THE 1934 Auto-Lite strike in Toledo demonstrated how workers in the worst economic crisis...

[Hannah Bell]

in living memory--could break through after a series of defeats and win.



When the depression hit, it hit Toledo hard... One in three workers in a city of 275,000 were on relief...Conditions at Auto-Lite--where wages were even lower than the NRA minimum and the drive for output was high--led workers to strike in February 23, 1934... The company responded by getting a judge to issue an injunction... Within three weeks, the bosses had gathered some 1,800 strikebreakers at Auto-Lite.

But workers had a secret weapon--the Lucas Country Unemployed League, led by A.J. Muste and the American Workers Party...Soon, the Unemployed League had organized mass pickets at the plant gates...the Unemployed League...sent a letter to the judge informing him that they would break the injunction and encourage mass picketing.

After they were arrested, tried and released for defying the injunction, workers walked right back to the picket line directly from court...Toledo workers and the unemployed responded in kind, and soon, more than 10,000 people were turning out to the picket line...When the cops tried to escort strikebreakers out of the plant, picketers responded with a barrage of bricks. Tear gas bombs rained down from the factory windows, as company thugs wielded bats and fired a water hose at the crowd.

"Choked by the tear gas fired from inside the plant, it was the police who finally gave up the battle. Then, the thousands of pickets laid siege to the plant, determined to maintain their picket line. The workers improvised giant slingshots from inner tubes. They hurled whole bricks through the plant windows. The plant soon was without lights. The scabs cowered in the dark. The frightened deputies set up machine guns inside every entranceway. It was not until the arrival of 900 National Guardsmen, 15 hours later, that the scabs were finally released...

Then followed one of the most amazing battles in U. S. labor history...With their bare fists and rocks, the workers fought a six-day pitched battle with the National Guard. They fought from rooftops, from behind billboards and came through alleys to flank the guardsmen...But the strikers and their thousands of sympathizers did more than shame the young National Guardsmen. They educated them and tried to win them over...A year later, when Toledo unionists went to Defiance, Ohio, to aid the Pressed Steel Company strike, they found that 8 percent of the strikers had been National Guardsmen serving in uniform in the Auto-Lite strike...

http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/15/labor-breakthrough-in-toledo

[Hannah Bell]

1. Unrecs for labor history on a Democratic discussion board. My, my.

[Luminous Animal]

2. Who the hell unrecs labor on a Democratic discussion board?

This is getting out of hand.

[AnneD]

6. The same people that bitch about union members getting....

high paying jobs or refuse to back unions when they go on strike because of their own spineless jealously. Thanks for this post. This is history that the corp MSM don't want you to know or schools don't teach. Wonder why that is. Maybe the corp overlords don't want THAT information getting out.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Yes it is out of hand

K&R cuz this is core to we OUGHT to be about.

[slampoet]

20. There is a large amount of people on DU who just don't know what it is like to be "The Other"

These are people who think their strife is more important than the general good, and the Democratic party is full of them.

[Greyhound]

11. Don'cha know? The Democratic Party doesn't need labor

(or the left) to win anymore.
:eyes:
:kick: & R

[ccharles000]

3. k/r

[Hannah Bell]

4. Participant's account:

"On the first day that we violated the injunction, our mass picket line consisted of four individuals. That’s right – just four. We were arrested, jailed, convicted and let out on bail and warned not to return to the picket line. But we told the judge that we were going back. And we did – picking up some 50 pickets on the way.

After that, there were a series of arrests, each one with a greater amount of pickets – first 46, then 108, and in between many smaller numbers. Every time we went back from the courts and jail, the picket lines kept growing steadily until on May 23 there were 10,000 reported on the street in front of the plant...

The Auto-Lite strikers battled first the police, then the company guards and deputies, and finally the National Guard. The first day the Guard came in they fired without warning at the unarmed strikers, killing two and wounding 25.

After those murders, the enraged strikers fought the guard for six days and nights – returning again and again to face tear gas and vomit gas, bayonet charges, and even rifle fire. During the lulls in the battle, we stood on boxes educating the guardsmen about the issues in the strike and how they were being used against the workers...On June 4, the company surrendered and signed on the dotted line..."

- from a speech given by Ted Selander on June 3, 1984 at an anniversary celebration of the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike

http://www.geocities.com/youth4sa/Toledo-1934.html

[tkmorris]

5. Recommended damnit

This is what it takes to effect real social change in America, particularly when it's corporate entities that are the enemy. Sadly I don't think we have the guts for it anymore, or maybe we just got too comfortable.

[Hannah Bell]

8. the Unemployed League's May 5 letter:

Honorable Judge Stuart:

On Monday morning, May 7, at the Auto-Lite plant, the Lucas County Unemployed League, in protest of the injunction issued by your court, will deliberately and specifically violate the injunction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully in support of the striking Auto Workers Federal Union.

We sincerely believe that this court intervention preventing us from picketing is an abrogation of our democratic rights, contrary to our constitutional liberties and contravenes the spirit and the letter of Section 7a of the NRA.

Further, we believe that the spirit and intent of this arbitrary injunction is another specific example of an organized movement to curtail the rights of all workers to organize, strike and picket effectively.

Therefore, with full knowledge of the principles involved and the possible consequences, we openly and publicly violate an injunction which, in our opinion, is a suppressive and oppressive act against all workers.

Sincerely yours,
Lucas County Unemployed League
Anti-Injunction Committee
Sam Pollock, Sec'y

[blindpig]

9. It is time for a new Unemployed League.

Way past time.

k&r

[Hannah Bell]

10. kick

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. The victors write the history.

Today, they call the Molly McGuires terrorists.

For good or ill, it was militant labor that changed society in the 30's.

[Hannah Bell]

13. kick

[leftstreet]

14. K&R

[scarletwoman]

15. k&r -- great history lesson!

[PinkoDonkey]

16. K&R

Thanks for posting this.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

17. K&R

[anonymous171]

18. K&R. nt

[Hannah Bell]

19. kick

[Ulysses_The_Red]

21. I generally think SW has uberweak politics, but...

People should know about the Auto Lite Strike. And there are connections to be made today to factory occupations and wildcat strikes. Labor history is VERY important, though I think that, as usual the SW tends towards white washing anything that moves (in this case the AWP).

[Hannah Bell]

22. kick

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

24. nothing personal, but i don't email people i don't know.

feel free to discuss those subjects here.

[Ex Lurker]

25. if that happened today, wouldn't the company just move to China? n/t

[Jon Boston]

26. Auto Lite Strike is ESSENTIAL working class history

Totally important for understanding how to fight bosses and win!

[mdmc]

27. kick

[aikoaiko]

28. Part of me supports worker actions like these, but on the other hand

I can't see how they are justified in using force to prevent the company from hiring someone else.

I like the organization part of unions (collective bargaining, etc) and the power of walking off or work slowdowns, but if others are willing to do the work then so be it.