The 1950 contract signed by GM and the UAW, called “The Treaty of Detroit” by Fortune magazine, looms large in accounts of postwar U.S. labor history, because it seemed to ensure steady employment, increasing wages, and improved benefits for autoworkers. That contract, however, was signed after a year of national recession marked by intensifying competition in the auto industry, with production speedups and strikes, new efforts at automation (the replacement of jobs with machinery), national coal and steel strikes, and increasing unemployment for autoworkers. Despite the recession and disrupted production, most auto companies prospered in 1949. But for workers the Treaty of Detroit and comparable contracts with Chrysler and Ford were efforts to achieve some semblance of stability and predictability in a volatile industry, not the confirmation and continued promise of the postwar boom. Chrysler workers, for example, gained their pension plan in 1950 only after a 104-day strike, during which one hundred thousand Detroiters were out of work and struggled to meet basic needs. The contracts appeared to have a positive short-term effect, as auto sales soared in early to mid-1950, especially when Chrysler’s strike ended, in the closest thing yet to a postwar boom. But the onset of war in Korea threatened auto industry prosperity as the government allocated strategic resources for military purposes. By the end of the year, employment instability had returned in force as many workers, including tens of thousands of new migrants to Detroit, were forced to rely on secondary support networks.
* * *
In early 1949 total employment in Michigan was declining and national demand for new cars was weakening. Economic indicators could not account for these drops. On average, passenger cars on American roads were over nine years old, with two-thirds of them built before World War II. Surely those vehicles needed to be replaced. On the other hand, disturbing unemployment trends extended well beyond Michigan and threatened the auto industry. Disregarding ominous signs, automakers boosted production at a pace that would have resulted in topping 1948’s output by nearly 750,000 units. Declining demand, auto officials maintained, could be overcome by energetic sales efforts at dealerships, which were required to purchase whatever their franchisor produced. To auto companies, a car was considered “sold” when it was shipped from the factory to the dealer. Dealers went into great debt to absorb high-volume production and had to sell those vehicles to consumers or watch inventories amass on their lots. If dealer stockpiles expanded too much, auto assemblies were reduced, and by the end of February it was difficult to ignore the backlog of unsold cars.1 Automakers blamed this predicament on tight credit terms. In March the Federal Reserve actually loosened requirements, allowing twenty-one months for the repayment of auto loans instead of eighteen, but industry officials argued that Regulation W was still too strict. Even under the revised terms, complained the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association, “It is almost impossible for the production worker on Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth assembly lines to buy one of the cars he makes.”2
Despite intense competition in a tight market, automakers refused to lower prices. To do so would have upset the vehicle-sales ecosystem. For example, if prices were reduced for low-end new models, such as Chevrolets, Fords, and Plymouths, sales of medium-range used cars, such as Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, would be jeopardized. Why buy a used car, the thinking went, if you could purchase a new one for roughly the same price? A backlog of medium-priced used cars would reduce trade-in values for those models, thereby discouraging sales of new autos in that important sector of the industry. Since costs for engineering, tools and dies, materials, and labor were roughly comparable for all vehicles, higher-priced cars generated the largest profits for automakers. So even though most consumers were unable to afford new cars, reducing prices on vehicles that were most likely to be in demand was out of the question.3
The most effective way for automakers to compete, then, was to reduce production costs, which provoked numerous strikes over workloads. Workers at Hudson, Briggs, and Chrysler experienced the most lost days.4 UAW leaders charged that automakers intentionally incited conflicts by ignoring complaints about harsh working conditions, thereby limiting production and inventories via strikes instead of layoffs and avoiding liability for unemployment benefits. Automakers disagreed. “The current disputes over production standards have generally been provoked by insistence of the union that more men than necessary be used to man some of the new machines,” explained a management representative. Inefficiency could no longer be tolerated, he insisted, because “the day of competition has returned to stay in the auto industry.”5 The largest workload strike erupted in the “B Building” of the Ford Rouge plant in May. At issue was a proposed speedup of the final assembly line, which, Local 600 charged, had been moving incrementally faster for months. Was Ford’s planned new rate within contractually acceptable limits, or was it excessive? The formal grievance procedure had failed to resolve the question to anyone’s satisfaction. The core dispute in this case was not so much about the regular speed of the assembly line, but rather the pace at which it operated when making up for the inevitable breakdowns and delays that occurred during each shift. As motor-line employee Teddy Winston insisted, “The company has been getting away with murder on these speedups.” Local 600 members voted overwhelmingly to strike, pending approval of the UAW’s International Executive Board (IEB). But when the IEB hesitated, irate Local 600 officials forced the issue by calling a strike anyway.6 The IEB’s reluctance stemmed in part from awareness that most UAW members were already in precarious economic circumstances and that it was possible there would be a strike later that year for a new contract at Ford. Two possibly lengthy strikes would likely lead to more economic hardship than most workers could tolerate. By its standards the UAW’s strike fund was large, about a million dollars as opposed to nonexistent. But because the Rouge plant was essential for Ford operations nationwide, well over one hundred thousand UAW members would be affected if the plant shut down. The strike fund could not stretch far under those circumstances.7
