Part 2 of a three-part series on the 1934 Fisher Body strikes in Kansas City, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Tarrytown.
While workers in Kansas City were voting to walk out, in Cleveland, 2,800 Fisher Body strikers jammed into the cavernous assembly hall at the Metal Trades Temple on Walnut Ave. They were there to hear a proposal to end their week-old strike from representatives of the American Federation of Labor and Franklin Roosevelt’s newly formed Automobile Labor Board. On stage, arms folded, Paul E. Miley, Richard L. Byrd, Francis A. Dillon put their heads together to confer about the night’s agenda.
Entering the great hall, workmen scanned the room looking for friends and coworkers. Many brought their wives. The men quickly bunched up in little clumps around the room. Leaning in, they joked among themselves and shared their assessment that the strike was holding and that, if they just stuck together, the company would soon be forced to give in to their demands. Wives settled into their seats and turned to their neighbors. Sergeants-at-Arms circulated, checking union cards. Anyone who couldn’t produce a card was escorted out.
Paul Miley, president of the union at the Fisher Body plant, chaired the meeting. He knew the workers’ sentiment when they arrived for the meeting was in favor of continuing the strike. They were confident the week-long strike put them in a strong position to finally force the company to recognize their union and to bargain collectively over their demands, including reinstatement of fired union men, enforceable seniority rights, paid weekend overtime, and a 30-cent-an-hour raise.
Miley introduced Richard Byrd, the labor representative on Roosevelt’s Automobile Board, established the previous month to prevent a nationwide strike of autoworkers dissatisfied with the Big Three’s refusal to recognize their unions. Byrd was a former Fisher Body worker. His work experience gave him credibility with the workers in the room, who wanted government and the labor federation’s support. They listened respectfully.
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“Those in control of the automobile industry are opposed to collective bargaining with union representatives because they fear loss of control of their plants and because of competitive costs,” Byrd told them, expressing more concern for the sensibilities of the industrialists than the workers he was thought to represent.
“There is a natural opposition to any change in the policy that has been in force since the inception of the industry—an opposition arising from anything that tends to change the natural routine,” he added, revealing with that phrase what he believed the natural order to be.
Byrd went on to assure the workers that if they traded the strong position the strike had put them in by returning to work for a vague promise of future labor Board-supervised negotiations, there would be no discrimination and no loss of jobs for union members.
Just one week earlier, in the same room, John P. Frey, secretary-treasurer of the metal trades department of the American Federation of Labor, warned trade unionists, “that we are in more danger of having our essential rights taken away from us than at any other time in the history of collective bargaining.”
Frey warned that the effort under the National Recovery Act to give minorities representation—a reference to company unions like the Fisher Body Employees’ Co-operative Association of Cleveland—was more dangerous to labor’s welfare than anything employers had ever done before.
In a pointed message directed to employers as much as the trade unionists in the hall, he cautioned that “Labor faced three ways of securing its rights, first by collective bargaining, by governmental decrees and by executive orders, or by ‘the law of the jungle’—force.”
In contrast, Byrd and Dillon urged compromise. The air seemed to go out of the room. Men looked at one another, searching faces for reassurance. They did what was expected of them, voting 1,387 to 190 to return to work. The strike that started one week before with such promise was over, with negotiations shifted to Detroit under federal oversight.
“The members of the union displayed an extraordinary amount of wisdom in voting to end the strike,” said Francis Dillon, the auto industry organizer for the American Federation of Labor. “I sincerely hope that out of this will come a better understanding of the problems of employer and employee. This is not a victory for either side. It is truly a step toward the abolition of all prejudices and hatreds.”
After the meeting, Miley and Dillon left for Detroit for talks between union representatives and the companies, organized by Dr. Leo Wolman, chairman of President Roosevelt’s Automobile Labor Board, to resolve the strikes. Representing the companies were Charles T. Fisher, president of Fisher Body; W. S. Knudsen, first vice president of General Motors; and Lincoln R. Scafe, general manager of the Cleveland Fisher Body plant.
According to an Associated Press account, those present for labor included Paul Miley of Cleveland; Homer Martin of Kansas City; W. Lauschinger of Janesville, Wisconsin; C. H. Gillman and F. C. Pieper of Atlanta, Georgia; Otto Kleinert of Tarrytown, New York; Arthur Law of Pontiac, Michigan; William McCannan of Lansing, Michigan; and L. Cook of Fisher Plant No. 1 in Flint, Michigan. AFL automobile industry organizers William Collins and Francis Dillon were also there.
