On this day in Labor History the year was 1937. Three hundred police men waited outside the Bernard Schwartz Cigar Factory in Detroit, MI.
They were there to break up the peaceful sit down strike going on inside the Cigar plant. During the winter and spring of 1937, Detroit had seen a wave of sit down strikes.
Some 35,000 workers sat down on the job for better pay and union recognition.
Strikers ranged from the women who worked at Woolworths to workers at six General Motors plants.
In all 130 sites experienced a sit down strike that year.
That March, the Mayor of Detroit ordered the strikers be forcibly removed. The Sherriff asked for 600 special deputies to assist with the brutal crackdown.
And so It was today in labor history that under the fictitious claim that an unattended boiler was ready to explode that the Detroit the police burst into the Bernard Schwartz plant.
It was later revealed that the assistant boiler operator was actually inside and part of the strike.
As the police stormed the plant, they were met with fierce resistance from the workers inside.
For fifteen minutes, the police battled floor by floor with strikers.
Many of them were women, armed with wooden cigar molds they used to attempt to repel the police.
In the end, the strikers were overwhelmed.
Outside 40 mounted policemen rode down the 500 picketers that surrounded the building.
That day the police also evicted sit down strikers at the Newton Packing Plant and at several shoe stores.
On March 24 a rally of 200,000 people in Cadillac Square, was held to protest the police tactics. It was there that the UAW’s Victor Reuther threatened a two-for-one: two new sit-downs for every one eviction.
The sit down strikes showed the will power of labor, and were a key tactic in union organization in Detroit, and across the United States.
Labor History in 2:00 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and The Rick Smith Show