Showdown at Ford

Last week, for the first time in history, Henry Ford's main plant at Dearborn was shut by a strike. One by one, subsidiary and assembly plants throughout the nation, which feed into the main plant or feed from it, were forced to close. The whole production flow of Ford was dammed.

The strike threat which had hung over Ford since C.I.O. determined to organize his plant had become a reality. One day last week, in the rolling mill at the main River Rouge plant, eight union men were fired. Promptly other union workers laid down their tools, ran through the mill shouting: "Strike!" Work stopped. About midnight, after leaders of C.I.O.'s United Auto Workers had asked to go into the plant to try to make peace, and Ford officials had said No, the union officially called a plantwide strike. Union men marched out through the gates, formed picket lines in the streets and drew up barricades of automobiles.

They were there at dawn when workers arrived for the morning shift. Some non-union men broke through. Pickets jeered. But there was no serious violence until 200 nonstriking Negroes, who had remained inside the beleaguered plant, made a sortie through Gate 4 armed with iron pipes, steel bars, bolts, razors, knives, and charged the pickets. Hot & heavy was the battle until the attackers withdrew, fled back inside.

Federal Conciliator James Dewey rushed to Detroit, earnestly conferred with Michigan's Governor Murray D. Van Wagoner, company men and union leaders, trying to find some formula for a truce before riot ran rampant at Rouge. Finally the company agreed to close the plant and negotiate tentatively, the union agreed to remove the barricades and send maintenance men into the plant to bank fires, keep them going.

Ford rearmament projects include contracts for 1,500 Army bantam combat cars ("Blitz buggies") and, far more important, for 4,200 Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engines. The Blitz buggies had already begun to roll off the assembly line, but the new $22,000,000 plant to house production of the aircraft engines was still abuilding. Work on it ceased when A.F. of L. construction workers refused to venture past the C.I.O. picket lines.

Week's end continued the truce, but brought no peace to Ford. Charges flew thick & fast. Ford's Harry Bennett accused leaders of the United Automobile Workers of Communism. Company officials charged that dies and tools needed in aircraft production had been destroyed. To the company charge that defense work was being delayed, the union replied that it was willing to supply men to keep defense work going, but that maintenance men sent inside were manhandled.

An estimated 1,200 Negro workers refused to budge from the plant, declaring that they felt safer where they were. Rumors leaked out that they were enjoying themselves inside, careering around the grounds in cars and newborn Blitz buggies. When Conciliator Dewey went inside to talk to them, he found them armed with knives which they had forged. He promised them safe passage through the lines, but still most of them would not leave. The few who did go were unmolested by pickets. Union men declared that most of the Negroes had been hired by Ford officials in the past month to play the ultimate role of strikebreakers, and were being encouraged to stay in the plant in an effort to create a race issue and confuse the real issue of the strike.

Hard-working Mr. Dewey made optimistic announcements of an early peace. U.A.W. demands included: 1) reinstatement of strikers without discrimination; 2) wage increases "up to the standards of" General Motors and Chrysler. The union was reportedly asking the company to negotiate a contract for its members now, and accept the U.A.W. as the exclusive bargaining agent if it could prove it had a majority by winning a plant election This week NLRB ordered an election to be held within the next 45 days.

At week's end, neither Founder Ford, President Edsel Ford nor Harry Bennett were to be found, though newsmen hunted high & low for them. Conciliator Dewey got along as best he could, conferring with second-string plant officials. But Henry Ford, who has no respect for unions and asks only to be let alone, was facing a labor showdown.

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