The Great Sit-Down

"The winning of this strike was the most important event in American labor history". The story of the famous sit-down at the General Motors plants at Flint, Michigan, early in 1937, is told by some of the people who took part. They sat down in protest against their intolerable working conditions. They sat down to demand union recognition. And despite the vast network of company spies and informers, the strikers, by brilliant strategy and with the help of the unique Women's Emergency Brigade, managed to "whip the mightiest industrial corporation in the world to its knees". The young union - the United Automobile Workers - forced General Motors to grant it recognition and within a generation was to proclaim itself the most powerful in the world.