As the speedup strike passed the two-week mark, all Ford operations stopped, and Walter Reuther encouraged Rouge workers to find other jobs until there was a settlement. Detroit resident and former Rouge employee James Oliver Slade noted that, including strikers’ families, at least a quarter million Detroiters were directly affected by the Rouge conflict. He warned that so many “ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed in this community can do none other than increase crime, delinquencies and generally unwholesome conduct for many persons who ordinarily would behave as law abiding citizens.” With little money left in its budget, Detroit’s welfare department braced for an upsurge in cases. One had to prove indigence and no means of support—no savings, no war bonds, no assets, no car—to qualify for city welfare benefits. If a family of four met those standards, and only eight out of a thousand Ford applicants were approved, they would receive about fifty-five dollars every other week, a little less than half of average Ford wages, in exchange for forty-five hours of work on city projects.8 The loss of Ford workers’ income had a staggering effect on the local economy. Neighborhood grocery stores and movie theaters fared reasonably well, but restaurants, drugstores, and bars saw business drop immediately. Furniture and appliance sales declined noticeably. The Detroit Street Railway lost ten thousand dollars a day for lack of ridership. As happened during many layoffs, rents and mortgages went unpaid. Under Michigan law, homeowners had eighteen months to make up any missed payments before facing foreclosure. Landlords, however, could evict tenants at any time for any reason, although during layoffs they had generally offered extensions, figuring that when the tenants returned to work the back rent would get paid. But with the region experiencing a housing shortage, State of Michigan Circuit Court judges in Detroit braced for a wave of strike-related eviction hearings. As it turned out, Ford and the UAW reached an agreement after twenty-five days, without settling the core dispute, and it took an extra week or two before full production resumed, because supply chains had to be restocked.9
While the Ford strike dominated the news, confusing economic data appeared. In a time marked by record auto production and employment levels, the state’s jobless total rose to over two hundred thousand. It was difficult to believe that production records could be set, given the number of strikes and supply shortages in the preceding months. And record employment levels could be deceiving, since they included thousands of Detroiters on “short weeks,” marked, according to the MUCC, by “cuts in weekly working hours, spotty one-and two-day layoffs and intermittent production shutdowns.” Automation was partly responsible for increased production and decreased employment, yet many industrialists were reluctant to invest as heavily as possible in new technology. Automakers knew that steel shortages and high demand for new equipment could increase the cost of machinery, which often forced them to settle for piecemeal upgrades even though improvements in one area could succeed only if every related process kept pace with expanded productivity. After all, auto production was ultimately limited by the least available part.10 In 1949 one crucial constraint was auto bodies, which could not yet be manufactured quickly enough to support the productive capacity of assembly lines. Yet there was also the example of new chemical-dipping techniques for polishing bumpers, which eliminated many jobs but also solved the problem of having to sell bumper-less cars with IOUs, which had been a common practice when sales boomed. No matter what, though, auto manufacturers always looked for ways to decrease the number of workers in each department, which contributed to rising car output with increasing unemployment.11
Those out of work or underemployed were forced yet again to turn to secondary survival strategies. Bud Weber, for example, found a job as a part-time janitor at the post office in Drayton Plains, outside of Pontiac, in an area increasingly populated by whites leaving or avoiding the city. Alternative employment in suburbs was virtually impossible for African Americans, and given the intense job segregation in Detroit and Pontiac, laid-off black autoworkers always had fewer options than whites. Many blacks tried to find temporary employment as butlers or porters, and most of them faced further disappointment. “Our office is jammed with people every day,” remarked the owner of Jones Employment Service, “but we just don’t have the jobs to send the people out on.” The abundance of temporary job seekers led to depressed wages. If they could find service positions, African American men who were laid off from auto work were lucky to make twenty-five dollars a week, well less than half what they could earn in a factory. Black women often received only fifteen to eighteen dollars per week as maids, about half of what they were paid in defense plants during World War II.12
Aware that high unemployment gave the UAW little leverage entering contract negotiations, Ford maintained that it was in the workers’ best interest to accept an eighteen-month pay freeze. Hoping to lower production costs, automakers had little control over prices for materials and parts, so they focused primarily on cutting expenditures for labor. “The postwar buggy ride of ever higher wages, costs and prices is over,” Ford’s John Bugas warned. Yet autoworkers had barely a toehold in the postwar consumer society, and driving their wages downward, UAW officials cautioned, was bound to have a negative impact on the entire economy. “The textile and shoe industries are depressed because insecure auto workers and other workers cannot buy garments and shoes with their present wages,” Walter Reuther observed. “It is further apparent that textile and shoe workers will not be customers for Ford autos until they have their own purchasing power restored and increased.” Ford’s proposed solution for long-term prosperity, Reuther warned, would “drag other industries and perhaps the whole economy down with it.”13
Disgusted with the prospect of more pay for autoworkers, Detroit Board of Commerce executive Harvey Campbell argued that those who built cars had become lazy and dependent. “Take a look at the employment records every Monday,” he emphasized. “Too big a percentage of workers don’t show up at all. They work four days and make enough money to enjoy themselves for the next three days.” If autoworkers found themselves in tight economic circumstances, he insisted, it was their own fault: “Poverty has become a profession—welfare a career.” Campbell assumed that if autoworkers were just ambitious enough to show up every day, they would prosper. Some evidence in mid-1949 indicated that Campbell’s point contained a kernel of truth. Bureau of Labor statistics showed that autoworkers were earning record weekly pay of $68.90. Moreover, according to the Board of Commerce, the city’s industrial workers enjoyed higher wages than their manufacturing counterparts anywhere in the nation. By these measures it seemed clear that opportunities existed for autoworkers with good attendance records to attain economic security without pay increases.14
