Transcript of ~ •. f1.~1.K Perkins Tape 1 side 1
I hired in in in Nov. of 1926, worked in the time office t~ll the following
~ 0 q summer, got sen~ out to the body shop as A time clerk at an hourly rate.
Ques. Time clerk?
Yeah, out in the shop I worked at that.till the depression hit and they
had to lay off A lot of people. I t'ook A jp·b on the. line, and:. A cut. in
pay, everybody did.
Q-.ues. How much?
Well, it was only 10¢ an hour, but between 50rt and 40¢ an hpur, theres
oz.1 was A vast amount of difference, 20%.
Ques. How much were you making?
0 z,y. Half A dollar, an hour, when I rode that out and eventually, things
opened up A li~ile bit more and along about this time they went to off
0 ~$ line bodies and I became an assembler and first, before I took that
over, and I got on the line where the pay was A little bit better.
Q.ues. How much better was it?
o ~ t Oh, I think it was 1 ~ an hour more, and there had been an increase
in the mean tirre and it was some where in the neigborhood of 80¢ , at
that time
Ques. What were tl:e working conditions in the body shop? -Well, in the winter time the wind blew and it was colder than A well
r
~-,t-2. diggers fingers, and in the summer time it got hootter than the devtl.
Now we were in the north unit at this time but all the ventilation we
was those windows on the northside of the roof a The torch soder booth
,.was right down the line from us and the welding booth , it got .pretty
hot inside, and I worked at ci~ssembly jobs until all the frucus started •
. 'i~~· So you heard there was goin5 to be trouble at Fisher 1?
lH~ '6 Yeah, but there was trouble back in 1931, Along about that timep there
~· So there was trouble back in 1931?
Thats my recollection of it. along about that time. They tried to organ
ize A union then and it didn't work, they couldn't get enough interest
cs-~ in it and not only that, but work wasn•t all that good. Therewasn't
that much work so you felt that you had some security, that you could
0 "'y go out on strl.ke if it came to it, so that worked against the formation
of A uni on along with that there was A lot of feelings that' these people
were radicals, and they didn't want anything to do with them so, well
ob~ they are radicals, in the best sense of the word. We didn 1 t realize
that, otherwise wa could have had A union before we did; But, the attempt
at A union in the place failed and , under the circumstances it was best.
Ques. In Nov. of 1936--?
The only one I can put A finger on was Bud Simons, was the only one
I know of.
o 1 3 -~ues. He was an organizer? Yeah, and I didn't know about that till the night we got the axe.
o 71 ~es• 'rhe night you go~ the axe, what happened?
The night before we got the axe, we came into work. The whole crew,
on A sort of A piece work system and we never knew how much money we
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. <>5 2- my brother, myself, and Carl Young, my partner. We had been working
c~; made till the end of the day.No way you could tell because they would
shut down the line and gaps in the line meant Jess money, so on it went
~£i so that they wouldn't tell us how much we were making. We got A little
tired of that and some of the fellows up the line from where Youllf!f'•
o9t my brothe~, and I were working)just quit working this night fairly early
cCf3 in the evening, the gap came down the line,probably ten or fifteen jobs,
well the gap didn't get much of A start before the foreman found out
about it, He didn't get much satisfaction from them or they from them.
i-iues. Who was he, What was his name? ·- This was 8horty W1ls-on,and he went and got s·cotty MacD0nald,. the general
forman and the first guy Scotty talks to is me, because he had kn~mn me
oCf<t for yearsf And he wanted to know what it was all about. So I told him
these men were tired of not knowing how much money they were making
101 from one day to the next and so am I and my brother and Young said the
,o~ sa..'Tle thing" so are we Scotty" 0,K • o you go back to work, he said, and
1 oi-t we' 11 get this all straightened out and tomorrow night we will have
everything under control. Well, they had everything under control all
right, when we came back in, Young, my brother, and myself, had cards
in the rack that said report to the employment office, so we took the
1 v '6 cards out of the rack and went down to the employment office and found
out when we got there we were terminated, fired, no explainations, no
ifs ands or buts about it.So they wrote up our papers and told us, you
come back in an hour and get your money. Well, so we figured, 'well
H ~ O.K. • Thats what we'll do". I wasn't married at the time, I was going
P '4 with the girl I lat2r marriedand my broth~rewas in the same boat, he was
going with A girl he wasn't married to and we went out to see our girls
and Young went accross the ~treetand proceeded to get himself pretty
well snockered, and in the meantime, we were up telling our troubles
to anyone who would listen, I supposewas at my sisters place. She was
married and 11 ving here in town. My broth~r and I were living in Columbia
p.. 1 ville at the time. So we hadn • t been there v.ery long before Franklin
Brown the night foreman came up looking for us, and said the plant manager
J1>5" wanted to see us; And he wanted to see Bill too.
