Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

danger, because alcohol was needed to get the workers'
minds off rebellion. In the new auto industry the A.F.L.
was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes
from the auto manufacturers (usually via expensive advertisements
in labor newspapers or "donations" to anticommunist
campaigns). (10)
But when the dam broke, the pent-up anger of
millions of Euro-Amerikan industrial workers was a
mighty force. New organizing drives and new strikes had
never completely stopped, even during the repressive
1920s. Defeat was common. But in 1934 two city-wide
general strikes in San Francisco and Minneapolis, and a
near-general strike in Toledo stunned capitalist Amerika.
The victory of longshoremen in San Francisco and
teamsters in Minneapolis were important, but the Toledo
auto workers strike - in which thousands of unemployed
supporters of the auto workers drove the Ohio National
Guard off the streets in direct battle - was the clearest
sign of things to come. The victory in the Auto-Lite parts
plant was immediately followed by union victories at all
the other major factories in town. Toledo became in 1934
the first "union city" in industrial Amerika. The tidal
wave of labor unrest affected all parts of the U.S. and all
industries.
The new Sit-Down strikes became a rage. It was
customary strategy for employers to break strikes by keeping
the plants going with scabs, while hired thugs and
police repressed the strike organization. But in the Sit-
Downs the workers simply seized and occupied the plants,
not only stopping production but threatening the bosses
with physical destruction of their factories if they tried any
repression. After so much abuse and powerlessness, militant
young workers discovered great pleasure in temporarily
taking over. In some strikes unlucky bands of foremen
and company officials trapped in plant offices would
become union prisoners for a few hours or days.
While 1935 and 1936 saw Sit-Down strikes in the
rubber plants in Akron, Ohio, in auto plants in Detroit,
Cleveland and Atlanta, it was the Dec. 1936 Flint,
Michigan Sit-Down strike against GM that became the
pivotal labor battle of the 1930s. Flint was the central fortress
of GM production, their special company town where
GM carefully kept both Afrikans and foreign-born immigrants
to a minimum. Wages in the many Flint GM
plants were relatively high for the times.
Still many enthusiastic Flint auto workers organized
themselves around the new C.I.O. United Auto
Workers union, and seized both Fisher Body No. 1 and
Chevy No. 4 plants. Thousands of CIO militants from all
over Michigan demonstrated in the streets as the Sit-
Downers, armed with crowbars and bats, barricaded
themselves into the plants. Since the first plant was the only
source of Buick, Olds and Pontiac bodies, and the second
plant was the only source of Chevrolet engines, the
CIO Sit-Down strangled all GM car production. (11)
After 90 days of intense struggle around the seized
plants, General Motors gave in. They recognized the UAW
as the union representation in seventeen plants. This was
the key victory of the entire Euro-Amerikan labor upsurge
of the 1930s. It was obvious that if General Motors, the