But once again, statistics indicating high wages and steady hours proved to be misleading. In August unemployment in the city reached eighty-seven thousand, about 7.5 percent of the workforce. Caution ruled in factory personnel offices, and hiring stopped at most smaller plants. Some jobs were available at larger facilities because of high turnover rates for entry-level positions, but foremen were increasingly picky, rejecting as many as fifteen applicants for every opening, often for reasons besides ability. “As the unemployment lines grow longer and longer,” observed a Michigan Chronicle editorial, “the old employment formula of selectivity once more begins to take hold,” causing “Negroes, Catholics, Jews, men of foreign birth, men over forty and women, to be slowly hired and hastily laid off.” Journalist Charles Wartman reported that “the ratio of 100 whites to one Negro, alleged to be the pattern of hiring at the Chrysler Motor Company, is still bringing great screams of protest.” To address the unemployment crisis, Detroit municipal departments compiled lists of New Deal–style public works programs—repairing fire hydrants, painting light poles, maintaining parks, and such—and city leaders petitioned the federal government for money to fund them.15
A contract settlement between Ford and the UAW in late September eliminated one possibility of a strike, which would have caused widespread unemployment. The agreement included no wage increases. However, the two sides agreed to the first major pension program in the industry, funded entirely by the company. When combined with federal Social Security, the Ford pension would provide retirees with a total of one hundred dollars a month, just over one-third of average, full-time monthly pay at the time. UAW members at Ford could receive full pension benefits when they turned sixty-five if they had at least twenty-five years of service with the company. Management hoped to replace older, less physically capable workers with younger ones and to set a precedent by demonstrating that corporate benefits could meet society’s needs, eliminating any momentum for expanding government programs like Social Security. Union leaders hoped that older workers could enjoy a dignified retirement and make way for unemployed younger Detroiters to take their jobs. The UAW would have preferred more generous Social Security benefits for all Americans, but given the Cold War political climate, a private pension plan made sense.16
Although the Ford settlement kept tens of thousands of Detroit autoworkers from picket lines, job stability proved elusive nevertheless because of a national steel strike in mid-October. If the steelworkers had not walked out, a simultaneous coal strike would have shut down their foundries anyway. Most auto companies had stockpiled thirty to forty-five days’ worth of steel, but they still had no control over supplies for parts manufacturers. As one auto industry analyst put it, having plenty of steel on hand “may not provide any more security than lighted candles on the Christmas tree.” Because unsold car inventories were so high, auto officials might have welcomed a shutdown that they could blame on somebody else. For autoworkers, however, a familiar cycle recurred: tens of thousands of them were laid off, the MUCC prepared for an onslaught of unemployment applications, and merchants in Detroit’s working-class neighborhoods prepared for yet more hard times.17
Contract settlements in the steel and coal industries in November offered hope for an end to Detroit’s crisis, but the lag time between resumption of steel operations and significant automobile production was considerable. As Thanksgiving approached, more than 100,000 Detroiters were counted as unemployed, with totals rising to 175,000 by December.18 “Having barely skimmed through a ‘thankless’ Thanksgiving, many of the laborers now at leisure in metropolitan Detroit are bitter and baffled over the turn of events,” wrote journalist Myrtle Gaskill, reporting on “the long line of workers who jam the unemployment compensation offices each day. There you will find a cross section of humanity whose expressions range from moderate hope to utter dejection.” “It takes the little I have accumulated to survive,” Edward Lowe claimed. “I don’t know what my kids will do,” said a worried woman in line. “It takes every penny I make to support them. I’ve been at the plant since the war—my man was killed in the Pacific. It will take me four months to catch up with what this lay-off has cost me and by then I guess there will be another.”19
When Detroit automakers announced a gradual return to work in early December, economists and industry analysts quickly forgot the most recent weeks of high unemployment, even if those who were directly affected did not.20 Indeed, most auto companies declared that 1949 had been a tremendously successful year. Chrysler set new records for production, sales, and net earnings. GM announced peacetime highs for payroll, employment, and profits. Although Hudson and Packard showed reduced earnings compared with 1948, both companies had relatively high profits and voiced optimism that they were well situated for the future. Only Kaiser-Frazer suffered losses.21 William J. Cronin, head of the Automobile Manufacturers Association, reviewed the industry’s accomplishments: “Production moved at a fast pace throughout the entire year, sales kept right on the heels of production, and employes worked longer, steadier and were paid more money than in any year in the history of the industry.”22 Such claims, however, offered a misleading sense of the year for autoworkers, who had missed weeks of employment from steel and parts shortages, speedup strikes, and overproduction. Indeed, a different year-end review marveled over strong output and profit statistics while noting that it all seemed “paradoxical,” because each month of 1949 had seen “a disheartening number of strikes, shutdowns, shortages and obstacles to production.”23 Because of these disruptions, many autoworkers had exhausted any financial reserves and had fallen behind on rent, mortgages, and installment payments while running up burdensome tabs with their local grocers. The aggregate economic data gave the impression of industrial stability and financial security, neither of which autoworkers had experienced during the year.
