Although Detroit had earned the nickname “The Arsenal of Democracy” for its contributions to the Allied victory in World War II, employment in its war factories had peaked in late 1943 and the postwar era brought employment instability. Shortages of crucial materials such as coal, iron, steel, copper, aluminum, and glass made auto production, hence employment, sporadic. Those shortages were compounded, and often caused, by strikes in major industries. Both authorized strikes and unauthorized wildcat walkouts in parts and assembly plants in the auto industry contributed to ongoing instability. Cold weather, hot weather, and federal credit regulations played roles as well. As a result, autoworkers experienced persistent layoffs. Although auto companies managed to earn profits during the early postwar years, production totals were nowhere near what they had anticipated. In late 1948 no one in the industry thought that the postwar boom had arrived.
* * *
With the end of the war in Europe and successful, if brutal and bloody, campaigns against Japan in the Pacific, there were reasons to be hopeful about a quick transition in Detroit from wartime production to civilian car and truck manufacturing. By mid-August 1945 the federal War Production Board eliminated production quotas, and automakers predicted that they would soon reach an annual assembly rate of five million vehicles. Government sources estimated that enough steel could be diverted from military to civilian use in the remainder of the year to launch a postwar boom, including half a million passenger cars, as well as millions of toasters, electric irons, refrigerators, and washing machines.1 Yet there were also reasons for concern. Manufacturing workers faced layoffs while factories retooled. Veterans were returning in increasing numbers and needed jobs. Moreover, although city leaders had long predicted a mass exodus when peace came, few of the hundreds of thousands of people who migrated to Detroit for wartime jobs appeared to be leaving. Instead, would-be autoworkers streamed to Detroit even after Japan surrendered.2
Women workers were affected disproportionately by postwar changes. Over 250,000 women had worked in Detroit’s factories in November 1943, the peak month during the war, but more than 50,000 of them had been let go by September 1945. A year later only 67,000 women remained in auto plants. Most women who took wartime defense jobs had once been waitresses, sales clerks, domestic workers, and such, and they expected to continue working after the war. A survey conducted in Detroit auto plants near the end of the war by the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor shows that 75 percent of women workers wanted to hold industrial jobs in peacetime, and that 85 percent of them absolutely had to find jobs to support families.3 Ford’s Highland Park plant, however, provided an example of harsh postwar realities. In late 1944 nearly 6,000 women were employed there, the peak total at that factory, but in November 1945 fewer than 300 remained, and laid-off women picketed the plant, claiming that since the war had ended, 2,200 men with no seniority had been hired while over 5,000 women with seniority remained unemployed. Highland Park Local 400 president John G. Carney defended the protesting women against plant managers, who argued that postwar tractor production was too arduous for women, apparently unlike the tractor jobs they had competently performed at Ford’s Rouge plant during the war.4
Individual women experienced the transition in a variety of ways. Margaret Beaudry had worked on water pumps during the war at Pontiac Truck and Coach, known to locals as “Yellow Cab,” and had wanted to keep her position. “But I also knew that when the war was ended, we might not get a job,” she recalled, “because the men that were over there, they had to come back to their jobs.” She left Yellow Cab on her own, however, to join her husband, Marvin, who was still serving in the military near Spokane, Washington. There Margaret worked in an egg factory, separating whites from yolks. It did not pay as well as Yellow Cab, she noted, “but it was easy.” When Marvin was discharged, he and Margaret returned to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where both had been raised and where he hoped to make a living painting houses. Margaret stayed home with their baby, wishing she could “have gone out to work,” she remembered, “but jobs weren’t that easy to get up there.” Katie Neumann had hired in at a Fisher Body Corporation factory shortly before the war ended and was laid off two months later. Her husband had a position at the Dodge Main plant but was out of work frequently as factories converted to civilian production. Katie was eager for paid employment, because they had purchased a house during the war and did not want to lose it. “Our payments were forty dollars a month,” she recalled, “and it was even hard to make that.” During her layoff from Fisher Body she managed to get a job in the Pontiac Motor foundry, which tended to hire only black men and white women. Dorothy Sackle, however, found only temporary jobs for several years after having been laid off from a Plymouth plant at war’s end.5
Even if one avoided reconversion layoffs, employment was often erratic because of strikes at plants that supplied parts to the auto industry. Every auto company relied on extensive supply networks for the thousands of parts, large and small, that went into a car. Parts manufacturers, in turn, required supplies of raw materials, such as coal, iron, steel, copper, aluminum, and glass. Disruptions at any stage of these complicated supply chains could stall assembly operations and ultimately result in significant unemployment. For example, Ford production at its flagship Rouge plant was jeopardized in late August when forty-five hundred workers went on strike at the Kelsey-Hayes Company, which supplied wheels and brake drums. The Kelsey-Hayes dispute stemmed from what the local union considered to be unfair firings of workers who had forced a foreman out of the plant in April. Although the National War Labor Board (NWLB) had ruled in favor of the company, Kelsey-Hayes workers stood their ground on the picket line, inadvertently shutting down the Rouge, and by mid-September, fifty thousand Ford workers, forty thousand of them in metro Detroit, were laid off. Henry Ford II complained that because of the Kelsey-Hayes conflict his company had produced fewer cars in a month than he expected to roll off assembly lines every three hours. No matter how one felt about the strike, it had resulted in tens of thousands of layoffs. As soon as this conflict ended, a nationwide coal walkout threatened all stages of manufacturing. Every auto manufacturer was affected by these dynamics, which constantly prevented full production, hence full employment. In early November total postwar auto production had reached only 19,136, a meager start toward the 500,000 vehicles the industry hoped to build by the end of the year.6