·.l,ues. Parker?
Yeah Parker, so I said"O.K': I'll go get him" .I went down to the shop
and they escorted me in like I was A V.i.:'."'. or something and the minute
I got inside Parkers door, he wanted to know what this was all about; And A c
great deal of wha-~ had happened the night be.fore. wasn't0ur fault, it was
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-~ 5 the people ahead 0f us on the line, but we were certainly in something
v.~]h them. ; And r;~lly the whole thing boiled down to our not knowing
how much money we m.;re making and they were trying to spe.ed up the line
all the time, every night you go in there you could expect another job
1% or two an hour pro .. ~_11ction. It go~ so that they got up to sixty jobs
an hour producdion, They want~d sixty five without putting any add.iti01nal
help on. Well, my parter and I were getting behind all the time and
going clear down to the end of our extendsion lines and then we would
•'+ 3 have to drop A job to catch up, otherwise, we would have to drop A job
and go all the way to the torch soder booth or welding booth, so, and
li.t6 so when we found out we were terminated, before we went up to my sisters
place, we went and got out front of the shop at the entrance to the
plant where most of the workers were coming in and ta:lked to two or three
,50 of them people who worked down the line from us, torch soder men
and told them what haL. happened and they said, don't worry, the line
won't start. Well, we fOl'nd out later that Drown had brought in A couple
1 ~q of people and he was breaking them in on the day shift. i1hen the
next shift got ready to start, they were in there ready to go to work,
thats the way they were going to take c~e of us, and get everything
t S l· all settled. They were going to fire the t'rouble" nrake:t'S' and, t:fue· who1e·
thing would be settled and everybody would go to work and away they would
go and the harder they would work, well, it didn't work out quite that
way. Unbeknownost to U t~ Q , Simons had bee'n organizing some·; or these
1 5'i guys down the line from us, in the soder booth and welding booth to the
point that when he said " look, these guys up there. are just like we are,
if they get fired, we could be next" .They all decided to d·o what they
were concilled t<i do, let the iine :mm, let the bodies go down till they
want to shut it ofj so thats what they proceeded to do. Well, we were
f~j outside and had no idea of what was going on in there and we couldn't ttll r
if the line was runY}fng or not so I went up to my sisters place, the
1 t. <j first time and picked up my girl and we went over th<~!f~ when Brown got
1-1 c hold of me and took me down to Parker and I told Parker what this was
all about, I told Parker, why don't you talk to Brown, he's responsible
for this, he wants to get more production with less men, but before we
11:, had A chance to do any more talking, he he11imed and hawwed but. did.n 't
really say a:nything really, He said " would you be willing to have A
time study made of that job", and if the time study proves that this
is A one man operation then wbuld you be willing to take A job some
l 11 where else? ; And~ I said," certainly, I would," and I said, if the
time study man can show me that thats A one man operation then I,'m
perfectly willing to go somewhere else". O.K. Parker said, would you
i -;q be wlllin,15 to go out. there in the shop and tell those men in the shop
just what you told me that you would be willing to have a time study, and
take an other job in a different department. I said "sure0 so I went out
1 ~: there and the men were milling around and talking and the line had stopped
in the meantime and people were crowding around from different departments
i '6'-/ d'own the line to see what was going on and there was quite an audience and so
I told them what had happened in the plant managers' office and I said "as
1 ~G far as I'm concerned, you can go back to work". Bud Simons said: 0 .K. lets
J '3"7 go back to work, that's the way you want to do it we' 11 do it that way so
we did. ·In the meantime they had located my brother and brou5ht Mm doi·•n
but they couldn"t find Young, but when they did find him Boy be was rea1ly
"one over the ape". They brought him in but the Foreman hadt"o do most of
;<i l his work, because he was drunk as a skunk, so the next day they 1Kour:ht the
time study man in and to this day I swear the guy was drunk. He come in there
and he walked 8/~:::::-oss the line and nearly fell, r.nd never took a stop watch
out of his pocket or looked at what we were ddng or a damn thing and he went
11 ~ up to the General Foreman or Superintendent and told him that that was
strickly a one man job, and so when McDonald came down and told me that,
an hour or so later I said "Soctty, you ought to have sense enough to send some-body
in here who is sober at least~ and that wa3 the end of that, really, and
ici yet they just let the thing ride like it was.
