Automobile industry workers

Bernard G. Hoffman Papers

aergas — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 11:32:52 -0400

Bernard G. Hoffman served as union steward at the Briggs Manufacturing Company and Chrysler Corporation in the 1940s and 1950s. He also served as secretary of the Briggs Joint Apprenticeship Committee and secretary-treasurer of the National Skilled Trades Council, UAW-CIO. The bulk of the papers are minutes, pamphlets, newsletters, agreements and personal notes relating to Hoffman's union activities. Of particular value are his daily notes on plant activities written during his years at Briggs and Chrysler.

James Moore Audio Recordings

eclemens — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 09:43:32 -0500

In the fall of 1983 Professor James Moore recorded an oral history interview with Shelton Tappes and Catherine "Babe" Gelles, both early organizers for the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). Taped in Tappes' Detroit home, the interviewees gave firsthand account of 1937's "Battle of the Overpass," a brutal response by members of the Ford Service Department to the UAW organizing effort against Ford Motor Company. The interview lends offers two different vantage points: Gelles', as that of a member of the UAW's Women's Auxiliary, and Tappes' as that of a Ford Employee and early Black organizer. Their testimony includes description of brutal assaults on organizers that occurred at the hands of Ford Servicemen, including Walter Reuther, Richard Frankensteen, and Gelles herself; demonstrated anti-union bias by the Dearborn Police Department; description of triage set up in the union hall to attend to the wounded; and UAW organizing efforts that followed the event. The interview was recorded for use in "Mass Producing Fords", a documentary for the United Kingdom's Open University.

Kenneth Forbes Papers

kschmeling — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 14:21:45 -0500

The collection consists of the papers of Kenneth Forbes, a UAW leader in the Saginaw area. Forbes held different offices in the union including the president of UAW Local 455 and was also active politically. The papers cover his active years in the union and his retirement, and gives a glimpse into the life of the politics and challenges of an elected official in the UAW.

Ruth Milkman Papers

drice — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 14:40:44 -0400

Ruth Milkman (1954-) is a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and the academic director at the Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. Her professional focus is labor and labor movements, and she has published on a variety of topics revolving around work and organized labor in the United States. She received her B.A. from Brown University and her M.A. from the University of California, Berkley. Milkman’s early research focused on women workers during the economic and war crisis of the 1930s and 1940s. Her next period of research focused on the restructuring of the U.S. automobile industry and its impact on its workers and unions. She also studied Japanese-owned factories in California at this time. Her studies now focus on low wage immigrant workers, including their working conditions and labor organizations.

The Ruth Milkman Papers are predominantly research materials for her published reports on the employee buyouts at the GM Linden Plant in New Jersey. Included are various articles, studies, clippings, and UAW published materials she used in her research. Of particular note are Milkman’s interviews with plant workers, which were critical to her reports on the GM Linden Plant.

UAW Chrysler Department Records

drice — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:28:29 -0500

The UAW Chrysler Department was formed in the year following the tumultuous sit-down strikes of 1937. Responsible of the department included planning, developing, negotiating, and administering collective bargaining agreements for Chrysler workers in the United States and Canada.

The records of the department reflect its administration and activities and largely include the files of Arthur Hughes, an administrative assitant and assistant director in the department from 1940-1978.

UAW Civil Rights Department Records

gstrassel — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 11:52:58 -0400

Called the Fair Practices and Anti-Discrimination Department until 1983, the UAW’s Civil Rights Department oversees the union’s diversity and anti-prejudice initiatives. According to the union’s website, the “Civil Rights Department works closely with the UAW’s Local Union Civil Rights Committees to educate, mobilize, and assist” the union’s members in matters related to discrimination and sexual harassment. The department also campaigns actively in support of voter registration and turnout efforts in various communities. The UAW Civil Rights Department Records consist of documents of the union’s investigations into claims of discrimination by their members, correspondence, educational videos, conference materials, and diversity training materials.