By mid-November, however, optimism had returned. Business leaders announced that reconversion to civilian production was nearly finished and that expansion of production, as quickly as possible, was now realistic and neces-sary to remain competitive. These hopes were quickly dashed by a glassworkers’ strike. In addition, a walkout of lumber mill workers in the Pacific Northwest meant that wood separators, essential for car batteries, were in short supply.7 Facing the impact of steep postwar inflation, General Motors workers also struck, on November 21, demanding a 30 percent raise, no increase in car prices, and a requirement that the company grant the UAW access to its financial records if it claimed that meeting these demands was impossible. Since GM was a major parts supplier for both Ford and Chrysler—indeed, GM was the largest parts supplier for the entire industry—its strike was yet another reason why all auto production was jeopardized. In addition to these threats, Ford endured strikes from fifteen other suppliers, which meant layoffs for forty thousand workers, most of them in Detroit. Henry Ford II conceded in mid-December that his company’s production would fall fifty thousand vehicles short of the eighty thousand he had predicted would be built by the end of the year. He emphasized that there had not been “a single unauthorized work stoppage” in his company’s plants since the war ended. Nevertheless, he lamented, “Ford Motor Co. production is limping, instead of galloping along, because of insufficient supplies—parts and materials.”8 All Detroit automakers confronted versions of this crisis. Ford’s low production and enormous layoffs coincided with the GM strike. Nationwide, over two hundred thousand GM workers were off the job in late November, around thirty thousand of them in Detroit and another sixteen thousand in nearby Pontiac, Michigan. As it turned out, however, GM’s production would have virtually stopped in early December regardless of the UAW strike because of the unresolved conflict in the glass industry. Chrysler was also operating at greatly reduced rates. “If we had been in full production of new cars, the glass shortage would have stopped us,” conceded a Chrysler spokesman.9
Heading into 1946 the postwar boom in autos had failed to arrive, employment remained unstable, and autoworkers scrambled to get by. Pent-up demand for cars still existed, experts maintained, and the reconversion process inside factories had been largely completed, but the auto production process was so complex, with so many potential points of disruption, that it proved impossible for the industry to gain traction. As a result, autoworkers lived precariously. Striking GM workers faced especially difficult circumstances. The Michigan Unemployment Compensation Commission cut off a potential source of relief by ruling that no one on strike, or who was laid off because of it, was eligible for unemployment benefits. Since there was no UAW strike fund, GM workers were largely on their own. War bond redemption rates were well above national averages wherever GM workers lived. Early in the strike many autoworkers went deer hunting, more seriously than usual, for food. By mid-January 1946, however, most GM strikers had exhausted their savings and cashed in all of their bonds.10 They displayed mixed emotions about the conflict. Most understood that their wages had not kept pace with inflation and believed that a raise was necessary. As one local union officer at a Detroit Chevrolet plant explained, “The take-home pay during the war was only 40 or 45 bucks a week. After the war it was about 35. How can you get ahead on pay like that?” World War II veteran Stanley Stasik, thirty, insisted that the union’s demands were justified but admitted that he thought differently while overseas. Enthusiasm for the postwar cause was clearly tempered by financial hardships. Most strikers had started out with enough in reserve to hold out, at most, about two or three weeks, not two or three months. “I was just talking to a fellow on the picket line,” said Albert Winters, forty-three, in January 1946. “His wife is going to have a child. He’s behind in his rent. There’s sickness in his family.” “We’ve had to tighten our belts—tighten ’em a lot,” John Geiger, twenty-six, added. “I don’t know how some exist.” Winnie Rowland, thirty-two, reported that of the Detroit Cadillac plant’s 350 remaining women workers, “almost all of them have exhausted their funds.”11 After twenty-three months overseas, World War II veteran F. L. Wolff expressed bitterness that after returning to Detroit and landing an auto job, “I worked two weeks and three days and was laid off when the GM strike was called.” Moreover, by taking that position he had become ineligible for twenty-dollar-a-week federal benefits available to returning soldiers. Wolff struggled to support himself, his wife, and their two children on his one-time-only mustering-out pay of two hundred dollars for his military service and about sixty dollars he had been able to earn as a part-time janitor.12 Aware of situations like Wolff ’s, Bud Weber held off on reclaiming his job at Pontiac Motor, preserving his eligibility for military benefits after he returned from service during the GM strike. He was married and had a child on the way, though, so he would have preferred a steady job.13 Gene Johnson had served in the U.S. Army during World War II and had returned to Pontiac Motor in 1945, but in early 1946 he reenlisted in the military to support his wife and child rather than remain on strike.14 The GM conflict, like all layoffs, forced workers to tap into emergency reserves, if they had them, or to find some other way to survive.