It didn't go on very long before they decided that they had organization
enough to present demands to the company and if it come right down to it
2 u~ they could go on strike and that's the way it was till the strike occurred.
It had been, before the sitdown strike, several sitdown strikes.
-·:-tu-es. Gaps in the line?
I
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·f
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Well no, it would get hotter than a firecracker on the day shift in there and
the boys would say, "To hell with it, it's too hot to work .. and walk out. Well
that didn't sit too well with management and you can understand that.
z_ tl Ques. There were a lot of young guys in there?
~
Oh yeah, like I say, it got pretty hot in there, they put a theromometer in there
and it got up to 120° F
Le? .Ques. Still does?
Oh, yeah, I have no doubt, although I imagine it is a little better now
. , because of the ventilation. Back then, they didn't even have fans like they .._ I ~1
i.ii... do now. So that was the situation up until the organization became strong
enough to present demands. to the company, and since they didn't intend to., they
went out on strike.
~es. That was in November 19.36?
I can't tell yo~ the exact date.
~es. And they _put you on welder maintence, right? -·-----
No, No, I didn't get put on that till 15 years before I retired.
·~~st • Do you recall the night of the strike?
Yes, I do! ~ell, word came in that we might be going out at midnight and they
Zl~ said, don't just all walk out, just sit down in there, in the shop. 3"o somez.?
~,, body fuad figured that that was a new worthwile ta::itic to try so when midnig~t
came, nothing had been done to settle the issues, $ettle the contract issues,
we all stopped, the line stopped, we all sat down and just sat there and waited.
L5, i Well nothing happened, the foreman came around and told us to go back to work
and of course lie sa#id nothi~ whatever and just s2~t there looklnc: stuptd at him.
You know, and sometimes insolence is pretty effective and, anyway, the line
didn't start and it didn't start a long time after that. I forget how many
days the strike lasted.
~ues. Fourty two days, right?
Fourty two days, alright.
L 3 'i ~uest. What were the issues as you guys saw them?
Well, line speed, wat;es, and wor:V...ing conditions in general, heat and cold, and
relief time •
. Ques. You didn • t have relief time?
z-Y3 No, no, hell no, you went in there in the morning and wbrked till noon. If
it was six hours till quitting time then you worked six hours ti11 the shift
ended. Unless you happened to be on a .subassembly job or so:nething ;·:here you
24 1 could go to the -- Goof off long enough to--get relief, But, those were
among the issues and no doubt there were a lot more and one of them was union
representation and job securl:ty we did11°t have, iJe were in a pretty precarious
job.
!.-LJ Lf- ~~~s, There wa.; a company uni on?
In years--years )efore that there had been a sort of a company union.
It didn't amount to much and most of the people in there didn't belong to it.
-Q.-.u..e-s. Okay, you say you hired a hall from--,
Lawrence Acoppean, and had meetings over there until the new hall was built,
in fact, that war. years after, but until then we held bur meetings up over
some of those buildings across the street from the office, Well, the strike,
-i5 .L. the si tdown, there were rumors flying around there that the sheriff and deputies
was going to come down there and clean us out of there and so we figured we may
be in for a schlacking, but this is worthwile, so we are going to stay in there
zc;'i anyway a.nd that's what we did. After g_ui.te a long ti.r:1e I was in tbe p1ant ;:rnd
then, oh maybe three weeks, something like that, we go leave of absence for a
z 5 43 day, from the strike committee to go home and get some clean clothes.