* * *
A 104-day strike for a contract at Chrysler dominated the early months of 1950 in Detroit. Negotiations reached an impasse before production could recover from the fall 1949 steel shortage, and when there was no settlement by the January 25 deadline, more than one hundred thousand Detroit-area workers, eighty thousand of them Chrysler employees and the rest from suppliers, were either off the job again or out of work even longer if they had not yet been recalled.24 The main sticking point was a pension plan. The UAW demanded a program like what had been negotiated with Ford, while Chrysler offered only a promise to do the best it could, without any formal framework or funding guidelines, “backed,” as a company vice president put it, “by the integrity and solvency of Chrysler Corp. itself.”25
Chrysler strikers, of course, were ineligible for unemployment benefits, although those laid off from suppliers, such as Briggs, could now receive weekly checks. In mid-1949 unemployment benefits in Michigan had increased to twenty-four dollars per week, with an additional two dollars per week for each child up to a maximum of thirty-two dollars. To qualify for benefits, however, a laid-off worker had to have earned at least forty-two dollars in each of the previous thirty weeks from that employer. Given the frequency of layoffs and short weeks throughout 1949, this was a difficult standard for many autoworkers to meet. About eight hundred Chrysler strikers a day applied for city relief, but as the walkout neared the three-week mark, only sixteen total had been approved.26 Overwhelmed with applications, the MUCC tried to match strikers with job openings but found that local manufacturing firms refused to hire them. As an official at the Cadillac Employment Agency explained, “They don’t want any Chrysler strikers. They know the men will leave when the strike ends.” Some customary opportunities for seasonal work were not available that winter. “Usually at this time of the year we have a lot of requests for coal handlers and coal truck drivers,” an employment agent noted. But because of the miners’ strike, he said, “there’s no coal.”27 Some Chrysler strikers hoped for help from the UAW. The union had recently begun a dollar-a-week assessment of its non-Chrysler membership to bolster its strike fund, which stood to receive six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand dollars each week. At union gatherings strikers often questioned what was being done with those resources, because the money reached only a small percentage of individuals at the local level. In response, the UAW’s Emil Mazey emphasized the arithmetic—there would be enough in the fund for only about six dollars per week per striker. Chrysler workers had to fend for themselves.28
Alternative jobs helped a bit. In 1950 Detroit had no snowplows. Instead, streets were cleared by hundreds of temporary workers. With heavy snow in the forecast on a February evening, some two thousand Detroiters, mostly laid-off Chrysler workers, waited for hours, hoping to be among the lucky eight hundred chosen to shovel all night for $1.26 an hour. A Department of Public Works official described the scene as “the biggest line since the depression.” One of the hopeful shovelers said he had only a dollar to his name. Another remarked, “My cupboard is not far from being bare.” A laid-off Kaiser-Frazer employee said he was desperate for work because he had a “baby on the way.”29 Many women increased their earnings, if they could, during such layoffs. For example, Helen Stanwyck used her dressmaking skills to support her family of seven, and her husband, Tony, who normally worked in the trim department at Dodge Main, helped by riding his bike downtown to buy thread and material. Working steadily, Helen earned $30 to $35 a week, she said, “and it kept us from going behind in our house payments and not get too heavily in debt.”30
Unloading possessions, begging for mercy, scavenging, and leaving town were also common strategies. Uncertain that they could make monthly payments, a number of striking workers sold their cars for whatever cash they could get. UAW officials met with Detroit Common Pleas Court commissioners to ask for leniency in cases involving strikers who faced debt collection and eviction. Large numbers of unemployed workers gathered at the site of an old boat-fueling station on the Detroit River to collect coal, which had once covered several acres of the property in a massive pile and with its weight had sunk into the ground about a foot deep. Hundreds of thousands of Detroiters in 1950 still heated their homes with coal. Facing shortages from the miners’ strike, soaring prices, and little or no income, desperate workers hacked out the precious fuel left behind. A steady line of vehicles, sagging under the weight of their cargoes, left the riverside as empty cars and trucks entered. Rather than scrounge out an existence in Detroit, many laid-off autoworkers, white and black, chose to leave the city to stay with friends or family members until plants reopened. Greyhound tripled the number of buses heading south to accommodate them.31
John Gibson, fifty-eight, with sixteen years of seniority at Chrysler’s Plymouth plant, strongly supported holding out as long as it took to gain a pension plan. “When you get past 50,” he said, “you begin thinking more in terms of future security. The young fellows don’t feel that way and I don’t exactly blame them.” Gibson was married and had three children, two of whom still lived at home. He conceded that he had not been able to save much money in the past few years. “I have a little but not enough to last a long time,” he noted. He could meet February’s $70 house payment, but he was “not so sure about the next one.” His wife, in charge of the family budget, had plenty of experience managing finances during tough times. “I think the really hard part,” she emphasized, “is after the strike is over and you start trying to catch up.”32
A fellow Chrysler striker was less certain than Gibson about the merits of the current conflict. “I have been a union member for years,” he said. “I believe in organized labor.” Nevertheless, he insisted, his concerns and needs were not taken into account by top UAW leadership. He emphasized the economic hardships caused by the strike: “We hope and pray we will get enough overtime so we can pay the bills that have piled up on us while we have been off from work, then by the time we get our bills paid, including the loans at the finance companies, and get our belongings back from the pawn shops, we are called out on strike again.” If one calculated on a cost-benefit basis, he insisted, strikes were not always worth it. “A lot of workers, like myself, are getting fed up. All we want is to be able to work steadily so we can support our families. When we strike for higher wages what do we gain? Nothing. It takes us years to make up what we lose while out on strike.” Sensitive to such concerns, Walter Reuther explained to a crowd of seven thousand strikers that the walkout was necessary “so our kids can grow up in a better world.”33 But the union leader had no relief to offer in the present.
