Child of the Sit-Downs_ The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger - Carlton Jackson [29]
The strike wore on. GM would not negotiate with the UAW until all of its plants were free of sit-downers, and the UAW refused to negotiate with GM until its union had been officially recognized. Such stalemates brought public officials into the picture. Frances Perkins, FDR’s secretary of labor, tried to get the sides together, to no avail. Other public figures urged that once again court injunctions be sought against the strikers.
In late January, GM offered nationwide employment on a part-time basis in any strike-free plant that had been idled by the stoppage in Flint. Some 40,000 GM workers around the country went to work; in Flint, about 11,000 resumed their employment.78 These actions worried the UAW leadership as well as its principal advisor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), headed by John L. Lewis. Ultimately, they decided that their best strategy was to enlarge the strike, and this meant taking a Chevrolet building that had previously been struck but had resumed work under GM’s enticement. This was Plant Four, the sole producer of engines (as well as other equipment) for Chevy and “thus one of the two or three most important units in the entire GM complex.”79 In fact, it was the largest unit of all the Flint GM buildings; in normal times, it employed 4,000 workers, 2,000 on each shift.80 If the UAW could capture this huge entity, its members felt sure they could win the strike.
From one point of view, Plant Four was logical because it had only two main entrances, first to take and then to keep. The plant was, however, only a third of a mile from the GM personnel building, which housed a “virtual arsenal” of company police, Pinkertons, and other officers.81 A diversionary scheme had to be cooked up to get the attention of the lawmen away from Plant Four, at least long enough for the unionists to occupy it. Kermit Johnson, Genora’s husband, worked in Plant Four and was the leader of the strike committee against Chevrolet. One night he came home with a “greasy little piece of paper in his hand.”82 It was a complete plan by which to take Plant Four. Workers in Plants Six and Eight were numerous enough to take Plant Four if—and this was a big if—the lawmen could be gotten out of the personnel building and sent to a distant place.83 That distant place was Plant Nine. Put out the word that strikers were moving against it, and the police would flock to it. While they were away, the UAW would take Plant Four.
The plan was put to a vote by the SP in Flint (Kermit was a longtime member of the Socialists). Walter Reuther was up from Detroit, and he opposed the plan without giving any distinct reasons. He created ill will by making it appear that he was the big city guy, up here to show the locals how to do things. He obviously thought the plan had been put together too hurriedly, mentioning how long it had taken the American Federation of Labor to become powerful, and that nothing, not even bold union plans, could be done overnight. He told Genora that this was her first strike and that she was still “wet behind the ears.” The UAW would have to learn how to “creep before we could walk.”84
Genora typed a two-page, single-spaced letter to Norman Thomas, leader of the National Socialist Party, and outlined her husband’s and his colleagues’ plans to take Plant Four. Thomas, who believed the sit-downs symbolized a challenge to capitalism and that the Flint strikers were “harbingers of a new society,” wrote to the SP secretary, Frank Trager, in support of Kermit’s plan.85
At the next meeting of the Flint Socialists, Trager spoke strongly in favor of Kermit’s proposal. Those assembled in Flint on January 21 certainly did not want to be at cross-purposes with national leaders. This time the voters approved Kermit Johnson’s plan.86 Walter Reuther (who