Continued materials shortages ensured that Detroit unemployment was widespread and long-lasting, regardless of the GM strike. The glassworkers’ conflict was not resolved until well into January, and alternative sources could not meet demand.15 Yet even if glass supplies had been ample and secure, a steelworkers’ strike, which began on January 21, prevented almost all auto production in Detroit. No matter how much metal an automaker had stockpiled, car assemblies depended on whether or not every other manufacturer in each of its supply chains had enough steel and in the right varieties, of which there were dozens. Most companies had only about three to five days’ worth on hand. Ford, which made more of its own steel than its competitors, immediately laid off fifteen thousand employees when the strike began. Unable to get crankshafts and connector rod bearings from its steel-strapped suppliers, automaker Packard issued layoff notices to eight thousand workers.16 General Motors, of course, was already shut down because of its own strike, but it would not have been able to manufacture vehicles even if it settled with the UAW. Indeed, it appeared that GM had no incentive to reach an agreement, because it would not be able to produce anything either way and it was not responsible for paying unemployment benefits as long as the strike lasted.17
Chrysler and Ford workers were heavily affected, although in different ways, during this unstable period. Because Chrysler had stopped production due to the glass shortage, the company had small supplies of steel on hand. When glassworkers returned to their jobs, Chrysler seized the opportunity and recalled nine thousand workers to duty in early February. “We will be able to operate a little while,” announced a company spokesperson. “Just how long we can’t tell.” Meanwhile, Ford produced virtually nothing. Vice President of Manufacturing M. L. Bricker explained that parts shortages stymied any auto assembly plans. One holdup was the lack of upholstery tacks, a casualty of the steel strike. This was “one of many” instances, Bricker complained, “but it shows how failure far down the line can accumulate until it reaches the point where production stops.” Whenever the steel strike ended, he predicted, it would take at least three more weeks for parts supplies to reach assembly plants in numbers large enough to resume vehicle production. He was correct. U.S. Steel settled with the United Steelworkers in early February, and three weeks later some thirty-eight thousand Ford workers who had been laid off for more than a month were set to return.18
When the GM strike appeared to be over in mid-March 1946, it was possible again to envision some sort of postwar boom, albeit a much smaller one than industry analysts had once anticipated. “The automobile industry is ready to move forward,” declared Free Press auto beat writer Leo Donovan, while reporting a huge downward revision of the industry’s 1946 production goal from six million to three million vehicles. The slow resumption of operations at GM plants underscored the need for cautious optimism. After 113 days the UAW and GM reached an agreement that was ratified by an overwhelming majority of strikers. UAW local unions, however, had the right to remain off the job until issues pertaining to their specific plants were resolved, and workers in twenty-two GM facilities, many of them crucial to supply chains, stayed on strike. Consequently, most GM workers remained idle for at least two weeks beyond the national strike settlement, and many stayed out much longer.19
Contentious issues at the local level continued to cause widespread layoffs at many auto companies. In early April 1946, for example, second-shift trailer drivers at a Briggs Manufacturing Company plant refused to work after management replaced one of their fellow workers, a World War II veteran who had served four years overseas, with someone the union members called “incompetent.” The trailer drivers stopped working, which meant that no auto bodies left the Briggs factory for Chrysler assembly lines at the automaker’s Kercheval and Plymouth plants. With auto bodies piling up, production halted at Briggs, and without those parts the affected Chrysler facilities stopped their lines. The result was twelve thousand laid off at Briggs and five thousand more at Chrysler. Almost any group of workers had the ability to bring supply, production, and assembly chains to a halt in such ways—even if they did not intend to do so before taking action—and exercising such power often seemed to make sense when frustrations were high. It was a tough reality, though, that many thousands of fellow workers laid off by such walkouts might not appreciate the missed time, especially if they were far removed from the problem’s source. This particular layoff lasted only a couple of days, but it was another interruption with lost pay for a significant number of Detroit autoworkers.20
Such unauthorized wildcat strikes affected job stability for many Detroiters. Sometimes the issues seemed baffling to outsiders, but they were almost always of great importance to those directly involved. For example, in March 1946 at a Chrysler plant, 40 employees on the framing line refused to work because their seats had been removed. The seats had not been there long, and they were not really seats; they were boxes that had been lying around the plant until workers who appreciated the comfort chose to sit on them. When a cleanup crew removed the boxes, the framing line workers refused to do their jobs, and soon all 2,000 employees in the plant were sent home. Although it is impossible to know how the other 1,960 laid-off workers felt about this matter, they missed work and lost pay at a time when employment was already uncertain. A few weeks later, 80 metal finishers quit in the middle of a shift, forcing the layoff of 4,400 workers at the closely connected Chrysler Kercheval and Jefferson Avenue plants. Management claimed that one worker had been disciplined for loafing and that others had supported his laziness. In contrast, UAW Local 7 president Tom Cunningham argued that the workers walked out because of inadequate ventilation in their department. In another thorny dispute, 850 workers at the Briggs Mack truck plant went on strike in early May to protest what they called “excessive production standards.” As a result, 6,500 employees at Mack and another 2,500 at the Chrysler Plymouth Division, which relied on auto bodies from Mack, were also sent home. Briggs Local 212 officers complained of “two months of indignities and Hitler-type methods” at the hands of management. Company officials claimed they were only enforcing production standards that had been agreed upon in recent contract negotiations. Whatever the truth in these conflicts, production was easily disrupted, and in each case thousands of autoworkers missed time on the job.21