Stress mounted among strikers as the conflict dragged on with no settlement in sight. Demetry Kolada normally worked at Chrysler’s Plymouth plant. He had bought a home for his family of five when World War II ended by exhausting his savings and cashing in all of his war bonds to make the down payment. Since then, keeping his children fed and clothed while being subjected to intermittent layoffs had prevented him from building an emergency fund. As soon as the Chrysler strike began, the Koladas canceled their contract for thirty-five quarts of milk each week. They had meat only on Sundays, and Demetry ate all of his meals at the Local 51 soup kitchen in return for serving tables and washing dishes. He and dozens of other volunteers were allowed to take home any uneaten food at the end of each day. When the Koladas’ children all needed shoes at the same time, they applied at the welfare department but were denied. Behind on their mortgage payments, the couple received help from Demetry’s mother-in-law. “She has bought up the mortgage,” he explained, “and after I get back to work, I’ll start making my payments to her.”34
After seventy-five days on strike, Frank Lubinski and his family were approaching desperation but showed no sign of giving up on the cause. “Feeding and clothing a family of eight on an auto worker’s pay is not easy even when you’re working steadily,” Frank said. “These kids will eat $45 worth of food a week. And milk, they’ll drink eight quarts a day if you give it to them. Fresh fruit is something we almost never have, even in the best of times.” “Children grow out of things so quickly and they’re so hard on clothes,” observed Frank’s wife, Clara. “I’ve patched Carol’s snow suit so often there isn’t room for another patch, and still it’s coming apart. It’s the same with their dresses and shoes.” The children had been able to pay most of their Catholic-school tuition with after-school chores, and Frank did cabinet work at the church and parish house to make up the difference. Suffering from sinus problems, nine-year-old Donald needed regular medical treatments, but those were suspended during the strike so that the money could be used for food. “He comes to us crying in the middle of the night,” Clara said, “but all we can do is give him an aspirin tablet.” The strain was economic and psychological. Clara was glad that her husband spent his days at the union hall. “He has to get out and talk to somebody or he’d go crazy,” she explained. “And it’s a relief to me to get him out of the house. He either paces the floor or mopes around with his head in his hands, worrying. He never was one to sit around idle.” By this point the Lubinskis were four months behind on their house payments and three months late on gas, electricity, and telephone bills. Altogether, they owed over three hundred dollars. “It was touch and go to make ends meet even with regular paydays,” Clara remarked. “Now, with all the bills that have piled up, I don’t know how we’ll ever get them paid.”35
Ralph Smith lost his home. A thirty-eight-year-old veteran who met his Irish wife in London during World War II, Smith bought a house in 1948 on a five-thousand-dollar land contract. The Smiths had a four-year-old at the time, another baby was on the way, and housing was very difficult to find. A truck driver for Briggs, Smith had missed a month of work in December 1949 because of steel shortages. He had been back on the job for three weeks when the Chrysler strike began, which forced Briggs to close. Because he was not technically on strike, he qualified for unemployment compensation, which with two children came to twenty-eight dollars a week. The family managed to hang on for three months before falling behind on mortgage payments and being evicted. Police escorted Mrs. Smith and the children to Wayne County General Hospital, which offered food and shelter on a temporary basis. Mr. Smith stayed at a neighbor’s home, keeping watch over the family’s possessions, which still sat in their former yard.36
These were just a few of the nearly two hundred thousand Detroiters who were out of work in Detroit in early 1950, and no one can know for sure how representative they were. It is highly unlikely, however, that many ordinary autoworkers, especially those with families, had been able to meet living expenses and save adequately for unpredictable, often long-lasting layoffs. Although the Chrysler strike was an extreme example, whenever layoffs occurred some version of these survival strategies kicked in, with distinct variables and different outcomes, but all in the context of insecurity and instability. The impact of layoffs continued to be wide-ranging. As one Detroiter observed, “economic paralysis crept over the city,” but the hardships were especially acute among the unemployed and shopkeepers in working-class neighborhoods.37
For the first six weeks of the Chrysler strike, Ford and GM had been hamstrung by the prolonged coal walkout, but those two-thirds of the Big Three boomed after the mine workers settled in early March. General Motors and Ford hoped to set new production records for the entire industry, with or without Chrysler.38 By mid-April vehicles rolled off assembly lines at a staggering annual rate of seven million. Industry analysts concluded that since sales of low- and medium-priced cars were especially high, demand must have finally materialized from people in low- and medium-income groups, which could sustain the good times. Even the Hudson Motor Car Company set production and sales records, and with its twenty thousand employees this was of no small consequence for Detroit. To many, the postwar boom finally seemed to have arrived.39 Yet Chrysler and its suppliers were on the sidelines, with strikers and those on collateral layoffs falling deeper into debt. When the Chrysler walkout ended on May 4, returning workers learned they would not receive paychecks for two weeks, while bills, most of them overdue, continued to arrive. “I’m happy it’s over,” said Frank Lubinski, but “I can’t forget the bank note for $285, the payments on the washing machine, the doctor bill, the three light bills, three gas bills, three telephone bills and four house payments.” He had fallen a thousand dollars in debt, he said, “and for a working man, that seems hopeless.”40
The long Chrysler strike was an example of militancy that resulted in significant benefits, ultimately for hundreds of thousands of workers. In the end the UAW extracted from Chrysler most of what it had demanded from the start: the equivalent of the Ford pension plan. It had become clear that the federal government would not expand Social Security to provide anything near what was necessary for a dignified livelihood in retirement. Average monthly payments to Social Security recipients in 1950 were only forty-one dollars, and about half of all Americans eligible for Social Security that year chose to stay at work because they could not afford to retire. The first to claim a pension at Chrysler was eighty-five-year-old Charles Long, who had been on motor assembly since 1924 and hoped, finally, to “take it easy.” Although immediately worthwhile for older Chrysler workers, the pension plan could easily seem remote and extremely costly for many younger ones. Much depended on how connected and comfortable people were with the long-range goals of the union movement as opposed to present economic needs, especially given the industry’s volatility. But whether or not they had supported the strike, all Chrysler’s manufacturing workers had suffered enormous economic setbacks.41