Company officials, however, refused to meet directly with John Bostwick, president of the Federated Automobile Workers of America (FAWA) in St. Louis, while his local was on strike. Having recently seceded from the AFL, Kansas City and St. Louis—both organized under the FAWA—were not granted formal standing in the negotiations, even as the Detroit talks proceeded and Kansas City workers continued walking the picket line outside the Leeds plant.
Wolman was not much concerned about the strikes in St. Louis and Kansas City, or the workers’ demands. Those strikes, he believed, would work themselves out. His primary concern was getting Cleveland back to work—a priority shared by the Labor Board, company representatives, and the AFL, if not by the local union presidents and the workers they represented.
The Cleveland strike was over. Workers returned to the line, but Dillon was wrong. Their anger did not dissipate—it sharpened. Much of it was directed at the high-handed attitudes of Alfred P. Sloan, Henry Ford, and Walter P. Chrysler. Close behind was a growing bitterness toward the American Federation of Labor, whose leaders had once again urged retreat just as workers were on the brink of victory.
SOURCES:
Kansas City mass meeting at the Athenaeum, April 28, 1934; attendance of approximately 400 workers; officers present including W. G. Patterson (president) and Homer Martin (vice-president); discussion of night-shift elimination, discharge of day-shift workers, and links to Cleveland and St. Louis strikes; reported in Kansas City Star, April 27–28, 1934, pp. 3, 1.
Worker grievances and strike recommendation at the Leeds Chevrolet–Fisher plant, including elimination of a night shift of roughly 1,000 workers; discharge of 40–60 day-shift men; replacement by low-seniority night-shift workers; and recommendation for a strike beginning Monday morning with a second meeting scheduled to finalize plans; Kansas City Star, April 28–29, 1934, p. 1.
Remarks by Jack Swift, paint sprayer and adjustment-committee member, alleging that discharged workers were handed final paychecks immediately—contrary to normal Saturday or Monday payroll practice—and asserting that the firings followed a speech by General Motors president Alfred P. Sloan Jr. signaling opposition to independent unions and a policy of eliminating union supporters; Kansas City Star, April 28, 1934, p. 1; Kansas City Journal-Post, April 30, 1934, p. 1.
Vote to strike, establishment of strike headquarters, commissary planning, and picket organization, including warnings against violence and weapons on the picket line; Kansas City Star, April 29, 1934, p. 1; Kansas City Journal-Post, April 30, 1934, p. 1.
Observer’s description of the Athenaeum meeting, including workers with oil-stained hands holding children, a conversational speaking style, and the remark “He’s got more brains than teeth,” reported without laughter and met with nods of approval; Kansas City newspaper reporting, April 1934.
Discussion among Kansas City workers of the Cleveland Fisher Body strike, including awareness that Cleveland’s shutdown created a production bottleneck due to exclusive body-stamping dies, a point widely reported in coverage of the strike’s national implications; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 23–30, 1934.
Telegram from St. Louis strikers pledging continued resistance, and pledges from railroad brotherhood members not to move parts or finished automobiles during the strike; Kansas City Journal-Post, April 30, 1934, p. 1.
Cleveland Fisher Body mass meeting at the Metal Trades Temple, Walnut Avenue; attendance of approximately 2,800 union members; closed meeting with union-card checks; presence of women; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1934, p. 1.
Strike demands of Cleveland Fisher Body workers, including reinstatement of discharged union men, enforceable seniority rights, overtime pay, and a wage increase; reported throughout April 1934 in Cleveland Press and Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Role of Richard L. Byrd, labor representative on the Automobile Labor Board, and his address to Cleveland strikers explaining the proposal to return to work pending negotiations; Byrd’s statements regarding employer opposition to collective bargaining due to fear of loss of control and competitive costs; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1934, pp. 1, 5.
Byrd’s assurances of non-discrimination and job protection if workers returned to work under Labor Board supervision; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1934, p. 1; Cleveland Press, April 30, 1934, p. 8.
Address by John P. Frey at the Metal Trades Temple, April 8, 1934, warning that labor was in greater danger of losing essential rights than at any previous time; condemnation of company unions and reference to “the law of the jungle”; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 8, 1934, p. 8.
Vote of Cleveland strikers to return to work, tally of 1,387–190; dissolution of picket lines; resumption of the 7 a.m. shift; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1934, p. 1; Cleveland Press, April 30, 1934, p. 1.
Statement by Francis J. Dillon, American Federation of Labor organizer, praising the vote as “an extraordinary amount of wisdom” and framing the outcome as neither a victory nor a defeat; Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1934, p. 1.
Post-strike bitterness among auto workers, including growing hostility toward General Motors leadership and the American Federation of Labor for urging retreat at a moment of perceived leverage; corroborated by contemporaneous reporting and retrospective testimony in Wyndham Mortimer, Organize! My Life as a Union Man.