While UAW local unions tussled with management, persistent shortages and strikes continued to affect employment and production. Ford had all of its eighty-nine thousand employees on the job for only one week in April 1946. “Shortages run from motor blocks to nails,” a Ford spokesman grumbled. “A total of 36 parts supplier plants are out on strike.” And just as Ford resumed operations, a national coal miners’ strike threatened auto production. The impact of that walkout on auto work depended on dwindling stockpiles of coal at each auto-related factory and, perhaps more importantly, at steel mills, which had to cut operations. Among the most pressing needs for automakers were simple yet vital items such as screws, nuts, bolts, and washers. Packard assembled automobiles only nine days during the first three months of 1946 because of a lack of bearings.22
The coal strike ensured that stability would not arrive anytime soon. Ford shut down operations by the second week of May, idling nearly 100,000 workers in the Detroit area. Chrysler was able to run a few extra days. GM had more coal on hand, because none was used during its long strike, but parts shortages made that stockpile irrelevant. The federal government set priorities for scarce coal supplies, and auto manufacturing was not high on that list. In 1946 the vast majority of the nation’s freight moved on trains, which were powered by coal. Trains, then, received supplies but not to haul auto parts. Officials gave top consideration to public health and safety, so hospitals were a top priority. Electrical plants also received coal before auto factories. Even if auto plants had been deemed essential, a ban on Great Lakes shipping, to conserve coal, meant there would be no iron ore heading from the Mesabi Range on the western shore of Lake Superior to steel mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. These limiting factors made life difficult and insecure for Detroit autoworkers. Over 120,000 Chrysler, Ford, and GM employees were laid off because of the coal, steel, and parts shortages. Thousands more at Briggs and other suppliers were also out of work. Fresh off their long strike, most GM workers had long since exhausted their financial reserves. Ford encouraged its workers to consider this layoff to be their annual vacation so that it might be possible to have uninterrupted production when conditions permitted. Chrysler pretended to be comparatively healthy, claiming that only 10,000 of its 70,000 Detroit employees were laid off before dropping the pretense and closing its facilities.23
It is hard to imagine how so many workers and their dependents made it through this period. Unemployment compensation was helpful, at twenty dollars a week plus two dollars a week per child for up to four children. “I stood in that unemployment line a lot of times,” Bud Weber recalled of the early postwar era. “They’d just lay you off.” But those who had started work within the past year or who had interrupted job histories, which included many in the auto industry, were ineligible for these benefits. Quite a few laid-off autoworkers traveled to stay with relatives, often in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, or northern Michigan, who had either never migrated to Detroit or who had returned home after giving it a try. Most who were out of work looked for whatever odd jobs they could find, a task made more difficult by the large numbers of people in the same circumstances. Corner grocery stores extended credit when possible, medical bills went unpaid, and rent, mortgage payments, and utility bills piled up.24
The lofty production goals that had been announced when Japan surrendered seemed wildly optimistic in mid-1946. Industry experts had anticipated the production of six million passenger cars in the twelve months following Japan’s surrender, but after eight months the total remained below four hundred thousand. Kaiser-Frazer, a new auto company that many thought would help boost the industry’s total to record heights, had produced only sixteen prototype vehicles by May 1946. There was more bad news for the auto industry in early June, when 70 percent of domestic copper production was held up by strikes. Cars required large amounts of copper, for radiators as well as electrical wiring. There were no substitutes, and plenty of other industries coveted the now scarce metal. As a result, auto production fell even further behind shrinking expectations. It was especially galling since industry observers maintained that there was consumer demand for ten million new vehicles.25 As a Packard official complained, auto production was constantly held up “by one aggravating little thing after another.” Considering the wide-ranging consequences of shutdowns at his company, he noted, “more than 60,000 persons in the families of Packard’s 2,000 dealers and their employees are deprived of their main source of income every time the final assembly line halts. Add to them the thousands of others in the factory and related industries—and the total becomes staggering.”26
Sporadic, short-term, local conflicts also continued to force layoffs throughout the region. Thousands of workers in Detroit’s auto plants refused to stay on the job during heat waves. Auto factories tended to be hot to begin with, and there was no air conditioning in the 1940s. Skilled tradesmen struck three tool and die plants to protest the removal of doors from toilet stalls. They resented the lack of privacy and management’s argument that the time spent opening and closing lavatory doors would be better spent on the job. Another sixty-five hundred workers, this time at Dodge Main, lost a day on the job when eleven hundred of their fellow union members, mostly veterans, celebrated the first anniversary of Japan’s surrender.27 These types of conflicts, and subsequent layoffs, never disappeared and sometimes resulted in tens of thousands out of work.28
