"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New
Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out.
Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and
a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains,
hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push,
to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry.
We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for
land."
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939
The Dust Bowl (Smithsonian)
The rise of labor organizations resulted from the growth of industry in the 1920s and the devastating effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
During the Great Depression, unemployment was high. Many employers tried to get as much work as possible from their employees for the lowest possible wage. Workers were upset with the speedup of assembly lines, working conditions and the lack of job security. Seeking strength in unity, they formed unions.
Automobile workers organized the U.A.W. (United Automobile Workers of America) in 1935. General Motors would not recognize the U.A.W. as the workers' bargaining representative. Hearing rumors that G.M. was moving work to factories where the union was not as strong, workers in Flint began a sit-down strike on December 30, 1936.
The sit-down was an effective way to strike. When workers walked off the job and picketed a plant, management could bring in new workers to break the strike. If the workers stayed in the plant, management could not replace them with other workers.
This photograph in the Labor Gallery shows the broken windows at General Motors' Flint Fisher Body Plant during the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37. You can see a video program about the sit-down strike in the gallery.
The Women's Auxiliary organized a first aid station, provided child care and collected food and money for strikers and their families. Some of the women organized the Emergency Brigade, an offshoot of the Women's Auxiliary. These women picketed the auto plant to divert management while another plant was seized. They smashed the auto plant's windows after they heard that the strikers had been gassed inside the building.
The women wore red tams, arm bands and political buttons such as these, which were loaned to the museum by the Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. The button with the words "Roosevelt: Labor's Choice" reflects labor's growing support for President Roosevelt.
On March 12, 1937, the Flint sit-down strike ended with an agreement under which General Motors recognized the United Auto Workers as the bargaining agent for their workers. The success of the UAW inspired others. Unions grew across the nation.
1930
* National Unemployed Council formed
* Imperial Valley, California, Farmworkers' Strike
1931
* Congress passes Davis-Bacon Act providing for payment of prevailing wages to workers employed on public works projects
* "Scottsboro Boys" arrested in Alabama
* Harlan County, Kentucky, Miners' Strike
* Tampa, Florida, Cigar Workers' Strike
1932
* President Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected
* Congress passes the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which prohibits federal injunctions in labor disputes and outlaws yellow-dog contracts
* Bonus March of World War I veterans on Washington, DC
* American Federation of Government Employees founded
* California Pea Pickers' Strike
* Century Airlines Pilots' Strike
* Davidson-Wilder, Tennessee, Coal Strike begins
* Ford Hunger March in Detroit, Michigan
* Four workers killed as protesters march on Ford Rouge Plant near Detroit seeking jobs during the Great Depression
* Vacaville, California Tree Pruners' Strike 1933
* Congress passes the National Industrial Recovery Act, Section 7(a) of which guarantees rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively
* Frances Perkins becomes secretary of labor and the first woman named to a presidential cabinet
* Newspaper Guild founded
* Briggs Manufacturing Strike
* California Farmworkers' Strikes
* Detroit, Michigan, Tool and Die Strike
* Hormel, Iowa, Meat-Packing Strike
* New Mexico Miners' Strike
1934
* Southern Tenant Farmers' Union founded
* Harlem, New York City, Jobs-for-Negroes Boycott
* Imperial Valley, California, Farmworkers' Strike
* Minneapolis Teamsters' Strike
* Newark Star-Ledger Newspaper Strike begins
* Rubber Workers' Strike
* San Francisco Longshoremen & General Strike
* Textile Workers' Strike
* Toledo, Ohio, Auto-Lite Strike
1935
* US Supreme Court declares the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional
* Congress passes the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
* FD Roosevelt signs the labor-backed Social Security Act into law
* Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) formed inside the American Federation of Labor
* Negro Labor Committee founded
* United Auto Workers founded
* Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri Metal Workers' Strike
* Pacific Northwest Lumber Strike
* Southern Sharecroppers' and Farm Laborers' Strike
1936
* President Franklin Roosevelt reelected
* Steel Workers' Organizing Committee formed
* Atlanta, Georgia, Auto Workers' Sit-Down Strike
* Berkshire Knitting Mills Strike
* First sit-down strike by auto workers starts at Bendix Products in South Bend, Indiana
* General Motors Sit-Down Strike
* RCA Strike
* Rubber Workers' begin the nation's first major sit-down strike at
the Firestone tire plant in Akron, Ohio
* Seamen's Strike
* Seattle Post-Intelligencer Newspaper Strike
1937
* US Supreme Court declares the NLRA constitutional
* American Federation of Labor expels the CIO unions
* American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union founded
* General Motors Sit-Down Strikes in US and Canada - stikes end after workers win first UAW contract
* Battle of the Overpass, Ford Motor Co. thugs beat Walter Reuther and other UAW organizers in Dearborn, Michigan
* Hershey, Pennsylvania, Chocolate Workers' Strike
* Little Steel Strike and Memorial Day Massacre, ten strikers shot at Republic Steel in Chicago
* US Steel signs a first contract with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee
1938
* Congress passes the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes the forty-hour work week, the minimum wage, and bans child labor in interstate commerce
* Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) is founded with John L. Lewis as president
* Chicago Newspaper Strike begins
* Hilo, Hawaii, Massacre
* Maytag Strike
* US Supreme Court issues decision permitting employers to permanently replace strikers
1939
* Chrysler Auto Strike
* General Motors Tool and Diemakers' Strike
Source
This information was obtained from the web site maintained by the San Jose State University Steinbeck Center.
His Works