Table Of ContentNOT AUTOMATIC
Not Automatic
Women and the Left
in the Forging of the
Auto Workers' Union
SOL DOLLINGER AND
GENORA JOHNSON DOLLINGER
Monthly Review Press
New York
Copyright © Sol Dollinger 2000
All Rights Reserved
Library ef Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dollinger, Sol, 1920-
Not automatic : women and the left in the forging of the Auto
Workers' Union / Sol Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-58367-017-3 (cloth). - ISBN 1-58367-018-1 (paper)
I. International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and
Agricultural Implement Workers of America-History. 2. Trade
unions-Automobile industry workers-Organizing-United States
History. 3. Women in trade-unions-United States-History.
I. Dollinger, Genora Johnson. II. Title.
HD6515.AR215735 2000
33 l.4'781292'097 3-dc2 l 99-38833
CIP
ISBN 1-58367-018-1 (paper)
ISBN 1-58367-017-3 (cloth)
Monthly Review Press
122 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
Manufactured in Canada
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
List of Illustrations viii
Foreword
by Kim Moody X
Preface XIV
PART I ORGANIZING THE AUTO INDUSTRY, 1934-1948
Chapter I The Toledo Auto-Lite Strike, 1934 3
Chapter 2 The Toledo Chevrolet Transmission Strike, 1935 16
Chapter 3 Homer Martin Leads the UAW 27
Chapter 4 Factional Warfare Breaks Out, 1937-1938 36
Chapter 5 A Program for Peace 45
Chapter 6 R. J. Thomas Elected Leader as Recession and
War Preparations Hit 53
Chapter 7 The UAW Organizes the Ford Motor Company,
1940--1941 63
Chapter 8 Equality of Sacrifice? 71
Chapter 9 Anti-union Forces Take Revenge 82
Chapter 10 Briggs and the Mafia 93
Chapter 11 Reuther Slams the Door on Union Democracy,
1947-1948 105
PART II ORAL HISTORY
Chapter 12 Striking Flint
Genora Dollinger Remembers the 1937 Sitdown 123
PART Ill PUTTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Chapter 13 Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval 163
Chapter 14 Who Led the Flint Sitdown to Victory?
On the Rewriting of History 173
Epilogue The Auto Unions Today 189
Notes 195
Bibliography 205
Index 208
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is due to the following for their assistance:
Nancy Bartlett, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
Dean Braid (Education Director, 1995) and Gene Ridley (Education
Director, 1996), Buick UAW Local No. 599, Flint, Michigan. Oscar
Bunch, President, UAW Local No. 14, Toledo, Ohio. Dave Finkel, editor
of Against the Current, for permission to reprint Chapter 11, which appear
ed in the May-June 1996 issue, with modifications. Margaret Anne
Fortier, Learning Center Coordinator, Labor Museum and Learning
Center of Michigan, Flint, Michigan. James C. Marshall, Manager,
Local History and Genealogy Department, Toledo-Lucas County Public
Library, Toledo, Ohio. Militant, 194 7, 1948; New Militant, 1935. Nation,
1934, 1935. New York Times, April 1934---June 1935; May 1935-June
1935. Socialist Call, 1938, 1939. Tom Whalen, editor of The History ef
Region 2B. United Automobile Workers Local No. 12, Toledo, Ohio.
Workers Age, 1937, 1938, 1939.
My deep appreciation goes to Dr. Leslie Hough and Thomas Feather
stone of the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University,
Detroit, Michigan-repository of the oral histories of Joseph Ditzel,
James Roland, Genora Dollinger, and many others.
A special debt of gratitude is due to Anne Fox, without whose editorial
assistance, encouragement, and advice this book would not have seen
the light of day.
List of Illustrations
I. Electric Auto-Lite strike, 1934: Troops lead the charge behind a tear-gas
barrage. Toledo-Lucas County Library Archives.
2. The National Guard returns fire against strikers with stones from the
street Toledo-Lucas County Library Archives.
3. Electric Auto-Lite strike: a strikebreaker; stripped of clothes, is marched
down the street Toledo-Lucas County Library Archives.
4. Picket line at Toledo Chevrolet Transmission strike, 1935. Archives of Labor
and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
5. A J. Muste, National Secretary of the American Workers Party. Archives of
Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
6. John McGill, president of the Buick local 1940, 1945, 1946. Archives of
UAW Buick Local No. 599.
7. Roy Snowden, Genora and Sol Dollinger in 1944. Dollinger collection.
8. John Anderson, President of Fleetwood UAW Local No. 15, standing in
front of the factory. Courtesy of Minnie Anderson.
9. Roy Snowden wielding bat at the Ford 1940-1941 organizing campaign.
Photo: Milton Brooks, © Detroit News Archives.