There were no reprieves. A seventeen-day coal strike in November and December resulted in tens of thousands of auto layoffs in Detroit, in part because freight trains could not operate without their primary fuel. The cycle repeated itself. The coal walkout created another lag in steel production, which in turn extended autoworkers’ layoffs. Automakers had abundances of some parts and scarcities of others, which meant few cars could be produced until the coal strike ended, steel mills had enough coal to operate, steel reached parts factories, and parts were delivered to assembly plants. Frustrated by delays, false starts, and unpredictable conditions, Ford and Hudson laid off eighty-two thousand Detroiters for an extended, unpaid holiday vacation. On New Year’s Eve the entire first shift at Chrysler’s Jefferson and Kercheval body plants left for lunch and never returned, and only one hundred out of three thousand showed up for the second shifts. Thousands of Briggs workers also took the afternoon off, against company wishes, to begin celebrating early. A Briggs spokesperson blamed the employees for this instance of “retarded production.” More likely, workers had become so accustomed to intermittent employment that they took a few hours on their own terms.29
* * *
In early 1947 few auto industry observers expected the postwar boom to arrive anytime soon, although automakers insisted that the potential for one still existed. Indeed, Chevrolet claimed to have over a million unfilled orders for new cars. But the persistent barriers to full production and full employment had not been resolved, and nearly a quarter of Detroit’s estimated 444,000 would-be factory workers were laid off in mid-January.30 In addition, strikes in Detroit continued to disrupt production chains. Union members reported that the conflicts involved production speedups, overbearing foremen, and unfair warnings, while managers cited lazy workers and irrational responses to reasonable workloads. It was difficult to get to the truth then, and impossible now, but each instance resulted in thousands of people out of work up and down supply networks.
Layoffs were so persistent that in March 1947 Walter Reuther demanded of GM a guaranteed forty hours of employment for anyone called in to work at the start of a week. For many months, Reuther noted, autoworkers had rarely worked full-time and were lucky to get twenty-five to thirty hours a week. “The worker must hold himself available,” he declared. “He cannot seek other employment, nor can he claim unemployment compensation even though he may be getting paid for only a few hours’ work each week.” No doubt this demand exasperated GM management, which pointed to strikes by UAW members and materials shortages caused by strikes in other industries, not the company’s unwillingness to offer full-time work, as principal causes of intermittent employment.31
But contrary to what business leaders thought, the postwar strikes were not irrational roadblocks to prosperity. The tensions between workers and foremen continued the sorting-out process, begun during the mid-1930s, of determining how much influence workers would have over crucial jobrelated issues, including pay, but also job security through seniority rights and some say over the content and pace of workloads. In many cases the root issue was dignity. Maybe an auto executive thought it reasonable to remove doors from toilet stalls, for example, but clearly the affected workers did not. The larger, industry-wide strikes addressed serious economic concerns. The cost of living skyrocketed after wartime price controls expired. Wages did not keep pace, and even if they had, erratic employment reduced earnings.32
Middle-class aspirations proved as elusive as steady work. If GM had granted Reuther’s demand for steady, forty-hour work weeks, the average UAW wage of $1.31 per hour would have produced just over $50 a week in pretax earnings, or a little more than $2,500 per year. Yet at this time economists and industry leaders calculated that a monthly income of $400 was necessary to purchase even the lowest-priced new vehicle. The inability of vast numbers of industrial workers to buy new cars might have explained much of the disparity between the relatively low number of passenger vehicles produced in 1946 (2,155,924) and the much smaller number of such cars actually sold by dealers (1,185,196).33
The auto industry’s volatility affected Chrysler and GM contract negotiations with the UAW in the spring of 1947. With employment so intermittent, the union had little leverage, and GM quickly shrugged off Reuther’s demand for a guaranteed forty-hour work week. In 1947 there was no talk of a strike like the long one that had ended just over a year earlier. Indeed, a walkout would have relieved GM of its unemployment compensation liabilities much more than it would have hindered the company’s sales. In the end, UAW members at GM received a total compensation increase, on average, of fifteen cents an hour. A couple of days later, Chrysler and the UAW signed a similar contract but for two years instead of one. Chrysler president K. T. Keller pointed to record earnings during the first quarter of 1947 as proof that “the Corporation’s operations can now be considered as fully re-established on a peacetime basis.” He hoped to lock in predictable labor costs to ensure continued profitability.34
It quickly became clear, however, that the industry’s new contracts could not resolve persistent steel shortages, which remained a fundamental barrier to a postwar boom for autoworkers. The auto industry’s production pace, even though well below what it ultimately desired, soon exhausted available steel supplies. For its part, the steel industry was actually booming during much of 1947, reaching a record peacetime rate of 93 percent of capacity nationwide during the first three months of the year.35 But there was massive demand for steel output in many sectors of the U.S. economy, especially for the cold-rolled sheet variety automakers needed most to build cars. Steelmakers told auto executives to stand in line, be patient, and expect no more than what they were receiving, as their precious metal was essential for construction, appliances, ships, planes, and trains. Production of sixty thousand new railroad freight cars, necessary for economic growth in all sectors of the economy, took priority over automobiles. Ironically, one factor that reduced supplies for the auto industry was the huge amount of steel required to build new steel mills. The petroleum industry presented another such conundrum. If the auto industry were to expand, more oil would be required to produce and operate those vehicles. Yet the petroleum industry lacked enough steel to build the rigs, pipelines, tankers, and barges it needed to meet any increased demand. Conditions might worsen before they improved, experts warned. Indeed, the proposed Marshall Plan called for diverting steel from U.S. markets to help rebuild Western Europe.36