Production at Chrysler facilities resumed as quickly as possible. Parts plants had been fully operational before the strike, feeder lines were full, and partly built cars still sat on final assembly lines. This contrasted with lengthy delays after coal and steel strikes, when supply chains had to be refilled. Although Chrysler’s early post-strike contributions helped set an all-time weekly record for vehicle output, the company operated initially at only about 50 percent of capacity, because so many workers had scattered to other states and it took time for them to return to Detroit. As those stragglers arrived, all auto production was threatened by what turned out to be a brief railroad strike, prompting enormous, largely unsuccessful efforts by automakers to arrange alternative modes of transportation for parts and materials and much reflection about the fate of the industry. “The whole career of the car and truck makers since the war has been a series of interruptions in production,” wrote a business observer. “The gleaming new machines that do the work of X number of obsolete machines and XX number of men in minus numbers of hours continue to function almost flawlessly,” he noted, “until there’s a strike. Or a change in the weather. Or something.” If not disgruntled railroad workers, he predicted, “it will be something else.”42
In this context GM and the UAW signed a new five-year contract in May, thus avoiding a strike like Chrysler’s. Called the “Treaty of Detroit” by Fortune magazine, the agreement guaranteed four-cent-an-hour raises each year above increases in the cost of living, and pensions of up to $117 a month, including Social Security, for retirees at age sixty-five. If GM employees were to work regularly, by the end of the contract they would receive over $700 more annually than under the previous agreement. GM also agreed to pay half of the hospital/medical insurance cost for union members; previously, workers paid the entire premium. In addition, the contract called for a modified union shop, in which all new hires at GM plants would have to join the UAW for their first year but could then quit the union if they desired. For its part, GM wanted to avoid interruptions in production when market conditions were so favorable, and looking to the future, predictable labor costs would help the company unleash its engineers to develop new technology and model designs. The UAW definitely wanted to avoid another walkout, especially one in which it would have had three times as many strikers (about 270,000 nationwide) as the recently ended Chrysler conflict.43
Labor peace accelerated surges in auto production and hiring, with unemployment in Detroit dropping from over 225,000 in February to only 44,000 by mid-June. The MUCC noted that because the demand for workers was so high, employers were abandoning their usual practices of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and age.44 Recently divorced with three young children to support, Dorothy Sackle benefited from this boom by hiring in at Dodge Main. Despite Sackle’s good fortune, however, women continued to be severely underrepresented in manufacturing. At the peak of wartime employment, 259,000 women worked in Detroit’s industrial plants. That number dropped to 67,400 after postwar layoffs, and it had risen to only 88,000 by mid-1950. Although more women were employed in the Detroit area in 1950 than during the war, most had been shunted into the service sector. It was uncertain how many women in Detroit wanted to work in factories in the early 1950s, but relatively few had the opportunity because of discriminatory hiring practices. Joe Woods, an African American worker at Pontiac Motor, took advantage of the tight labor market to land a better job in the company’s gun plant, where he helped skilled tradesmen dismantle and reassemble military equipment for shipment overseas. He recalled that he was as good at those tasks as the white men who had been through apprenticeships, and that he proved to be more valuable than many of the official white “helpers” assigned to the tradesmen. But despite Woods’s successful transfer, racial discrimination in factories was persistent and well understood in the black community. Black women stood virtually no chance of being hired for auto work, unlike during World War II, when they held defense jobs in large numbers. Many black Detroiters were convinced that if not for discrimination, African Americans already in the city could fill any supposed labor shortage during the 1950 boom. Middle-age Detroiters of any race, both men and women, also routinely met rejection when applying for auto work. Declining physical abilities and increasing pension liabilities hindered the chances of older residents, and during the 1950 boom the unemployment rate for those over age forty-five rose to nearly 33 percent.45
Celebrating the auto boom, the Detroit Board of Commerce declared that the average industrial worker in Detroit now earned $3,345 per year, still the best in the nation for blue-collar employment. The board’s wage calculations, however, assumed steady full-time employment and did not account for strikes or layoffs. For the tens of thousands who had recently missed weeks or months of pay, the record-setting statistic rang hollow.46 Even if the Board of Commerce’s wage figures had accurately represented blue-collar earnings, most autoworkers would still have been, at best, on the fringes of the new car market. According to a survey sponsored by GM and released in February 1950, only 12 million of the nation’s 43.8 million families were financially able to purchase a new car. Only 22 percent (2 million) of the 8.9 million families that earned between $3,000 and $5,000 a year, which, according to the board, would barely include an average full-time autoworker, owned new cars. Another 44 percent in that category had used cars, and 34 percent owned no car at all. GM understood that its hourly employees would probably not be able to purchase even the cheapest new Chevrolet. Instead, the nation’s largest automaker set high prices for its vehicles, ensuring desired profits even if actual demand for its cars fell as much as one-third short of predictions. Used cars, the company maintained, were available for working-class consumers.47 Many autoworkers owned cars in 1950, but despite being the elite of blue-collar workers, they played only a supporting role in the viability of their industry by propping up the used car market so that others might be the first purchasers of what they built.