UAW President's Office: Howard Young Records

drice — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:34:00 -0400

Howard Young began working for the UAW in 1960, as an Actuarial Consultant and later became the Director of the Social Security Department. Later in his UAW career, his main function was as Special Consultant to the President, but he also worked as a member of the Pension Research Council, Director of Social Security, Director of the Research, and Director of Information Systems. He worked for the UAW from 1960-1971 and again from 1974-1987. During that time he worked under four UAW presidents: Reuther, Woodcock, Fraser and Bieber. His work included collective bargaining, public policy on economic and social programs (job and income security, pensions, and benefits), international trade, the impact of technological change on workers, and federal policy regarding energy and automobile standards.

The UAW President’s Office: Howard Young Records consist of the chronological, subject and meeting files of Howard Young during his tenure in various positions at the UAW. The Chronological files combine the correspondence and research from his position as Special Consultant with those from his positions as Director of Social Security, Director of the Research, and Director of Information Systems. The subject files cover a range of topics with emphasis on pensions, auto emissions, international trade, technology, and Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. The meeting files consist of the correspondence, presentations, speeches, and testimony of Howard Young to a wide range of organizations, college classes, conferences and government committees and subcommittees. A gap in the records exists from mid 1971 through late 1974, a period when he was not employed with the UAW.

UAW President's Office: Stephen P. Yokich Records

gstrassel — Fri, 19 May 2023 09:16:34 -0400

Stephen Phillip Yokich was President of the UAW from 1994-2002. As president of the union during a time of great change to the auto industry, he oversaw negotiations for increased benefits, expanded the union into new fields, and helped navigate autoworkers through a period of job cuts. The UAW President's Office: Stephen Yokich Records reflect the activities of the union’s offices of President and Vice-President during Yokich’s respective tenures. These records are critical to understanding the activities of the International Union during the late twentieth century, as well as metro Detroit’s labor movement during that same period.

UAW Vice President Jack Laskowski Records

gstrassel — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:28:33 -0500

The UAW Vice President Jack Laskowski Records document the Volkswagen Department within the UAW. The records cover business between the International Union, the automobile maker, and three UAW locals. These three locals are sometimes referred to as the Volkswagen Council, and they include Locals 1933, 2055, and 129. Though the materials were sent over by Vice President Lawskowski, they do not document his work at the union. Instead, the records detail when Vice Presidents Martin Gerber and Bill Casstevens oversaw the Department in the eighties and nineties. The records consist of correspondence, memorandum, and negotiating materials.

African Americans and the UAW

mosmith — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:53:30 -0500

The Reuther Library celebrates African American History Month with a brief review of the important role that African Americans have played in the formation and growth of the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW), one of the most powerful unions in American history, and the influence of black UAW members within the polity of Detroit. read more »

Collection Spotlight: UAW Local 600 Records

gstrassel — Wed, 15 May 2019 11:41:40 -0400

When I started as the UAW Archivist, one unprocessed collection stood as the clear priority to open to the public: The UAW Local 600 Records. The largest and arguably most influential local in the historic UAW, numerous researchers clamored for the papers since the union deposited them in the archives. read more »

Event Announcement: Dr. Donna Kesselman Speaks on Employment Grey Zones in Automobile Production

Public Relations Team — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 10:32:41 -0400

Dr. Donna Kesselman, Professor, Université Paris-Est Créteil, will provide an update on her current research into the changing interrelationships between labor, management, and government in the automobile industry. This brown-bag presentation will take place at noon on Wednesday, August 5, 2015, in the Reuther Conference Room of the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. Transformations in employment norms are an integral component of today's globalizing world labor market. Exploring “employment grey zones” provides a critical thought approach to defining these constantly evolving labor-management structures. read more »

Event: "Roy Reuther and the UAW: Fighting for Workers and Civil Rights"

eclemens — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 07:58:12 -0500

Join the Walter P. Reuther Library on March 27th as we host Alan Reuther to celebrate his new book, Roy Reuther and the UAW: Fighting for Workers and Civil Rights.

