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• 1 2022-12-01T21:37:24+00:00 Unionization: The Inevitable Pushback 27 plain 2023-02-08T16:54:35+00:00

  During the 1930s and 40s, industrial workers in Muncie started to form unions to improve their daily lives. One example of unionization in Muncie took place at Warner Gear (BorgWarner) and the company was known throughout the state of Indiana for having a large and aggressive union membership. Individual workers at Warner Gear were tired of the working conditions and decided to band together to improve their work environment. The Great Depression and New Deal were also catalysts of their demands to achieve greater benefits. The formation of Local 287 in the 1930s was integral to improving the lives of these workers. In an interview, Eugene Clock, who was a supervisor at Warner Gear, described the first year he worked there. Clock explains that when he started in 1934, a union was not established.[1] UAW Local 287 was in fact organized in 1937.[2] He went on to explain why workers wanted a union:

  Daniel Crowder: Gene, what were some of the things that you fellows were trying to gain during the late thirties and early forties working through the union labor organization? What were some of the goals and objectives that you were trying to accomplish in those days?"
  Clock: "Uh, better working conditions.
  Crowder: For example, shorter hours?
  Clock: Shorter hours, and just better working conditions in general as far as safety and, uh, job standards.
  Crowder: Seniority rights?
  Clock: Seniority rights was a big thing, and, of course, our insurance programs”[3].

  The union at Warner Gear was instrumental in improving the daily lives of the workers. From improved working conditions to a shorter work week, the organizing of Local 287 at Warner Gear impacted on the workers' lives significantly. Unions improved the standard of living for workers by demanding higher wages and negotiating insurance and retirement benefits. Before the organizing of unions, this would not have been a possibility at the factory. Kenneth Ertle was a member of Local 287 when it was first organized in 1937. Ertle mentions that one of the first important improvements for the workers at Warner Gear were a seniority system and the improvement of working conditions[4].
  
  Another vital part of what workers demanded was job security, which improved the daily lives of workers significantly. Clock, in his interview with Crowder, stated that the union at Warner Gear established seniority rights, which meant that workers who had been with the company for a longer period were not subject to layoffs. In other words, older workers would not be replaced by new workers. Larue Leonard, a worker at Warner Gear, describes what job security was like at the plant prior to the organizing of the union:

  “There would be spasmodic layoffs from time to time, and there were never any recalls....And often times you’d find a guy who hadn’t been there too long getting the good jobs. And the guy that’d been there for years getting nothing. Well, the time came, the men who had been there ten, fifteen, years getting up a little years in age—they’d be laid off. And here’s some guy like myself in 1928—I went in there and a year later they lay off him. [Unintelligible] nineteen years of service with the company, taught me everything I knew. He was laid off, and I was kept. That wasn’t right.”[5].  

  
  In Middletown, the Lynd describe the state of job security before the organization of unions. In the 1920s, workers did not know if their job was secure, or if they were going to be laid off the next day. A worker's wife told them her husband “can’t tell when he’ll be laid off. One day he comes home thinking work is over and then the next day he believes it will last a few weeks longer.”[6] The idea of job security was paramount for industrial workers in Muncie. The Lynds note that trade union membership fell from 1893 to 1924.[7]  During the late 1930s, union membership began to increase after its decline in the first years of the Great Depression. This is evident through the interviews with industrial workers at Warner Gear who described the push for organizing a union. Industrial workers at Warner Gear and throughout Muncie fought to organize unions and ensure job security to improve their daily lives. 

   

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  [1] Eugene Clock, Interview by Daniel B. Crowder, May 15, 1969, audio and transcript, Daniel B. Crowder Oral Histories Collection, Ball State Digital Media Repository, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/CrwdOrHis/id/9/rec/2

  [2] Clock, interview.

  [3] Clock, interview.

  [4] Kenneth Ertle, Interview by Daniel B. Crowder, May 17, 1969, audio and transcript, Daniel B. Crowder Oral Histories Collection, Ball State Digital Media Repository, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/CrwdOrHis/id/13/rec/9

  [5] John Bartee and Larue Leonard, Interview by Daniel B. Crowder, May 28, 1969, audio and transcript, Daniel B. Crowder Oral Histories Collection, Ball State Digital Media Repository, https://dmr.bsu.edu/digital/collection/CrwdOrHis/id/0/rec/1

  [6] Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1929), 59.

  [7] Lynd and Lynd, Middletown, 78.