I tell you, thine~> got pretty hairy. You didn't want to go out, they were quite
short handed because, as it ~;;'.1 s, they were manning the plant, the strikers were
manning the plant and by that I mean that they wanted to keep enough people in
lC .~, there so that they couldn't just send three men and a boy in there and say o.k.,
·you guys are out. So, I got a leave of absence to go home and I talked to the
strike committee about going on picket duty. Driving the car around from gate
to gate.
z c..,L/ _Qu~_s. Yeah, because you had a car?
Yeah, I had a car, I was one of the fortunate ones there and I did tha:t until
be out of the plant and not on duty '!Then they settled it, at home. But it was I .
just one of those fortunate or unfortunate things. rt· had nothing to do with
the strike.
i c, '~ ~ues • Do you remember Sam Keenan?
z.6i Sam ~eenan, yeah, years before the strike, th:1t • s wha.t--well it must have been
not too long before the strike because, that,:..; what they were. There have been
rumors around, I suppose, about pe>ssible labor trouble and what they were
trained to do was organize a simi-military group who would, in essence, be strike
breakers. We didn't know that, I was too nia·ieve to know what they were up to.
~~· How did he contact you, in the shop?
~~~ Yeah, he was one of the foreman in there, and he came around, oh, I had known
him for years. He was one of the old foreman around there and he came down
there where I was working to see if I wanted to become a -~ I forget now whetRer
it was a sargent or a corporal in a military or simi-mi1itary organization.
,~s. Would they have paid you fdr it?
l?c) Oh no, strickly vQJ.tt~nteer. I suppose the idea of pay was that you could ·keep
your job, and where they threw everybody out, we would still be in there.
Ques. Sounds like they were expecting a strike? ·-
2 TL Well yes, the climate, political climate, h'fuor climate, was such that a strike
was enevi table and they were s:aart enough to realize it, so I was offered this
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job and turned it down. I don't thlnk anything weut on my record about that.
I never saw my record, in fact, I'm no~ sure they don't have two of them, the
one that you can look at, and another one. But. that is one thing. I have to tell
you, I was never hasseled about any of this stuff after we went back to work.
They forgot about the time study and left us right in there.
L q l:- _~ue.~. Irld anythinG improve?
Not then they didn't, no, I'm stUJprised that really that--the only way that
condi t:i.ons improved was t_hat when it got too hot down there the boys would
walk out, and have a breather and take the rest of the day off; and you come
back in the next d,};t,y, it wo~ld. be. just the sam.~. as lot had, been,.
._,~ uest. ......... ,~ You did get a raise?
I don't remember whether we did or not, I' Ir tell you the tru-~h, the first )
recall we got a raise was. after the strike ended and w:e we.nt on day rate, then
and by day rate, it was a dollar an hour. That was quite an improvement, and
because of the strike, the line speed was set at fourth two jobs a.n hour without
z. ~ (.-: anyone being taken off. So, that was enough and plenty, so that gave you some
idea of how they were crowding us from sixty three jobs an hour down to f ourty
two with the same man power. So, that's,, . about the way it was.
~'f 0 Q.ues. What w:ere conditions like in Flint'? ·-
L 't: Well, of course you realize this was during the depression and the depression
d.idn't end till quite awhile after that really and thirl0s were pretty rough
z.•n all over. A very great deal of unemployment and no such thing as social security
and so people who were out off work, I don't know how they got along, I really
don't know how they got along, people who were off at that time. I got laid off
:whenever anybody else got laid off. But in general, these layoffs would be two
Z. ... 11 months or three months and then we would be called back to work and my brother
was in the same boat. We were single and so, they tried to keep the married
people on and I suppose there was some sense to that at the time and under the
conditions, but that was another thing too at the time, was the issue of senoritn
and that was settled according to the unions aggreement; and also of course shift
preferrence and a100 they started a shift ·al.ternating policy and at le2,st in
the body shop, I'm not sure about the rest n'f' "the plant, I think it was all over.