Alan will discuss the biography about his father, Roy Reuther, a leader of the 1937 Flint sit-down strike that gave rise to the UAW. The book chronicles Roy’s central involvement in the civil rights struggle, support for striking farmworkers, and efforts to expand registration and voting in elections, as well as his close work with icons Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez. Roy Reuther and the UAW will be on sale at the event, and Alan will be available to sign your copy! read more »

Exhibit Opening and Panel Discussion - "From the Margins to the Core: Latino Workers in the Nation’s Auto Industry"

mcourtney — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 11:04:56 -0400

This March 29th, please join the Walter P. Reuther Library for a panel discussion to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit on loan from Michigan State University. The exhibit spotlights the voices of Latin@ workers to explore their impact on the auto industry in Michigan, drawing from photographs, oral histories, and other archival records. Panelists will discuss the contributions of Latin@ auto workers from a variety of perspectives. read more »

Recent additions: Black perspectives at the Reuther Library

srafferty — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 18:06:22 -0400

Detroit’s Black citizens have faced a long, complicated history of struggle and perseverance. While the voices of Black individuals are generally underrepresented in archives, Reuther Library has a number of collections that help document this history in varied formats and perspectives, and we've added more in recent years. Here are descriptions of just a few of these notable collections: read more »

The 1972 Lordstown Strike

aorchard — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 16:11:12 -0400

Work speed-ups on the line helped to initiate the 1972 strike at a General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Although the strike’s impact was initially felt at GM, its influence quickly grew, informing the nation about the struggles of its young workforce, and influencing the content of congressional hearings and national studies. read more »

Women Engineers Moved the Midcentury Motor City

teller — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 16:04:11 -0400

While the number of women in engineering increased dramatically between 1900 and 1950, the actual number of women in engineering was still quite small: approximately 3,000 women, or just two-tenths of one percent of working engineers in the United States. Detroit's automobile industry presented a growing number of opportunities for women in engineering, however, and local papers in the 1950s and 1960s frequently published articles about these female curiosities in what was still very much considered "a man's world." The stories of Society of Women Engineers Detroit Section members provide a fascinating look at the opportunities and challenges faced by midcentury women engineers as they thrived–or not–in the Motor City. read more »

(45977) Chrysler Sit-Down Strike, Women's Auxiliary, 1937

eclemens — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:24:05 -0500

Members of the Chrysler Ladies Auxiliary No. 5 parade outside of the Chrysler executive offices in celebration of the end of the Chrysler DeSoto sit-down strike.

(45978) Chrysler Sit-Down Strike, Dodge Main, Women's Auxiliary, 1937

eclemens — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:28:25 -0500

Members of the Women’s Auxiliary bring food to the Dodge Hamtramck Plant in support of sit-down strikers inside.

(45979) Chrysler Sit-Down Strike, Dodge Main, Women's Auxiliary, 1937

eclemens — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:31:38 -0500

Members of the Women’s Auxiliary demonstrate outside of Dodge Main in support of sit-down strikers inside.

(48493) Portraits, Catherine "Babe" Gelles 1940s

eclemens — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:23:09 -0400

Portrait of Catherine "Babe" Gelles, early organizer for the UAW Women's Auxiliary and Emergency Brigade.

(vmc48900) Shelton Tappes, Portraits, UAW Local 600, 1948

eclemens — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 09:01:06 -0400

Shelton Tappes, Ford organizer and Recording Secretary for UAW Local 600, pauses for a portrait in his office.

Ann Fletcher, Ford Rouge Patent Draftsman, 1954

teller — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 11:32:21 -0400

May 14, 1954 article from the Ford Motor Company's Ford Rouge News about Society of Women Engineers member Ann Fletcher, the company's only patent draftsman. From: Society of Women Engineers National Records, Box 83.

Article, Women Engineers Help Detroit Grow, 1954

teller — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 12:12:05 -0400

March 22, 1954 article from the Detroit News about women engineers' contributions to Detroit's postwar economic growth. From: Society of Women Engineers National Records, Box 83.

Lucille Pieti, All Alone With 300 Men, 1954

teller — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 11:47:08 -0400

February 14, 1954 article from Parade magazine written by Lucille Pieti about engineering as a career for women and her experience as the only woman in a class of three hundred engineering students at Wayne University. From: Society of Women Engineers National Records, Box 83.

