk attempts to (slightly) correct the record at his blog, linked to above.

Back to Kelly, though. Don't you remember how the media praised the first President Bush for his administration's rapid response to Andrew? It was one of the reasons he was re-elected, wasn't it? Jack, buddy, did you have an acid flashback there, or did your memory just go selective? The slooooow response to Andrew was one of the factors that cost Bush pere the '92 election.

Not only is Kelly apparently a former drug-use, but he also imbibes wingnut kool-aid during working hours:
"A better question — which few journalists ask — is why weren’t the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?"
Yep, if only Nagin would have packed off 12,000 to 13,000 evacuees on those 2,000 buses, this whole disaster could have been averted. Then the rescue teams would have only had to handle 20,000 evacuees that would not have had seats on the buses, instead of the 32,000 that they ended up having to rescue off of rooftops. And all of this time, I thought it was the fault of the Bush Administration for repeated failures to address serious problems with the security of this country.

Katrina and Davis-Bacon

After resting for six months, I've got a lot to say. It has become quickly apparent that George Bush is determined to rebuild the Gulf Coast on the backs of the working-class. In one of his earliest actions, Bush announced that he was revoking Davis-Bacon protections for workers employed on Katrina-related reconstruction projects, meaning that contractors can pay below the "going rate"--meaning, below the union rate--on these projects. Time magazine is reporting via Kevin Drum that the White House plan to boost the President's popularity (his approval rating is as low 38 percent in some polls)is to throw unlimited amounts of money into reconstruction projects down there. So, the Bush administration is going to spend huge amounts of tax dollars along the Gulf, but limit the amount of money that will be paid to workers--who will probably be risking their health, and possibly their lives, in the remnant of the "toxic soup" that now covers most of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. Hmm, sounds like Bush is once again taking care of his "base."

September 11 -- Four Years After

As many have already noted, today is the fourth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentegon, and the crash in western Pennsylvania. This has also been widely noted as the defining moment of the first Bush term. Many Americans chose to overlook the fact that Bush ignored the warning of the impending attack, given during his month-long vacation at his compound in Crawford on August 6, 2001. After getting word of the first attack on the World Trade Center while on his way to a grade school in Florida, Bush sat in the classroom while Chief of Staff Andrew Card informed him of the second attack. After completing his PR responsibilities, Bush and his entourage spend most of the rest of the morning on Air Force One, while most of the rest of America (and the world)watch in horror as the twin towers collapse in New York City--killing nearly 3,000 tower workers and first responders.

With the help of the SCLM, however, most Americans have been able to willfully ignore these shortcomings, and see the strong leader that we wanted to see during that unsettling time. That image of strong leadership most Americans retained, despite the failure to capture Osma bin Laden, and despite the "failures of intelligence" that led to the vanity war in Iraq.

Since the Bush "mandate" in the November election, however, the scales have begun to fall from the eyes of many Americans. With nearly 1900 casualties in the Bush vanity war and the continual rise of gas prices, there has been good reason for Bush's steady fall in popularity. Events along the Gulf Coast during the past two weeks, however, have exposed Bush for the abysmal leader that he is. Despite being briefed on Saturday, before the storm hit, Bush continued on his merry way, west to Phoenix and San Diego, to a friendlier crowd to attempt to sell some more Social Security snake oil as well as some Iraq War oil. In the meantime, of course, the city of New Orleans drowns in one of the disaster scenarios that FEMA had previously warned against.

Which finally brings us full circle. We are perhaps more vulnerable to attack and disaster four years after the events of 9/11. Four years that should have been spent in shoring up government capabilities to respond to events like Katrina, have been instead wasted on public relations window-dressing by the Busheviks. Four years that should have been spent improving the levys in southern Louisiana were instead spent issuing nonsense terror warning meant to shore up Bush's poll numbers. Perhaps 10,000 mostly poor, and mostly black, Americans--three times the number killed in the terror attacks of 9/11--have had to pay the ultimate price for Bush's incompetence.

February Hiatus

After taking most of February off, I am determined to be more diligent in posting my thoughts here. Much is occuring that affects the working world, and is deserving of comment. Plus, someday, someone may stumble across this blog and get a few laughs at its (and my) pretensions.