~ 6 <:; We looked forward to shifting or whatever it was. You would swap shifts with
your opposite number on second shift. That was not on an lndi vidual basis but
in the whole plant.
-~ue-s. That started when? After the strike ended, negotiations had been completed _and we went back to work
w1 th a contract •
Q.ues. How long did it go on'?
That went on till they decided that--I dor.'t renember how long till, don't know.
~ues. Swing shifts?
~···-........-.
Seems to me we were on swing shift till the end of civilian production and the
war started I think, it was and then after the war, things were entirely different
than anytime before there had probably been several contracts negotiated. Since
I was in the service I didn't know. I know that when I came back I was on day
?>, -f r::t.te ~!.nd hJ.d scnoi"i ty and I didn't have to go on sectmd shift. I could stay
·on day shift on a production job. In fact, at that time, I got a chance to go
on welder repair and worked on first shift for some time and worked in that trade
31 'h with a journeyman, and when I got a chance to go on third shift I went as an
319 indepentlent trainee.because what they did was they set up so that we ran the
sta~ion the same way that the jouryman did. But they didn't have enough
journymen so some of us tralnees were doing jourymans' work.
~· It's the same way now? ·-
3LL I suppose so, it don't change much.
3z.) Que_§.. Going back to that strike, the time before? 1937, there at Fisher 1,
did you ever hear of an organtzati.on called the,,. Black Leg_ibon?
Oh yes, I don't recall I heard a great deal about it in the shop, I certainly
heard. a Great deCJ..l about it outside. There was thinc;s about it in the r;e'. .. rs-pa.:
pers and rnt10rs f1oatinc; around about it, in fact, they Ht:>re EL pretty r:ou.':;h
bunch. One or two killings were attributed to it at least, I remember there
was one particular incldent that occurred up in a cemetary and it seems to me
that there was very definately a member of that organization that was nailed for
330 that, but I don't know what it was all about. Ac:tuall:y, I don't know what the
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Black Legion was all about, I think it was an organization that--
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Tape 1, Side 2
Stick up for our rights you might say, see what happened, but if you caused
trouble you were out, They didn't want you around so that's all, but if you
were put outside they would say let that be a lesson to :.rou to the other people.
ac<1 I wouldn't put it past them either.
e1z.. ~· Do you recall Windom Moritmer speaking to. J':OU?
Yes, I remember hearing him talk many times, he was quite a guy. I always
thou,:::;ht he got a rouch deal. 1.Iel1, you know, I llke ·,,1c.1lter Beuth_e'l?, and. the
~- 1 1 Reuther brothers, like them very we11, but they dld k!.:•_d of boc1_;:-:i::2 h:lrn ()Ht,
they were certainly instrumental.
-\.l-ues, Did you know Walt Moore or Joe De Vitt? I don't recall either one of those names,
v 31 Ques. When yo1.J. w.ere on mobile picket duty outside the shop, do you recall when
the sheriff can1e down?
Oh yes, yes, I w1.s in the plant at that time and he crune down and said he had
a parer he had t0 read to us. I forget what, an eY.tetion notice or something,
so the strike committee said, let him in, so we went down, they set up a cafe-ateria
down in the north unit with some ladies working in there, ~'ii th some coffee
and odds and ends in there and--but they brought him down there, I re.call he came
alon.o, I'm not sure, he may have had a deputy, but they came in and he read the
paper or started to read it and some of them gave him cat calls and that, and
6it7 they said let him talk, so he read the thing off, He said, "I don't expect to
get any kind of response to this boys, but I just got a j.ob to do." There was
no effort to t:jet us out of the plant, in fact, people i·:ho were ~;et tine; in, a
c )t\ great amount of them, were in when the strike was settled.
:~, ';/hat about when the judee sie;ned the order to c;et you out, were there
Q(,C' any preparations in the plttnt to defend a.c,ainst the F'lint Alliance, were there
any firearms?
·No, no. The only thing I saw along that line were some homemade clubs and
billyclubs that someone had cobbled up, we" weren't going to be thrown out
readily. ~le were going to be forced~, Ifr:cki'nf§ and:. sc:r::.EH311li:;ng-.