Lucille Pieti, Technical Questions on Motors Don't Stump Chrysler's Lady Engineer, 1953

teller — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 12:01:03 -0400

January 23, 1953 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about Lucille Pieti's work explaining the technical specifications of vehicles on display during the Chrysler Corporation's New Worlds In Motion Automobile Show. From: Society of Women Engineers National Records, Box 83.

Virginia Sink, Miss Clean of the Auto World, 1964

teller — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 11:13:51 -0400

August 27, 1964 Daily News article about Society of Women Engineers member Virginia Sink, the nation's first female automotive engineer and co-developer of the Chrysler Clean Air Package, which served as an industry standard for automotive anti-smog devices until the introduction of the catalytic converter in the 1970s. From: Society of Women Engineers National Records, box 83.

(3058) Portrait, Owen Bieber, 1988

eclemens — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 11:07:41 -0500

Portrait of Owen Bieber, President of the United Auto Workers Union.

(28580) Walter Reuther, Leonard Woodcock, Negotiations, 1970

eclemens — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:32:55 -0400

Candid view of Walter Reuther and Leonard Woodcock during the 1970 UAW / General Motors contract negotiations.

(28582) Walter Reuther, Tex Colbert, 1960s

eclemens — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:20:38 -0400

Chrylser CEO Tex Colbert with UAW president Walter Reuther.

(30587) UAW Organizing, Flyer, Battle of the Overpass, 1937

eclemens — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:33:30 -0400

Copy of the flyer distributed at the Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan during the Battle of the Overpass.

Original material can be found in Box 8, folder 7 of the UAW President's Office: Walter P. Reuther Records.

(32181) Women Workers, Automobile, Detroit, 1917-1918

eclemens — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:31:28 -0400

Women industrial workers learn how to assemble cars during the First World War.

(32182) Women, War Workers, Automobiles, 1917-1918,

eclemens — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:31:28 -0400

Portrait of a female auto worker during the First World War.

(32205) Women, War Workers, Automobile, Detroit, 1917-1918

eclemens — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:31:29 -0400

Women industrial workers learn how to assemble cars during the First World War.

(32206) Women, War Workers, Automobile, Detroit, 1917-1918

eclemens — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 14:31:29 -0400

Portrait of unidentified female auto workers during the First World War.

(45976) Flint Sit-Down Strike, Strikers, Interiors, 1937

eclemens — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:20:33 -0500

Strikers relax on car seats and read newspapers inside of Fisher Body Plant No. 1 during the Flint Sit Down Strike.

(46043) Posters, "One Big Union" Auto Workers

eclemens — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 16:55:09 -0400

"Auto-Workers Join the One Big Union." 18x24 inches.
Artist: "SAM"
Produced for the Industrial Workers of the World.

This Union Cause: The Queer History of the United Automobile Workers

teller — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 16:54:57 -0400

Wayne State history PhD candidate James McQuaid discusses his research on the gradual cognizance and acceptance of queer autoworkers in the twentieth century, leading toward the UAW’s rapid embrace of LGBTQ-friendly policies and initiatives in the 1990s. read more »

[Podcast] Hillbilly Highway: Charting White Migration from Appalachia to the Industrial Midwest

teller — Fri, 03 May 2024 08:47:31 -0400

Dr. Max Fraser shares the often overlooked story of the “hillbilly highway,” the route nearly eight million poor, rural, white Americans took in the 20th century from economically depressed areas in the Southeastern and Southern United States toward higher paying factory jobs in the Upper South and Midwest. read more »

Auto Workers News (formerly The Auto Worker)

kchinery — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 13:53:25 -0400

Processed. Bound volumes: 1921-1924 (Vols. 3-6), 1927-1934 (OS #2). Microfilm: May 15, 1919-June 9, 1921, 1923-1924. Copies of original issues (1919-1921, 1929-1930, 1933-1934) located in UAW Unbound Newspapers Collection, Box 11.

Convention Proceedings, Auto Workers Union

kchinery — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 13:48:01 -0400

Processed

Ford World

kchinery — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 16:47:52 -0400

Processed

The Hudson Worker

kchinery — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 11:20:39 -0500

Processed