As the auto industry boomed in mid-1950, the onset of war in Korea distorted the domestic economy. In late June, immediately after the conflict began, consumers rushed to purchase both new and used cars, as well as much else, from washing machines to nylons to refrigerators. It was part of a monthlong shopping spree, prompted by memories of World War II rationing programs. Frenzied demand contributed to inflated prices for manufactured goods. Food prices spiraled upward as well. Many wondered if Detroit would reprise its role as the Arsenal of Democracy, its economy humming with war production. Economists cautioned, however, that even if the war in Korea escalated, there would be no sudden employment boost from defense spending in Detroit, in part because it could take up to two years to convert back to military production. In the meantime, auto plants churned out as many cars as possible for the civilian market.48
The rush to produce was most urgent, and caused the most problems, for Chrysler and Briggs, which had been strikebound for over a hundred days while their competitors had thrived. During the first two post-strike months, numerous conflicts broke out in Chrysler and Briggs plants, some obviously a result of attempts by the automakers to make up for lost time, while others were familiar examples of shop-floor contentiousness that always seemed to crop up. The ripple effects from these conflicts resulted in layoffs for almost a quarter of Chrysler’s blue-collar employees in Detroit, with comparable impacts on Briggs workers.49 Strikes continued to affect production in non-Chrysler operations as well. A walkout in Muncie, Indiana, at the Warner Gear Corporation, which produced transmissions and overdrives, forced Kaiser-Frazer to lay off ten thousand employees “right when our production is at its peak,” a company spokesman complained. This sudden shortage also hurt Ford, Packard, Nash, and Studebaker.50
Most of these strikes were unsanctioned by the national UAW leadership and exposed fault lines within the union. Local UAW officers were obligated to inform wildcat strikers that they were breaking the contract and were thereby subject to penalties ranging from suspension to dismissal. As the only directly elected officials in the union, however, most local officers were reluctant to deliver these lines with enthusiasm or conviction. Whether or not they sympathized with wildcat strikers, upper-level UAW officials were in a bind, because they negotiated contracts that promised labor peace by settling conflicts through formal grievance procedures. According to UAW leaders, wildcat strikes undercut their authority at the bargaining table and could come back to haunt workers, since unauthorized walkouts could potentially set precedents for breaking contracts. UAW regional director Norman Matthews offered an example of a typical higher-level response to a wildcat strike, this one at Hudson: “If it is impossible to negotiate a satisfactory settlement of the grievances, the international union will authorize a strike by the Hudson workers once a proper strike vote has been taken and all other provisions of the contract and the international UAW constitution have been properly observed. We cannot and will not condone strikes or stoppages which are called and conducted in violation of those procedures.”51
In a perfect world, smooth-functioning grievance procedures could resolve almost any conflict. That was the promise of formalized grievance systems, with arbitration of the most difficult cases, which became the norm in industry during World War II. The wartime necessity of maintaining full production made a virtue of settling disagreements without resorting to strikes, even though thousands of wildcat walkouts still took place. In the postwar era, grievance procedures continued as standard features in most union contracts. If a worker believed he or she had been wronged, the first step was to meet with a union steward or shop committee member and the department foreman to try to sort out the problem. Although this stage rarely made headlines, nearly half of all budding grievances (more than 25,000 of 52,146) at GM plants from July 1948 through December 1949 were resolved this way. If the first step proved unsuccessful, both the worker and the foreman wrote out their versions of what happened and testified before a meeting of the local shop committee and management representatives. Again using GM as an example, more than a third of complaints were resolved at this stage. If an agreement still could not be reached, another meeting took place with the worker, the foreman, and two representatives each from the union and the company. This stage settled another 12 percent of grievances in GM plants. The thorny remaining cases went to an “umpire”—each of the Big Three had one—who ruled on them in court-like proceedings. By the numbers, then, the grievance procedures could be viewed as amazingly successful, because the vast majority of problems were indeed resolved without strikes. But wildcat strikes persisted, even if in small numbers compared to the total number of grievances. Some problems were too sudden, too serious, or too persistent for workers to wait for the formal process to unfold. What was of great importance to a particular group of workers, however, could be viewed as trivial or counterproductive by fellow union members in other departments and other plants or, more likely, by the larger public. As autoworker Patricia Cayo Sexton noted, “In the rest of the plant, we in trim were regarded as prima donnas and hotheads. In fact, other parts of the plant got quite tired and angry about being dragged off their jobs so often by trim wildcat strikes.” Whatever their merits, wildcats often bedeviled managers, union officials, and many thousands of indirectly affected workers.52