~ l <!, ~~~. D:id you know anyone back i:1 +·he power h'1use at that time?
No, the only contacts we had with the pcwe.r hcu.se wa.f3 that seve:!:'..'al of w:; manned
the fire hose up in the--you knoH, 'r·:tiun you com•.:: in the north front ent:r:-t.nce
there is a set of windows up there and I think it was an office at that time and
anyone that was going to come in there if we didn't warit them to they were going
to get wet, good and wet.- But there was trouble orre night with one of the
power house people. They had passes from tr.~ strike committee and he was
:J 77 not going to show it, and some body hollered ·•. ;.lright, lets give it to him"
and they stuck the fire hose nozzle out the window and he showed his pass
right now. But outside of that, no, we had no contact, we knew that they were
working out there and we were hardly in accord with that but we knew that it
got pretty cold after awhile and we needed heht in there.
cA~ ~es. Were there any supervisors out there in the power house?
That I couldn't tell you.
-Ques. Just that the boilermen were cooperative?
Oh, yeah, yes, I'm sure their assistance favored our cause," but as for super-
1c; vision, that I couldn't tell you, They must surely have had somebody out there •
. Qt1es. You had a bed set up in there'?
/"' 5 Well, yeah, this was a kind of a three shift operatiort. We made up a bed and
when you weren't usirJ.G it someone else was. You d1dn't each have your own bed,
. ther.e wasn't room a.round for that, or material to make beds out of for another,
we used quite a lot of cotton padding and stuff of that nature, and in some
cases they used upholstary material which wasn't good, but you had to have
something, those metal bocU.es got kinda hard.
~~s. Were there National Bua.rds around the plant?
No, I never saw anybody in uniform out there othe.r than an occasi,onal. ppliceman,
until the sheriff. But never after that either. No, we had no national guard
out J.t nur place. A ppnrently, Fister 2 and Ch.evroI et T,.:c'.re the }:: 1 ~:,:~r:::s ,. o:::- the
i 1- ~ Ques. Were you happy to see the National Guard called out in ~,lint?
Yeah, I was, I fl(3Ured that at least they wouldn '·t be company, and I figured
1
.1l z._ that any orders they got would be to just k~ep thH peace.
·~ues. Back bef o:r;e the. st:d.ke in November of 1 ~J3£. you and y0ur" bJ?othe.r,
; 3't how did thcy contact you?
Well, Brown came up, he called my sisters house and found out that I was t:11~re
1 :, ~ and he came up after me and I kne:w where my brother was and was ~.ble to get in
tou~h with him and tell him that he was wanted back right now and that's the way
they GOt hold of me and I got hold of my brother. This guy Brown was more respon-sible
for the conditions in the plant, this guy Bra,wn, trying to set 65 jobs a
hour, with manpower enoueh for 42 jobs a:n hour, this one man was more responsible
than anybody else I'm sure. He saia "I can do it," you know, trying to make a •
reputation for himself.
15 1-- ~s. Did you ever go up to the Pent:,ully building to the me.etinGs?
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5 3 you now· who was the speaker ci ther.
-~UQ.S • Do you remember a Mr. Kraus or his wife Dorothy?
No I don't.
i S-£3 .~. Did you know anybody in the trim ship?
No, I worked in the body shop on a pretty short chain, I didn't know anybody much.
1 <;. ci ~ues • Did you know Ray C ~.oos?
Yes, He ran a resturant, he used to be a general foreman in the body shop years
before the depression hit and a pretty nice, guy. .I aJ:way-s: licked- h±m· and when
Jii./ he got--I suppose:,) he was fired or laid off or whatever--thinGs got--back in
the depression there was a lot of supervision le'-id off and he was one of them,
nnn he bouc;ht a li ttlc re2.turant acroo::. t..be :.:d~rect c-1r::d :r:-:n: it. h.~L::;,sr.:;-lf 2.n-.:: :~_uring
1 {v'J the strike he donated foord.· i:-epeatedly to us. That I can remember very well and
the strike committee who was across the street most of the time in the hall on
top of Ray Gooks resturant.
