By

Anamari Golf

Whether viewed as positive or negative, the existence of “the plant” resonates throughout the Janesville community. Sixty-eight years ago a critical moment took place when workers at the Chevrolet and Fisher Body plants staged the first sit-down strike in Janesville’s history.

It was January of 1937, eight days after 7,000 workers at the Fisher Body plant in Cleveland, Ohio began a sit-down strike to gain union recognition. Janesville workers - motivated by the desire for a union contract that would boost their eighty-cent hourly wage, alleviate poor working conditions and protect them from unfair management practices – followed suit by implementing the illegal sit-down tactic. Several hundred workers banded together to close the Chevrolet and Fisher Body factories, until a national settlement between General Motors and its employees was reached.

The strike ended after 9 hours and 15 minutes. Janesville City Manager Henry Traxler mediated a discussion with company officials and local union leaders that resulted in an agreement to cease production if the workers would end the strike. The announcement spread though the two plants and the “big parade” began. Strikers marched up Industrial Avenue and then Jackson Street in a horn-blowing convoy, and later paraded through downtown Janesville to announce that they had accomplished their goal.

A national agreement signed on February 11, 1937 recognized the United Auto Workers and included a five cent raise.  The occasion boosted efforts to organize auto workers across the nation. And it continued the progress forged by those who sacrificed their lives in the struggle for a living wage, decades earlier, during the rapid rise of the Industrial Age.

Unionization in Wisconsin began in 1865, when the Moulders’ Union came to Milwaukee, By 1886 the nation was embroiled in the battle for the eight hour day. During the first five days of May in that year, Milwaukee workers shut down most of the industrial plants, and thousands marched together towards the city’s largest employer, Bay View Rolling Mills. The marchers were met by State militia forces, who fired into the crowd and killed seven people. The campaign for the eight hour work day weakened, but the strength of brotherhood and community grew stronger.

That sense of brotherhood and community is waning. Union membership has decreased since the 1950s, when an estimated 40 percent of private sector employees belonged to unions. In 1983, union membership, as reported by the U.S. Dept. of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics was 20.1 percent. That number has steadily declined, and in 2003 only 12.9 percent of wage and salary workers were union members. Fear and politics make all-too-common bedfellows; those partners have contributed to the controversial legacy of unionization.

Yet the union-won issues that have faded from popular memory remain. The nation-changing roles unions played in enhancing the quality of life enjoyed by so many today – union and non-union alike – are often taken for granted, ignored and even criticized. In fact, most Janesville residents, including the families of strikers, initially disapproved of the 1937 sit-down strike. As recently as fall 2004, some Janesville residents protested the re-naming of Opportunity Drive to Reuther Way, on honor of Walter Reuther and his brothers, who were instrumental in making the recognition of the UAW a reality. Every employed person on the United States, and in Janesville, owes a great debt to the individuals who willingly risked their jobs and lives to fight for the benefits that have simply always existed for the majority of Americans today.

Now, thousands of low and middle wage jobs are being shipped to nations where more-faster-cheaper is the rule of thumb, jobs that were once the domain of American workers. The low prices we pay for manufactured products are at the cost of real people in the U,S. whose jobs are rapidly being exported to cut costs, and real people in nations where the standard of living is far worse than anything we could recognize. Those low prices fill the coffers of international/U.S corporations that feed business to overseas sweatshops – a relationship that trades people for profit, in countries where unions are prohibited and workers suffer.

So, where does that leave unions in the United States today? In many ways, the fundamental premise of unionization simultaneously perpetuates and defies the chest-thumping sense of entitlement that pervades this nation. Unions are heralded as the foundation of middle-class America, while vilified as the barrier to U.S. success in the international export market.

Locally, unionization has bred a distinct social division and economic interdependence. Most will agree that Janesville is economically dependent upon GM to some degree, but there is a tangible tension between GM workers who have solid, middle-class lifestyles, and professionals in this community who enjoy similar lifestyles. The tension can be found in many places, from benign conversations to incendiary commentary in the Janesville Gazette. The fact that GM employees earn decent wages and benefits doesn’t seem to affect their status as the “working class.”

Perhaps those earned wages incite a bit of ironic jealousy amongst those of us who are quick to categorize people based on their jobs. But a cutting irony is that as a community, and as a nation, we stand on the shoulders of those who gave of themselves to the spirit of brotherhood, helping to secure our futures – and we often reap these benefits without gratitude.

Anamarie Golf is a museum professional, educator and writer, and former executive director of the Rock County Historical Society. She can be contacted at anamarie_golf@yahoo.com