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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 6. Pre-War Conditions of the Negro Wage Earner in Selected Industries and Occupations - 14. Automobile Workers
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Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner 1121
does not, however, have full equality of opportunities; the occupational status of the
Negro worker at the Ford plant differs only in degree from that of Negro workers in
other plants. In 1937 about half the Negro workers were in the foundry of the River
Rouge plant, where they constituted 47 per cent of all the workers. In the tool rooms
scarcely i per cent of the workers were Negro. Still, the Negroes have a better chance
to advance in this factory than they have almost anywhere else.®
This difference between the River Rouge plant and other major automobile factories
IS not accidental. In 1921, when layoffs occurred because of the post-war depression,
some Negro leaders approached Henry Ford asking him not to dismiss Negroes in any
discriminatory manner. Ford then set down the policy that Negroes should make up the
same proportion of the workers as corresponded to their proportion in the population
of Detroit, and that they should be represented in all departments of his company. He
has appointed some Negro officials in his personnel department who do the hiring of
Negroes and have the right to interfere should any discriminatory practices occur.
It is claimed that these Negro personnel officials have put pressure on the workers in
political matters and, until Ford gave in to the union in 1941, in matters of labor
organization. Although conditions even in other respects are not ideal, they are far
better than in other automobile plants, and Negro leaders generally characterize them
in this way.** Negro and white Ford workers are not segregated in the work rooms,
which sometimes happens in other factories. White workers may object to this condition,
but the opposition is not nearly as widespread nowadays as it used to be in the early
’twenties when Negroes started to become a prominent part of the Ford labor force.
The fact that the company’s policy on this issue is well known makes the white workers
realize that opposition would be of little avail. The Ford training school was, until
about 1940, the only major automobile trade school in Detroit which admitted Negro
workers.®
Daily wage rates are comparatively high in the automobile industry, but work has
been insecure. There are seasonal variations in the need for labor. Since the beginning
of the ’thirties, the cyclical variations have been worse. The drive for efficiency has put
a premium on youth. It is frequently claimed that new workers arc being hired while
good, well-trained workers are walking the streets.**
The automobile industry was not well organized until the C.I.O. organized the
United Automobile Workers’ Union in 1936-1937. The United Automobile Workers’
Union (now the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implements Workers’
Union) includes the Negro on a basis of equality. Negroes have been represented in the
leadership from the beginning. Yet for a long time the Negro was a poor union mem-
ber. Bailer, when making a survey of all U.A.W, locals in Detroit in 1940, found that
more than three-fourths of the white workers, but not much more than one-half of the
Negroes, in plants under the jurisdiction of these locals were organized by that lime.
Moreover, there were general complaints about Negroes showing less interest than
whites in union work. Some Negroes served as strike-breakers at a Dodge walk-out in
1939, and the same thing happened in the Ford factories in 1941. The reasons for this
condition are obvious. Negroes have been unaccustomed to union work. As long as Ford
Part 4, pp. 559-570 and 649-652.
^ Ibid,y Part 4, pp. 589 and 599-652.
^ Ibid.y Part 4, pp. 589 and 599-624.
^Ibid.y Part 4, pp. 527-531.
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