I 0. Emil, William, Ernest, and Emil Mazey. Courtesy of William Mazey.
I I. Genora Johnson and son Jarvis at the 1937 children's picket line. Archives
of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.
12. Genora and some of the five hundred women inspectors in Mack
Avenue Briggs in 1944. Dollinger collection.
13. Flint, 1937: Car blockade of Fisher Body 2, site of the Battle of Bull's Run.
Flint Journal Photo.
14. Strikers at Fisher Body 2 repulsing tear-gas attack at the Battle of Bull's
Run. Flint Journal Photo.
15. Women's Emergency Brigade marching in front of Chevrolet Plant 9 after
breaking the windows to release the tear gas. Flint Labor Museum and
Learning Center.
16. Chevrolet Avenue after the capture of Plant 4. Flint Labor Museum and
Learning Center.
17. Genora Johnson with members of the Women's Auxiliary. Socialist Appeal.
18. John Lamesfield, recording secretary; Kermit Johnson, president, Chevrolet
Division UAW Local No. 156. Dollinger collection.
Foreword
Kim Moody
In writing Not Automatic, Sol Dollinger has set out to put the record
straight. In doing so he has brought us a wealth of new material and
insights into how America's industrial unions were organized and won
their first victories. This is not a memoir or personal account, but a
well-researched history of the early years of the United Automobile
Workers, told through the eyes of a participant. Covering the period
from the early 1930s through the late 1940s, Not Automatic brings to life
many of the worker activists whose roles in creating the UAW have
been passed over or trivialized in much of the literature on America's
most studied union.
As Dollinger recounts the struggles, the factional fights, the heroism
and savvy of "regular" working-class men and women, the cowardice
and false wisdom of old-guard union bureaucrats, and the perfidy and
plunder of corporate giants still on the prowl, the lessons for today leap
out and demand our attention.
The unorganized were not "organized"; rather they organized them
selves or were recruited by fellow workers, sometimes with help from
the best of the contemporary officials. Dollinger writes:
The battles for unionization engaged tens of thousands of rank-and-file auto
workers, who volunteered hours, days, and weeks of superhuman, self
sacrificing activity. After their normal shift work, these union warriors waged
a battle against the country's biggest corporations.
There was no organizing institute or legion of well-paid professional
organizers. When these did appear from the tired hierarchy of AFL
officialdom, they often did more harm than good. The real organizers
of the UAW were rank and filers or local officials like Charles Rigby,
a press operator who initiated the union in the stamping department of
the Auto-Lite plant in Toledo, Ohio that would explode in one of the
FOREWORD xi
first successful strikes in the industry; or like Kermit and Genora
Johnson, later Genora Dollinger, who would play key roles in the great
Flint sitdown of 1936-1937.
After years of failed "blitz" drives by professional organizers, we are
hopefully witnessing the return to this kind of unionizing as we see
Teamster members volunteering to recruit workers at Overnite Trans
portation and Continental Airlines, or Communications Workers'
members from telecommunications signing up thousands of airline reser
vation clerks at USAir. Once again, it seems, more and more U.S.
workers are willing to put in the "hours, days, and weeks" of volunteer
efforts needed to do the job.
Dollinger reminds us of something else, as well. It was corporate
America's relentless pressure on the workforce that set people in mo
tion, but it was a bigger vision that brought tens of thousands into the
streets to defend and support one another in struggle after struggle.
While we certainly have an excess of relentless pressure on working
people as corporate America pushes for lean and mean industries and
society, the vision of what a vibrant, democratic labor movement could
do is hobbled by a commitment to labor-management "partnerships,"
hierarchical methods, and an obsession with media and PR techniques.
As welcome as the new vitality at the AFL-CIO is, it suffers from a
distrust of the rank and file that is not qualitatively different from that
of the AFL old guard, or even many CIO leaders in the 1930s.
The vision that inspired workers in the 1930s as well as much of the
tactical and organizational know-how that made these activists so
effective was typically provided by workers who first acquired a bigger
world-view, and frequently a pretty good political education, in one of
the many organizations of the socialist and communist left of that
period. Historians have tended to focus on those who rose to high
places, even if momentarily, in the UAW and other CIO unions. This
has favored well-known national leaders like the Reuther brothers and,
oddly enough given America's thirty-year Cold War anti-Communist
obsession, leaders and activists associated with the Communist Party of
the Depression years.
Without trying to deny the role played by these better-known figures,
Dollinger redresses some of the imbalance. Much of his "lost history"
is that of rank-and-file leaders who made history but didn't make the
history books. In particular, he tells the stories of those militant workers
affiliated with a number of non-Communist left organizations: followers
of A. J. Muste, Socialist Party members, and Trotskyists.