Steel shortages affected automakers, hence employment, in many ways. High demand meant increased prices for scarce supplies, which necessarily boosted the cost of new cars. It did not help that postwar automobiles were significantly heavier than prewar models and that most of the added weight came from steel. Costs increased considerably as well for tools, dies, and presses, largely made of steel, and those expenses had to be passed on to consumers. At the same time, inflated prices for housing, food, and clothing reduced household disposable incomes and thereby affected the ability of consumers to pay for new cars, if not to hope for them.37 General Motors managed to purchase adequate quantities of steel, at least for the short run. Ford was not as severely affected as its competitors, because it made so much of its own steel. It did experience significant production disruptions, however, when its foremen struck in hopes of gaining union recognition.38 Packard was still producing on a limited schedule, but it was doing far better than during the first quarter of the year, when it operated only twenty-eight of the sixty-three available working days. Even Kaiser-Frazer produced a decent number of vehicles in May. Yet Chrysler continued to do poorly for lack of steel, and nearly fifty thousand of the company’s employees were laid off. Lines stretched for blocks outside unemployment offices as those affected resorted to their secondary support systems.39
Sporadic unemployment persisted at other auto companies for reasons not always related to steel. These included excessive heat, extreme cold, and even the use of a particular type of cockroach spray that incited the pests to attack workers.40 Missing a day here, a week there, a month on occasion, and often even more made it next to impossible for workers to predict earnings and plan for the future. Because of the continued instability in auto production, many skilled tradesmen left Detroit for what they hoped would be more lucrative opportunities elsewhere—for example, in the emerging aircraft industry. Auto analysts feared that a developing shortage of tool and die workers, pattern makers, carpenters, electricians, metal finishers, and maintenance mechanics would hinder future prospects. In late 1947 openings in the skilled trades in Detroit auto plants were plentiful, but there was very little demand for unskilled or semiskilled production workers. This was particularly bad news for African Americans and white women, who were effectively barred from the skilled trades, but it was not especially comforting for white men either, because there were nowhere near enough apprenticeship positions or available jobs to accommodate the large number of them who were unemployed or underemployed.41
Given the high annual turnover rates for the auto industry’s entry-level positions—estimates were in the 40 percent range—if plants were running, there were almost always some jobs available. Paul Ish, a native of Pontiac, Michigan, remembered being placed in an assembly job, the most common entry-level position for whites, soon after hiring in about this time at Pontiac Motor. “They were always short of help over there,” he recalled. “So I went over there and I worked up on second floor of Plant 8 putting brackets on horns before they went on the car.” Before long, his foreman stationed him “in a pit” from which he fastened molding to the underside of each car. “I worked down there for probably a month or so,” Ish remembered, “and then I ended up above, putting hoods on the cars as they come down the line. Well that about killed me.” The weight of the hoods and the pace of the line over an eight-hour shift—“they were running fifty-two an hour at that time”—wore him down. For such reasons, some entry-level positions had annual turnover rates as high as 400 percent. For those who remained, Ish recalled, “everybody was waiting for the line to shut down” because of some mechanical problem or parts shortage, and when that happened, with joy and relief they would all “hoot and holler.” As an African American, Joe Woods faced a different set of possibilities. An Alabama native, Woods hired in at Pontiac Motor “on May 7 of ’47” and quickly surveyed the segregated landscape. “They put all the blacks in Plant 6, in the foundry,” he said. “And if you got in the main plant, you got a job on sanitation.” African Americans, Woods noted, “didn’t get no production jobs, unless it was a job that didn’t nobody want.” Of the two options for blacks, Woods preferred sanitation. “I was blessed that I didn’t get in the foundry,” he said. “I got in the main plant as a chipper and a sweeper,” cleaning up the metal debris from parts-stamping operations. “I couldn’t have stayed in the foundry,” he insisted. “I would have quit.”42
Also African American, World War II veteran James Franklin returned from duty overseas to take a job in the Rouge plant foundry. He settled in, he recalled, “on the bull ladle, where you would take your cup, catch some of the iron when you was pouring it into your mold.” Then he would crack the metal and check to make sure that it was tempered properly, “from the top to the bottom.” Unsatisfied at the Rouge, Franklin took a job in 1946 at upstart Kaiser-Frazer, where he was allowed to bid on jobs outside the foundry. He progressed rapidly from materials handling, which was exhausting, to stock chaser, “where you run stock all over where it’s needed” to keep the lines running. He quickly advanced to inventory checker, managing the stock chasers. If certain parts were in short supply, it was his job to prevent a line shutdown by noticing far enough in advance so that more arrived before anything ran out. “It was a high degree of responsibility,” he emphasized.43 Franklin’s quick climb up the job ladder demonstrated what could have happened for more African Americans if given the chance, but most black autoworkers remained trapped in foundries or in menial positions supporting white production workers and therefore had limited opportunities to gain access to auto work.
