The history of labor activism in Detroit is the history of many communities joining, breaking, and rejoining.

Early organizing actions were greatly hampered by unions unwillingness to reach across professional boundaries and include workers from all stages of auto production. In addition, racial tensions fragmented worker solidarity through most of the first half of the 20th century.

Labor activism in the Great Depression

In January 1933, a strike of 6,000 people at the Briggs Manufacturing sparked strikes throughout the city, bringing the auto industry to a halt. The workers were not part of a union, so it seemed that the strike could be easily stopped using the large number of unemployed workmen in the city at the time. However, a community of workers supported by Mayor Frank Murphy and others successfully held out until Briggs Manufacturing collected overwhelming police power through State-level influence.

Manufacturers frequently hired spies to infiltrate unions and sabotage organizing efforts. They also set up competing “official” unions and tied membership to benefits. The vigilante Black Legion, a group of white Protestants, attacked union organizers and others.

The Mechanics Educational Society of America hid radicalism behind an intentionally plain-sounding name in order to confuse management. It recruited over 35,000 skilled workers by the beginning of 1935. The more inclusive Automotive Industrial Workers Association allowed workers of all skill levels.

Autoworkers in the American Federation of Labor had been agitating for an auto-focused union, and in 1935, the AFL formed the United Autoworkers Union.

A series of sit-down strikes in 1937 both energized and taxed unions across the city. Thousands of workers across many unions decided to hold impromptu, in-house strikes across the year. Their presence in the factories and stores made it impossible for management to bring in non-union labor and dangerous to use force near valuable equipment and goods. To reinforce the sit-downs, union supporters and family members organized meals and visits. Most of the strikes were successful.

Sources

Babson, Steve. Working Detroit: the making of a union town (1986).