journal of social history-1985-gersuny-463-75.pdf

SENIORITY AND THE MORAL ECONOMY OFU.S. AUlOMOBILE WORKERS, 1934-1946

In order to avert a strike called for March 26, 1934 by AFL Federal Labor Unionsin automobile plants at Detroit, Flint, Pontiac, Cleveland and St. Louis, PresidentRoosevelt summoned the parties to negotiate at the White House. Under the termsof the National Industrial Recovery Act, the settlement reached in these sessionsprovided for establishment of an Automobile Labor Board appointed "to sit in Detroitto pass on all questions of representation, discharge and discrimination." The automobileworkers' demand for seniority rights was acknowledged in the agreement, albeit notin the unequivocal terms that the AFL Federal locals would have preferred. The relevantparagraph of the White House settlement said that "the industry understands that inreduction or increases of force, such human relationships as married men with familiesshall come first and then seniority, individual skill and efficient service,"!

A half century ago, as it is today, seniority was a key facet in the moral economyof American automobile workers. Both as an antidote against arbitrary personneldecisions and as a moral claim for preference over newcomers by those who had giventhe best years of their lives to an enterprise, seniority elicited strong support fromworkers in this industry. As such, seniority claims, and seniority rights when thoseclaims are acknowledged by employers, are part of what Thompson has called themoral economy, "an alternative political economy and morality to that of laissez-faire."The members' criteria of fairness serve, in James Scott's terms, as the basis of the"operational moral economy of a subordinate class.,,2

Writers on the U.S. labor movement have portrayed unions as instruments forimplementing a moral economy of the working class. Perlman argued that workersformed unions to defend their "job territory" against the unrestrained impact of marketforces. Tannenbaum attributed unionization to a motive of recreating a more secureexistence based on a community of status as a bulwark against the insecurity of a laissezfaire dispensation of individual contract. In both of these versions of the moral economyseniority is a mechanism for regulating assignment of work more fairly than undera dispensation of unrestrained and arbitrary discretion vested in the buyer of laborpower.

Perlman said that unions seek "enforcement of the rules of job 'occupancy andtenure,,,3 in order to safeguard the "collective 'job territory'" and in this respect heholds unionism to be "not unlike patnotism.f In many industries seniority rules arean integral part of the mechanism for controlling access to the job territory. Tannenbaumpointed out that under a laissez-faire dispensation, "the individual laborer could bedischarged at will and without notice, but collective bargaining ... regulatesthe ...career of the individual within the industry by seniority'P The Webbs corroboratethese versions of the moral economy when they stress the importance of collectiverules as a bulwark against laissez-faire, arguing that "when in the absence of anyCommon Rule, the conditions of employment are left to 'free competition; this alwaysmeans in practice that they are arrived at by Individual Bargaining between contracti~

parties of very unequal strength': .. resulting in "the worst possible conditions of labor.Allocation of work in what McPherson calls a possessive market society is notrestrained by custom or status, subjecting all to "equal insecurity and equalsubordination to the market." However, belief in "the apparent inevitability of everyone's

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464 journal of social history

subordination to the laws of the market ... became increasingly challenged"? as theworking class articulated its moral economy.

The problem of laissez-faire in the pre-1934 automobile labor markets of the UnitedStates was less a problem of entry into, than of exit from, employment. There wasneither a daily auction to employ the lowest bidders nor a daily shapeup for randomselection of the labor force, but there was a notorious exit problem because supervisorsdismissed workers at will, for any reason or for none.

Automobile workers' tenuous hold on their jobs before seniority was instituted asa criterion for governingpersonnel decisions was one of the givens ofpre-UAW times.Even FortuneMagazine asserted in a matter-of-factway that "automobile labor (whetherFord, Chevrolet, or Plymouth) is labor with little dignity and less security .. ;' andthat "no worker has any definite assurance that he will be working next year wherehe worked last."g

The extreme seasonality of this industry was documented in the 1935 HendersonReport (named after Leon Henderson, then the NRA research director). Pointing outthat under complete absence of seasonality, each month's employment wouldapproximate 8.3 percent of the yearly total, the report showed that in the peak monthof 1934, 12 percent of the yearly labor input was utilized as against only 5 percentduring the slowestmonth.? This range was characteristic of the industry prior to WorldWar II, but the resulting insecurity was compounded by other conditions of personnelmanagement.

Henry Ford's principal biographers have pointed out that before unionization, workersin the company "were subject to discharge at any time for any reason. They had notenure and no appeal ...On the assembly line ... the bosses had a natural liking foryoung, vigorous, quick men not past thirty-five. Experienced hands past that age...werethus often the first to be dismissed and the last to re-engagedv'" Under such adispensation, workers perceived as trouble-makers or simply as deficient in deferencewere dismissed without ado.