Q-u-est. Did yo~ ever go over there?
I wasn't in ther2, but once or twice myself. I don't know what kind of a set-
1 7 'i up they had the~.-~. I have a feeling they must have had at least one waitress.
It w2.s a big resturant he had more than just one lunch counte.r.
9-_u_es. So you were inside the plant after the setdown and then you went outside
1~i on mobile strike duty?
Yeah, I was outside till the end of the strike.
Ques. You didn't get in on that business over there at Chevrolet?
i s~t 0h no, I didn't, I have ever talked with anyone 'that was over there at Fisher 2.
All I knew about what occurred over there was what I read in the newspapers and
from different people, just rumors, you know, I.heard this or that and so on.
'.iere you ever contetcted by the Flint Alliance or anyone else about
joininr; any organizations?
1 (.
~:ot rca1ly, I don't know about anyone who actually did join. But I do
rc::-icn bcr one of the men's clothing store had sponsored 2 or J people as
ntrikc breakers. But the whole.thing never got off the ground, as far as
actual physical violence, luckily I suppose.
:~ > ~~~· After the strike, did they have trouble collecting the dues or
would you say a lot of people were in favor of the organizational drive?
Oh yes, I don't recall that there way any problem at all collecting dues, you
i':now there is always one or two who don't but in f~eneral, at that time, there
') r.' ho, you clidn't have it deducted. fro~n your pay by the sorn;;;:3,ny, you h.::..cl to
co across the street and pay, I don't recall anybody being in arrears or not
paying their dues. Just one man, and he quit the shop because his religious
belief;; and he quit the shop rather thQn joi.n the union. Because th.:.=.t ;,.'as the
conditions of employment, you had to belong to the union for the· whole' shop.
,l::~~s. .las this right after the Strike?
I believe so, yes, I knew I was working on a subassembly job at the time and
·:. l L/
1 1 c this man worked in the group I worked with. There was about 4 or 5 of us toget-
~ i ·7 her and I was astonished that his conscious woulcln 't allow him to belong to
the union. There wasn't anythin~ wrong with the union, but of course the w2.y
I feel is the way everybody ought to feel you know, so--But that's the only
case I ever heard of that I can remember.
::tt.ie?_• During the war you- were away?
• -~ ·: .. t Yeah, I went to State school and learned welding and after civilian production
ceased, I went out of the shop and the way the thine; was set up, welders and
c~hey were also making Tank Hulks there when I got called out there to the tank
plant, I went out there awhile and got a rush of patroitisrn, we were getting
-~· 3 l.~ one tank a shift out there and I figured. I could do more some where else so I
went down.
. , Ques. ',{hen you came back after the war. , • ?
/,. :: "'- r---
G. ~1. · put me out at the tank plant, and then I ccune back, in fact, I went back
on the same job as I was workine on before the service, and I stayed there for
awhile, We quit production there (at the tank plant) and then went back to
Fisher Body. I became a spot welder. I had been a spot welder before, so I
went back into the same group. I couldn't get a welder job at arc weld, at
that time they didn'~t have· an 01)enlng_, they: hact more ru1tc w.e.Iders than they
knew wha.t to do with and I had already been in the weldinc; group you see. So
I became a spo~ welder, and I worked at th~Lt till I got a. chance to 1-:r;o on
welder repair.
2. 4-1
Ques. Going back to that time before the str~ke, the young guys in there,
-·-----
if they Heren' t 1iked,. they clicln't Get c::~lled brrc-k?
~..; S That's right, thsre was no senority rights that guarantee a man a call back
after the strike. Oh yes, if you raised turkeys and liked the boss,. the bo~.~
liked you, you got back. If he didn't, you didn't. There was a great deal
of favoritism then.
:~_e.~. Did you see a lot of favodtism down there?
z 5 :j No, not really. Well, you know. A guy was workine along here and he got
laid off along with everybody when the model change carne along, or a cut in
.. .:_ss- production and they d_i,dn~t like him, he just didn't come back. And you didn't
know whether they didn't like him or what, he was just gone, that's all.
•
