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Labor Day: A look back at the largest UAW strikes in history

American made is almost an anachronism now, but good manufacturing jobs drove America's post-war economic golden age. Fifty years ago, if you held a job on a line, you were most likely a member of a union. And no union was more powerful than the United Auto Workers. Before the slow decline in membership started in the 1970s, the UAW had over 1.5 million members and represented workers from the insurance industry to aerospace and defense. The UAW isn't the powerhouse it once was. Today, just fewer than 400,000 workers hold membership in the UAW. Unions are sometimes blamed for the decline of American manufacturing, as companies have spent the last 30 years outsourcing their needs to countries with cheap labor and fewer requirements for the health and safety of their workers. Unions formed out of a desire to protect workers from dangerous conditions and abject poverty once their physical abilities were used up on the line; woes that manufacturers now outsource to poorer countries, along with the jobs. Striking was the workers' way of demanding humane treatment and a seat at the table with management. Most strikes are and were local affairs, affecting one or two plants and lasting a few days. But some strikes took thousands of workers off the line for months. Some were large enough to change the landscape of America. 1. 1936-1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike In 1936, just a year after the UAW formed and the same year they held their first convention, the union moved to organize workers within a major manufacturer. For extra oomph, they went after the largest in the world – General Motors. UAW Local 174 president Walter Reuther focused on two huge production facilities – one in Flint and one in Cleveland, where GM made all the parts for Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet. Conditions in these plants were hellish. Workers weren't allowed bathroom breaks and often soiled themselves while standing at their stations. Workers were pushed to the limit on 12-14 hour shifts, six days a week. The production speed was nearly impossibly fast and debilitating injuries were common. In July 1936, temperatures inside the Flint plants reached over 100 degrees, yet managers refused to slow the line. Heat exhaustion killed hundreds of workers. Their families could expect no compensation for their deaths. When two brothers were fired in Cleveland when management discovered they were part of the union, a wildcat strike broke out.

Wish you had a world-famous auto exec give your commencement speech? Watch this

We've seen some pretty great commencement speeches over the years. There was Steve Jobs' incredibly inspiring Stanford address in 2005, John Stewart's insightful speech to the graduating class of William and Mary in 2004 and Steven Colbert's hilarious 2011 address at Northwestern, but automotive executives aren't strangers to honorary degrees. Former General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner spoke at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011, and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne recently gave the keynote at Walsh College's 100th Commencement Ceremony. The executive knows a thing or two about success and following one's beliefs to fulfillment.
"I constantly encourage my co-workers at Fiat and Chrysler to go beyond the cliche and the conventional to try new approaches and change perspective each and every day," Marchionne said. "I exhort them not to repeat the same things, the same approaches, and I remind them they are indeed free. The freedom I am talking about is something inside you. It is determined by how open minded you remain, how receptive you are to the new and to the different, to the infinite possibilities that present themselves even if you don't go looking for them or could never have imagined. Being free means that you have the strength not to be conditioned by what others want you to do or by what may seem to be the easiest choice."
Amen to that. You can check out the brief press release on the address below as well as a video of a few highlights from the speech.

Fiat and UAW back at negotiating table over Chrysler stake

We knew there'd be no Chrysler IPO before the end of this year, but Fiat is determined to get the best run going into 2014 and is back at the poker table with the UAW. The delay was said to be Chrysler's desire to clean up a tax issue with the IRS; turns out that also bought the carmaker time to try and close a deal for the UAW's 48.5-percent stake in the company before the IPO happens.
Whereas the price Chrysler was willing to pay was once more than $1 billion under the UAW's asking price, the gap has closed to just $800 million of late. A recent valuation of the company at $10 billion - a valuation the UAW has disputed - means Fiat would be looking to pay about $4.2 billion instead of the $5 billion that the UAW seeks. But the UAW needs to hold out for the highest amount it can get because its pension obligations through the Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) are $3.1 billion greater than the VEBA's assets, which include the Chrysler stake.
There's a clause in the agreement that Fiat can buy the VEBA shares for $6 billion, but Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has said that the UAW "should buy a ticket for the lottery" if they even want $5 billion. The UAW, though, has more time to wait; it's Fiat that wants access to Chrysler's $11.9-billion war chest and that would like to avoid the risk of paying the full $6 billion for the UAW share if the float really takes off. With other valuations of Chrysler as high as $19 billion, a hot IPO could make that $6 billion look like a bargain.