Adding to insecurity, all newly hired autoworkers were on probation for their first ninety days, after which they received seniority and accompanying protection under UAW contracts. Before the ninety-day mark, probationary workers could be let go for any reason, and when the industry was unstable, as it was throughout the mid- to late 1940s, they were often fired before achieving seniority. New workers could be found easily, and companies did not want to expand payrolls, and subsequent unemployment responsibilities, without some certainty that more employees would be necessary for the foreseeable future. Large numbers of new hires, both black and white, lost their jobs this way.44 Others, like Don Hester, were fired because they had trouble showing up on time. A native of Pontiac, Michigan, who had grown up on farms far from the city, Hester admitted that after he was hired at Pontiac Motor, he “couldn’t get up in the mornings. Living down here in the city was a whole bunch different from living in the country. I was trying to burn the candle at both ends, hanging out with the guys.” Before he completed his ninety-day probationary period, Hester remembered, “they let me go. Yeah, I lost that first job, and I was out of work.”45
Despite dynamics that hindered steady production and employment, total U.S. auto production in 1947 was the third largest in history, topping 1929 and 1937. Chrysler posted all-time record sales and profits in 1947. GM reported a peacetime record for sales and an enormous increase in net income over 1946. In addition, unemployment in Detroit at the end of 1947, as measured by the MUCC, was as low as it had been since the war. Statistics like these laid the foundation for the notion of a postwar boom in the auto industry.46 The aggregate numbers, however, failed to reveal that layoffs, short weeks, and uncertain income had been the norm for Detroit’s autoworkers.
* * *
In early 1948 auto industry officials anticipated another record postwar year, with output of as many as six million new vehicles, steady employment for autoworkers, and occasional overtime pay.47 But high hopes were quickly thwarted by cold weather throughout the Great Lakes region. Record demand for natural gas strained the supply from the single pipeline through which it was transported from Texas and Oklahoma to Michigan, as well as to most of Indiana and Ohio and much of Pennsylvania and New York. Officials suspended industrial use of gas and gave priority to the increasing number of households that had switched from coal to gas for heat. Some Michigan companies, such as Ford, produced much of their own gas, but within days of the cutoff Chrysler and GM facilities were closed completely, and unemployment in Detroit was as bad as during the worst times in the Great Depression. Resumption of auto work took time because of reduced production in coal mines and steel mills, a result of the gas shortage, and subsequent industrial curtailment from New York to Indiana. After three weeks off the job, tens of thousands of Detroit workers were desperate. Briggs employee Jessie Goe, sixty-four, had spent his savings on food and furniture payments and waved his empty wallet in front of onlookers. Another Briggs worker, Floyd Curtis, forty-one, had exhausted the financial reserves it had taken him eight months to accumulate. Although Ford averted the worst of the gas-crisis layoffs, the company planned major changes for its 1949 models and laid off twenty-five thousand Rouge workers for up to six weeks while updating machinery. Any hopes for a year of steady employment were already dashed.48
Despite persistent disruptions, automakers produced a postwar monthly record of 490,000 vehicles in March, but more troubles loomed. The United Mine Workers launched another strike that gradually created a familiar ripple effect throughout the national economy. Coal shortages hurt steel production, and railroad shipments were curtailed, affecting supplies of parts and materials. When the federal government ordered national freight train service to be cut by 50 percent, automakers tried their best to get supplies via trucks and ships, but there was no way to replace the volume normally carried by rail. Although the coal strike ended in mid-April, it took nearly another month to restore production to March levels. In response, General Motors closed operations for two weeks, laying off nearly forty thousand Detroit-area workers, and Chrysler president K. T. Keller glumly warned stockholders that production would be hampered for several more months.49
Additional disruptions appeared likely as contract negotiations faltered at the Big Three automakers. The UAW had demanded what amounted to a fifty-cent-an-hour increase from Ford. Thirty of those cents were to go toward a straight wage increase, and the rest would support programs like a medical plan, pensions, and a three-week paid vacation. The union’s demands of Ford far exceeded those made of GM (twenty-five cents an hour total) and Chrysler (thirty cents an hour), which outraged Ford officials. Ford vice president John Bugas argued that higher wages would only accelerate inflation, resulting in fewer new car purchases and additional unemployment. Since Ford already paid a higher average hourly wage ($1.53) than GM ($1.42) and Chrysler ($1.43), Bugas warned, his company would propose a wage cut instead of an increase.50
Chrysler workers made the first move, however, by striking for a contract. At the time, Chrysler operated eleven plants in Michigan, ten of them in Detroit, employing sixty-five thousand people. The Chrysler walkout caused an immediate shutdown of operations at Briggs plants, and industry analysts estimated that an additional fifty thousand Detroiters would be out of work if the conflict dragged on, which seemed certain. Most Chrysler strikers appeared to support the action, although a sizable number of them conceded that they lacked the resources to stay out for long. Ineligible for state unemployment benefits and with no financial support from the UAW, striking Chrysler workers, like their GM counterparts two years earlier, were on their own.51 Many wives of Chrysler workers assumed larger roles as wage earners. Some families leaned on relatives for help. Others were already supporting members of their extended families. “Besides my children, I have my father and aunt to look after and we’re paying $17.50 a month for a new icebox,” said one mother of seven. “I don’t know how we’ll ever make it now.” Elizabeth DuVan, seven months pregnant, worried about medical expenses. “We’ll have a large hospital bill in a couple of months,” she noted, “and I don’t know where we’ll get the money to meet it.”52