While turmoil racked so many auto plants, the onset of war prompted a new wave of migrants to Detroit—over 100,000 arrived between June 1950 and June 1951—who compounded a serious housing shortage in the city. In 1949 housing experts had concluded that there was virtually nothing available in the city for persons of low or average income. Only one-tenth of 1 percent of rental units in metro Detroit were open, and those commanded rents from $85 to $110 a month, well beyond the range of autoworkers. Working-class families, especially large ones, generally found it impossible to come up with down payments for purchasing houses, and many landlords refused to allow children to live in their apartments. In December 1950 the Detroit Housing Commission concluded that 250,000 Detroiters lived in “substandard” housing, defined as “dilapidated” or without indoor toilets, bathtubs, or running water. An additional 500,000 lived in what the commission called “substandard conditions,” in which two or more families occupied a unit meant for a single family. Nearly 40 percent of the city’s roughly 1.85 million residents, then, endured officially poor living conditions. Comprising about 16 percent of Detroit’s population, African Americans were certainly in the worst situation, but no one with limited means who hoped to rent in Detroit was likely to find something livable and affordable.53
Also of great concern was whether or not auto plants could absorb the new arrivals, let alone employ those already in Detroit. The return of stricter credit requirements in mid-September was an ominous sign. Total consumer debt, in large part for auto loans, had reached a record high, fueling inflation and prompting the Federal Reserve Board to act. Under the revised Regulation W, the least expensive new car on the market, with a one-third down payment, would require monthly installments of ninety dollars, nearly a third of an autoworker’s income. As feared, new car sales declined by 30 percent. A spokesman for used car dealers complained that they were hit even harder and that the tighter requirements took “the working man right out of the auto buying picture.” Paul Graves of the Detroit Auto Dealers Association predicted that “the paralyzing effect will now back up through pipelines to automobile factories and suppliers. Obviously, autos can’t be built if they can’t be sold.” Walter Reuther called Regulation W “a grievous blunder” and accused Federal Reserve Board members of “living in a world of banker mentality,” of having made “a stab in the dark,” with the knife “in the backs of America’s low-income families.” Local 600 officials complained that “the new restrictions impose hardships on those with the greatest needs while leaving those with the ability to pay completely unhurt.”54
Apprehension rose while industry officials waited for the federal government to announce its resource allocation plans. Five months after the war’s outbreak, government officials ordered nearly a 30 percent cutback on civilian copper use. Without copper, cars would have to go without radiators and electrical wiring, which was obviously impossible. But if the auto industry received all the copper it wanted, military electronics would be compromised, everyone in the household appliance industry would be screaming, and the nation’s electrical grid could not keep pace with increasing demand. Steel shortages seemed likely as well. The domestic steel industry had difficulty keeping up with the boom in early 1950, and even if it boosted production by 10 percent, as it planned to do, there would still not be enough to meet both civilian and military needs. In addition, automakers were reduced to pleading with federal agencies for a portion of the aluminum supply normally allocated for children’s toys.55 Fears appeared justified in November when materials shortages led to tens of thousands of job losses, mainly at Ford and Chrysler. Chrysler explained away its thirty-four thousand layoffs as part of a changeover in car models, but the company conceded that it had no definite plans to resume production. Chrysler workers wondered how they would pay for housing, food, or property taxes due at the end of the month, let alone any Christmas gifts. Hopes fell further when the company announced that in a best-case scenario, production would be reduced by 20 percent for the foreseeable future, requiring some twenty-five thousand fewer employees.56
Nevertheless, at the end of 1950 automakers and business boosters celebrated record annual production for the industry. Compared with 1949, vehicle output had increased by 28 percent, despite the long Chrysler strike and persistent steel shortages. Indeed, some industry analysts called this a “miracle” that had created “a veritable mountain of wealth.” Detroit factories had produced a record 9.8 billion dollars’ worth of manufactured goods, and industrial workers’ wages pumped an average of 37 million dollars each week into the local economy. The aggregate data was misleading, however, because conditions had not been so wonderful for actual autoworkers. Chrysler employees had missed three months early in the year, many were laid off again in the late fall, and chronic production interruptions occurred at every auto firm. Ford’s Rouge plant was currently enduring massive layoffs, and the war in Korea threatened hopes of high production and full employment in the coming year. “There will be disruption in Detroit employment in 1951,” the Pentagon guaranteed. Walter Reuther translated that to mean “mass unemployment.”57 On paper, contracts like the Treaty of Detroit promised increasing incomes and greater security for autoworkers, but in the real world unstable employment and inflation brought continued economic insecurity.