American Workers From Dawn to Sunset 1937 Chevrolet Division, General Motors (Patreon)

more at http://quickfound.net/

THIS PICTURE MAKES VIVID THE LIVES OF THE MEN & WOMEN WHO BUILD THE MODERN AUTOMOBILE. IT SHOWS THEM IN THE MORNING ON THEIR WAY TO WORK, AT WORK IN THE PLANTS & OFFICES, IN THE MARKET PLACES SHOPPING, & AT HOME IN THE PLEASANT EVENING HOURS.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Automobile_Workers

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Automobile Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and Canada. It was founded as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and grew rapidly from 1936 to the 1950s. The union played a major role in the liberal wing of the Democratic party under the leadership of Walter Reuther (president 1946-70). It was known for gaining high wages and pensions for auto workers, but it was unable to unionize auto plants built by foreign-based car makers in the South after the 1970s, and it went into a steady decline in membership; reasons for this included increased automation, decreased use of labor, movements of manufacturing (including reaction to NAFTA), and increased globalization.

UAW members in the 21st century work in industries as diverse as autos and auto parts, health care, casino gambling, and higher education. The union is headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. It claims to have more than 391,000 active members and more than 580,000 retired members in over 600 local unions, and claims to hold 1,150 contracts with some 1,600 employers...

The UAW was founded in May 1935 in Detroit, Michigan under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) after years of agitation within the labor federation.[citation needed] The AFL had focused on organizing craft unions and avoiding large factories. But a caucus of industrial unions led by John L. Lewis formed the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL at its 1935 convention, creating the original CIO. Within one year, the AFL suspended the unions in the CIO, and these formed the rival Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), including the UAW.

The UAW rapidly found success in organizing with the sit-down strike, first in a General Motors Corporation plant in Atlanta, Georgia in 1936, and more famously in the Flint sit-down strike that began on December 29, 1936. That strike ended in February 1937 after Michigan's governor Frank Murphy played the role of mediator, negotiating recognition of the UAW by General Motors. The next month, auto workers at Chrysler won recognition of the UAW as their representative in a sit-down strike.

The UAW's next target was the Ford Motor Company, which had long resisted unionization. Ford manager Harry Bennett used brute force to keep the union out of Ford, and his Ford Service Department was set up as an internal security, intimidation, and espionage unit within the company. It was not reluctant to use violence against union organizers and sympathizers (see The Battle of the Overpass). It took until 1941 for Ford to agree to a collective bargaining agreement with the UAW.

Communists provided many of the organizers and took control of key union locals, especially Local 600 which represented the largest Ford plants. The Communist faction controlled some of the key positions in the union, including the directorship of the Washington office, the research department, and the legal office. Walter Reuther at times cooperated closely with the Communists, but he and his allies formed a distinct faction from the Communists within the UAW.

The UAW discovered that it had to be able to uphold its side of a bargain if it was to be a successful bargaining agency with a corporation, which meant that wildcat strikes and disruptive behavior by union members had to be stopped by the union itself. According to one writer, many UAW members were extreme individualists who did not like being bossed around by company foremen or by union agents. Leaders of the UAW realized that they had to control the shop floor, as Reuther explained in 1939: "We must demonstrate that we are a disciplined, responsible organization; we not only have power, but that we have power under control."...