GM settled without a strike. The sides agreed on a wage increase of three cents an hour, improved health benefits, and, out of the blue, a mechanism for keeping up with inflation. If the cost of living, as determined by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose by a certain amount—1.14 points on the bureau’s scale—GM workers would receive an additional penny per hour. If the cost of living went down by the same amount, workers would lose one cent an hour, but hourly wage reductions during the life of the contract would be limited to five cents total. The Bureau of Labor Statistics used 1940 data to create a baseline index of 100.2. In April 1948 the index was 169.3, meaning the cost of living had increased 69 percent in eight years. GM claimed that its proposal (nicknamed COLA, for cost-of-living allowance) would “promote prosperity and stability and protect and improve standards of living” for its workforce.53 Shortly after, Chrysler and the union reached a similar agreement, although without a COLA clause. Despite their contract settlement, many Chrysler workers did not return to their jobs right away because of wildcat strikes at Briggs and a contract strike at the Budd Company, both major suppliers. The Chrysler settlement, it turned out, had not brought steady employment. Neither had the GM agreement. The corporation shut down in mid-June because of the long-term effects of the coal strike, and nearly thirty thousand of its Detroit employees were once again off the job.54
The inability to sustain full employment irritated auto executives as well as their workforces, and stricter federal credit regulations were partly to blame. Economists warned of a disturbing rise in consumer debt across the nation, fueled by an increasing percentage of car purchasers who relied heavily on credit. The Federal Reserve Board sought to rein in the binge by strengthening “Regulation W,” an inflation-fighting directive that originated during World War II. The board had eased credit requirements in 1947, but the 1948 upsurge in debt prompted it to order that automobile purchasers make down payments of one-third the selling price and pay off loans within eighteen months. This meant more substantial down payments and steeper monthly installments, putting purchases of new cars out of reach for many consumers and certainly for most industrial workers. Indeed, a study by auto financing companies showed that only those with family incomes in the nation’s top 14 percent could afford new cars under the revised Regulation W. It was even difficult for many potential purchasers to buy used cars. For autoworkers it made little sense to commit to relatively high monthly payments when employment was so volatile. Indeed, in the month after the revised Regulation W took effect, used car sales in Detroit plummeted and many used car dealerships closed. Industry observers understood that a healthy used car market was essential to sustain new car sales. Shoppers wanted to trade in their old vehicles for maximum values, but the offers they received were low in large part because of Regulation W’s negative impact on demand, which in turn discouraged new car purchases. On the other hand, as the Federal Reserve pointed out, the likely alternative was a credit bubble and inflation, followed by some sort of crash.55 Auto industry analysts estimated that there was an unmet demand in the range of 4.5 million vehicles, which at the automakers’ current sluggish rates was about a year’s worth of production. And although steel shortages remained the largest impediment to production, tight credit did not help sales.
While the credit controversy raged, a production disruption at the plant level tested the limits of solidarity among workers in tough times. In early September, 170 guards at Briggs plants, members of the independent United Plant Guard Workers of America (UPGWA), went on strike, hoping to gain fifteen minutes of paid time to prepare for work once on site. UAW members refused to cross the UPGWA’s picket lines, halting production at Briggs plants and quickly forcing the shutdown of most Chrysler and Packard operations. Fifty thousand Detroiters were immediately laid off. When the plant guards and Briggs management held fast to their positions, one hundred thousand Detroiters up and down the affected production chains were out of work. With employment having been so unstable, many autoworkers soon had second thoughts about observing the UPGWA picket lines, and UAW leaders pressured the plant guards to give up. “We are returning to work because we realize so many others have been affected by our dispute,” explained UPGWA president James McGahey.56
Despite intermittent production, automakers earned record profits during 1948, and official employment levels reached postwar peaks. Total industrial payrolls in Detroit for 1948 reached an all-time high of over $1.530 billion.57 If one looked only at these official statistics, it would be easy to conclude that these were boom times for Detroit autoworkers. The catch, of course, was that total employment figures did not translate into steady jobs for autoworkers, who had experienced tumultuous swings in employment and persistent economic insecurity. National Association of Manufacturers president Morris Sayre warned industrialists in Detroit that volatility in the auto industry was a serious national concern. “Security represented by the steadiest job possible is the first concern of every working American,” he declared, and the free enterprise system might not last unless each employer considered “every unemployed worker as our personal problem.” Despite any favorable economic data, by the end of 1948 autoworkers had yet to experience a postwar boom.