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Well written & informative great 4 both pleasure & research!, December 10, 2004
The 1937 Detroit Woolworth's Strike
Throughout history and around the world, since the time of the construction of the ancient Egyptian pyramids , workers have united in protest of low wages, unfair policies from employers, and unpleasant work environments. The history of the United States consists of many examples of working people's struggles to organize. The greatest successes in U.S. labor history occurred in the mid-1930's and 1940's, as millions of working people who had never belonged to unions became organized in the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO, and with their new strength in unity, organized strikes and won better wages, the 8-hour work-day, and other benefits.
During this labor movement, millions of workers across the United States went on strike every single day, and each triumph inspired others to organize and succeed. This national movement was due much to the new branch of the labor union, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which was full of young, energetic union activists. It had emerged from the American Federation of Labor, an older labor union uneager to enlist new members and to help workers fight capitalism that bound them. A rush of all different types of workers hurried to enlist in the CIO. The CIO allowed the workers to weave themselves into a force stronger than the largest and the most prosperous of corporations. Unions had traditionally included only white men who worked in industries such as the auto industry or as dockworkers. Now, women, African Americans, waiters, teachers, artists, and salesclerks were included in the workers' organization and their struggle for righteousness, too.
In early 1937, the women working in one of the forty Woolworth stores in the greater Detroit, Michigan area organized a strike against what was one of the biggest corporate chains in the world, its two thousand department stores stretching across five different countries. This particular store was centrally located in downtown Detroit, with heavy foot-traffic outside and a lot of business inside.
The key to the Woolworth department store chain's huge success was in its miniscule income from each of its items, adding up to a hefty profit in the millions. The Woolworth department store's founder, Frank W. Woolworth, the company's president until he died in 1919, developed this clever strategy. Woolworth's bought products at very low prices from sweated labor and directly from manufacturers and hired an inexpensive workforce. Therefore it was able to price many useful items cheaply, in addition to selling fashionable items by their sides. Drawing many eager customers, this "palace built for working class people, " was similar to today's discount chain stores such as Wal-Mart and COSTCO, where the same selling strategy is still used.
On February 27, 1937, one hundred and eight women working at a downtown Detroit Woolworth's store sat down, presenting their store manager with a list of policies they demanded from the Woolworth's company before they would return to work. These included union recognition, hiring through union offices, a ten cent per hour raise, an eight hour work day with overtime pay, free laundering of uniforms, seniority rights, and no discrimination against past strikers returning to work.
They had organized a sit-down strike, where the employees on strike occupy their workplace for an indefinite amount of time, until their employer meets their petition. One of the most effective strike tactics that emerged during the 1930's was this one. Known to raise the morale and the solidarity of strikers, a sit-down strike had proved to be a good tactic for workers in the rubber industry in France, and more importantly by union members in the auto industry in nearby Flint, Michigan. Even high school students sat down in protest of bad teaching and poor cafeteria food . This type of strike also avoided the possibility of the company's hiring scabs to take the place of the original workers, another sit-down advantage.
Living and working in the time of the 1930's labor movement, the Woolworth workers and their decisions to organize a strike were influenced by the media's communication of successful strikes in the surrounding Michigan area and by the uprising of labor unions all over the country. Just a couple weeks before the women at Woolworth's went on strike, the autoworkers working in General Motors, only seventy miles away in Flint, Michigan, had a tremendous sit-down strike victory against "the greatest of corporations " of their time. By reading their local newspapers, listening to the radio, and hearing news of victorious strikes from friends and family, Woolworth employees realized that success was possible for them, too, and that they too could fight for their rights and triumph.
During their week's stay at the store, the women were able to keep high spirits. To do so they made-up each other's hair and makeup, posed for newspaper and magazine pictures, listened to the radio, and participated in daily calisthenics. They danced down the store aisles and sang songs, both classic and original, such as their lyrics to the well-known song "Mademoiselle from Armentieres:"
Sit down, sit down girls.
Perlez-vous.
Sit down girls, come sit down, don't be afraid to [stand your ground?].
Hinky dinky parlez-vous.
At night, they slept on a sea of mattresses, blankets, and pillows sent by family and friends spread out on the store's floor, and whispered to each other until they fell asleep. The strikers' enjoyment and strength of mind was the reason for their determination throughout their strike.
The media played a strong role in the achievement of the striking women. Newspapers contributed the communication of the worker's struggles to the public. Although many reporters portrayed the women as giddy, young, and boy-crazy girls, their constant appearance in the news, despite what was said, offered the backing and the publicity the young women needed from the public to keep their ground. This outside support kept Woolworth's from having police take the strikers away, because the company knew of the outrage the action would have brought from the public and potential customers. Every day, dozens of reporters came to interview strikers and snap photographs. The constant publicity intensified the pressure on Woolworth's to give in to the strikers' needs.
On March 5, after the strikers had been occupying the store for eight days, they finally prevailed. Woolworth's department store gave in to the victorious, strong, and determined women on strike at the Detroit, Michigan downtown store. Upon hearing the wonderful news, the strikers and women of another Detroit Woolworth store engaged in a joyful party inside their store and paraded outside victoriously, and in song. They had won increased union rights, paid overtime, a forty-eight hour workweek, and their original twenty-five cent an hour wages were inflated by five cents. Not only had the
strikers won these rights for themselves, but for all of the forty Woolworth stores in the Detroit, Michigan area.
This story is only one among thousands of sit-down victories that took place over the course of just a few years. Workers throughout the entire country began "sitting down in the wake " of the burst of successful strikes in Michigan. Just as the workers at the Woolworth store in Detroit had been inspired by the autoworker's victory against General Motors, Woolworth workers in New York were starting their own sit-downs, moved by the women of Detroit. A Broadway musical brought the department store labor issue into popular culture.
The courageous women working in the Detroit Woolworth store were putting themselves at a huge risk by going on strike. The Great Depression had hit the country hard, and only four years earlier, one third of the workers in the United States were unemployed, and jobs were extremely scarce. A job was more important at that time, and there were more people ready to take the strikers' places if they were to lose against Woolworth's. The vast majority of the women on strike were only teenagers, unmarried and left without the income of a spouse.
Unfortunately, people around the country and around the globe are still fighting this battle for justice at work today. The Woolworth department store worker's struggles for their rights as employees are similar to the Wal-Mart workforce's present day effort to receive higher wages, overtime pay, healthcare, and improved work conditions. However, the victories of the General Motors workers, the Woolworth workers, and the thousands of strikers of their time period have brought us closer to the workers utopia so many of us are striving for today.
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