A Brief History of the United Auto Workers (UAW)
—Chrissie
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We here at History with the Szilagyis would like to express our solidarity with the UAW workers and congratulate them on their success in the recent contract negotiations. Sometimes, a strike is necessary.
Perhaps surprisingly, the history of the United Auto Workers begins before the mass production of automobiles with the laborers who produced wagons and carriages. In 1891, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) created the International Union of Carriages and Wagon Workers (IUCWW). In 1913, seeing the shift toward cars, the IUCWW added “Automobile” to their name. The AFL demanded they remove this addition; when they refused, the AFL kicked them out. On 2 September 1918, they reformed as the United Automobile, Aircraft, and Vehicle Workers of America. This union thrived, reaching a membership of 45,000 in 1920, now under the name Auto Workers Union. This was their high point, as other auto unions pulled members away and union membership became associated with communism, pushing people away from any union.
Some of the other auto unions were small locals under the auspices of the AFL, who had come to realize their mistake in pushing away members involved in automobile production. At their 1935 convention, these smaller locals sought to unify, creating the United Automobile Workers of America. At this same convention, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed. They focused on unskilled labor, which conflicted with the AFL’s longstanding focus on skilled labor, and so the AFL pushed them out the next year. They renamed themselves the Congress of Industrial Organization (still CIO) and took the UAW with them.
These new unions took advantage of a recent law created under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs: the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, better known as the Wagner Act. This guaranteed the right of private sector employees to organize and collectively bargain with their employer. It even protected their right to strike.
The UAW tested this during the next few years, most famously with the Flint Sit Down Strike from December 1936 to February 1937. This strike forced General Motors to recognize the union. Chrysler followed suit shortly after, subsequent to a shorter strike. Of the major auto companies, Ford remained a holdout until the pressure of public opinion and the FDR administration forced the issue in 1941. Ford had, prior to the Depression, even worked to undermine the calls for a union by increasing the pay for his workers to five dollars a day.
The UAW was instrumental in the United States’ efforts in World War II, beginning before the US even entered the war. FDR encouraged a shift toward the production of war materials and away from consumer goods, like cars. The heads of the auto companies didn’t like this idea, believing it would cut into their profits. UAW President Walter Ruther supported the idea of transitioning existing factories to war production and suggested that if some existing plants were to be reworked to produce airplanes, UAW workers would be able to produce 500 planes a day. His particular plan did not work, but the US’ entry into the war in December 1941 made the point moot: Americans needed war materials produced by American factories, whether the owners of the car companies liked it or not. And they also needed more workers—while the men went to war, women took up factory jobs. To pay women less was common across all industries, including the auto companies, but the UAW pushed for these women to be paid equally to the men standing alongside them doing the same job. They were not always successful, but their efforts made sure the women were paid better than they would have been. The union was less effective in gaining equal pay for African Americans, and had mixed reactions in trying to assure equal treatment on the shop floor.
The postwar era was a boom time for the United States, and that included autoworkers. But as unions began bargaining to include pensions and health insurance, using strikes as leverage, Congress looked to reduce their power. Elements of the Wagner Act were undermined with new legislation: solidarity strikes were outlawed, closed shops opened, and union political activities curtailed. Conservatives also did all they could to associate unionism with communism, to the point that union officers were required to sign affidavits denying any association with the Communist Party.
In 1950, after strikes and bargaining, the UAW and GM came to an agreement sometimes called the Treaty of Detroit. The union agreed to a five-year contract in exchange for pensions and health insurance for the workers. These soon became the standard for workers across all industries, blue- and white-collar. The issue of health insurance has continued to be a sticking point for the UAW and other unions which also have members outside the United States, as the US is one of the few industrialized countries without government provided health insurance or care, meaning the locals and their laborers elsewhere do no need to include that in their bargaining. Through the 1950s, the American auto industry saw increasing competition from foreign automakers, most notably Volkswagen. By the end of the decade, a recession prompted the loss of 300,000 auto jobs, a point that was used by conservatives to claim that the demands of unions had caused the losses. They also blamed union contracts for high prices of goods coming out of unionized production, and the auto industry was an easy example. In fact, however, UAW President Ruther countered this by trying to include in negotiations elements that would lower prices (this would, after all, also benefit the workers), but these never made it into a final contract.
While a union’s primary focus is the workplace, it also has influence on people’s lives away from work. With this in mind, the UAW was greatly involved in the Civil Rights movements of the mid-twentieth century. Walter Ruther gave Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. an office in the UAW headquarters building in Detroit, where he wrote some, if not all, of his Dream speech. The UAW also funded some of the work for the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, where Ruther was one of the speakers.
The auto industry was hit hard by economic problems in the last decades of the twentieth century, not the least of which were related to oil embargoes and gasoline shortages of the 1970s. Between this and an influx of cheaper cars that had better gas milage, the UAW was forced to concessions time and again as the Big Three claimed they could not maintain wages while also competing with the new imports. The Reagan Administration (1981-89) also did everything they could to undermine workers and unions, beginning with his breaking of the strike of air traffic controllers in the summer of 1981. This, and Reagan’s deficient appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, gave companies license to ignore the needs of their laborers and the unions who represented them. At the same time, some union leaders allied with management, either hoping to help their members or with an eye to double-dealing for their own benefit. At times, even the union members saw the organization as working against them.
The labor issues of the 1990s surrounded the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which allowed American companies to outsource elsewhere on the continent where they could pay lower wages, provide fewer (if any) benefits, and maintain lower safety standards, all while keeping prices the same. This followed into the automakers’ worsening financial situation of the first decades of the twenty-first century. As older workers retired, the cost of their pensions and benefits became a growing portion of companies’ costs. Additionally, higher fuel prices during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars led many Americans to trade their SUVs and trucks (the heart of the American market) for better-milage smaller cars, many from Japanese or German automakers. When the financial markets crashed in 2008, both GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in order to reorganize. The UAW was presented by these companies with the choice of accepting concessions in the form of reduced wages and benefits or seeing all of the jobs disappear as the companies collapsed. These were, of course, supposed to be temporary measures, but after the emergency had ended and contracts came up for renewal, there were always reasons to not restore workers to their pre-2008 wages.
These issues came to a head amidst negotiations beginning in the spring of 2023. The recently-elected UAW President Shawn Fain presented a hard line to the automakers: with dramatically rising profits over the last few years, there’s no reason not to restore to workers what they had conceded in the emergency situation of 2008. With both sides at an impasse, Fain held a vote of the membership to approve a strike; 97% voted in favor. The strike began on 14 September 2023. It was organized as a rolling strike, meaning that not all members would walk out at once, but that specific plants would be targeted, with additions scheduled as long as a tentative deal was not reached. Fain called this a “Stand-Up Strike” in a nod to the 1936 Sit-Down Strike in Flint that forced GM to recognize the union. Approximately fifty thousand workers from GM, Ford, and Stellantis struck between 14 September and 30 October. Tentative agreements were reached separately with each company, Ford on 25 October, Stellantis three days later, and GM on 30 October. The new contract addresses the most important issues of concern, particularly pay increases and removing the system of keeping workers at a temporary status in order to pay them even less. As of this writing, the contracts have not yet been fully ratified by the membership but are expected to be soon. Never forget: united we bargain, divided we starve.