Since the industry was highly seasonal with long shutdowns for model changeover,absence of seniority rules meant that long-serving employees had no assurance of beingrecalled to their jobs when production of new models began. There were situationsin which the oldest workers in age and length of employment were the least likelyto be recalled. It was to counter their intolerably precarious hold on their jobs thatautomobile workers perceived seniority as the keystone of their moral economy. Theywere formulating an anti-laissez-faire morality against the unrestrained labor marketfreedom of employers who acknowledged no limitations based on rights of employees.To illuminate development of seniority as an aspect of the automobile workers' moraleconomy, we examine evidence from three periods: the time from the inception ofthe Automobile Labor Board until the Supreme Court struck down the National IndustryRecovery Act, the formative years of the United Automobile Workers union and theyears of World War II with their contention over war workers' place in the seniorityqueues.

Seniority Under NRA

A report prepared by the National Recovery Administration pointed out that before1934"little attention was paid to seniority in rehiring after layoffs." The report attributedthe high level of unrest in the industry to "insecurity, low annual earnings, inequitablehiring and rehiring methods, espionage, speedup and displacement of workers at anextremely early age,"!' Against this background, the March 1934 agreement concludedafter presidential intervention may be viewed as a step forward. Even though PresidentRoosevelt may have been overly sanguine in describing it as "a new course in social

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AUTOMOBILE WORKERS 465

engineering in the United States;'12 the agreement contributed to the development ofinstitutional seniority rights.

On May 18the Automobile Labor Board issued a statement of principles governingimplementation of seniority rights. Among the cases heard by the Board were a numberarising out of local strikes at General Motors plants in St. Louis and Kansas City inApril 1934. In these cases claimants contested the implementation of an agreementto rehire strikers in accordance with their accumulated seniority.

The ALB cases cited here primarily illustrate one of the principal purposes ofseniority as part of the moral economy, i.e. to restrict the employers' capacity fordiscriminating against supporters of a bona fide labor union. In other cases the Boardadjudicated claims of improper layoff of complainants who argued that their juniorswere retained while they were not.

One statement received by the ALB from the St. Louis AFL local indicated a valuingof seniority rights above kinship. "My brother;' wrote Frank Eilers, "...was hired bythe Chevrolet Motor Company this Tuesday... as a Maintenance Welder. He has neverbefore worked for General Motors Corporation in any of its various plants. Many men,with plenty seniority were outside the gate waiting to be hired, but he was hiredinstead."13

A Chevrolet worker with six years seniority, who had not been called back to worksought assistance from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He reported that "Miss Foresteltold me that she had been informed by both Chevrolet Company and Fisher BodyCompany that there was no need of giving relief to strikers as they could all go backto work next week. I told her that at Chevrolet it 'was necessary to join the CompanyUnion in order to get back. She asked me: 'Why don't you join?' I told her it wasagainst my principles as a union man."14

Another member of the AFL federal labor union, who was married and haddependent children, complained that although he had eight years seniority, "since thesettlement of the strike, I have not been called back. There are men working on thejob who are single, and men who have not worked there over six weeks. Manyexperienced men from my department are still out while they are being replaced byCompany Union men and their friends."15

In a similar vein, affirming belief in the principle of worker equity proportionalto length of service, the maker of a statement to the ALB reported that he "saw JosephHerman, a man whom I know to be a Company Union member, who started workingfor Chevrolet during the last part of February 1934, going into the plant to work.Herman worked in the Heavy Repair department and is a single man. There weremany men in that department with much more seniority, and who are married andhave families. The Chevrolet Motor Company, by putting this man to work, inpreference to those others is violating their agreement made with the Automobile LaborBoard .. :,}6

Complaints about seniority came not only for AFL supporters, but from the companyunion element, which complained that the strike settlement should have rewardedstrikebreakers with superseniority because of the risks they had incurred. The CompanyUnion at St. Louis Fisher Body complained that during a layoff five months after thestrike, the management there was "giving full consideration to ...the seniority ruleof the Automobile Labor Board which does- not give any recognition whatever to thoseemployees, who at the risk of personal injury, did not heed the call of the minorityto strike. These loyal men and women have not received any advantage over thosewho quit work without any regard for the rights of their fellow employees and theautomobile industry of St. Louis."

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Robert Winzerling, a member of the Company Union at St. Louis Fisher Bodycomplained to Leo Wolzman that the Automobile Labor Board has been

very "narrow" in its enforcement of the seniority rule. The Fisher Body Company shouldhave the right to give us preference, regardless of seniority as we risked our lives to keepour jobs ...Toquote Rev. Charles E. Coughlin: "Raise up your voices, but don't lay downyour tools!" We demanded Company representation and organized a "Work Council."Working conditions were ideal before the time the strike was called ... Regardless of theoutcome of this petition ... I personally will always be loyal to the Fisher Body Company.They gave me factory work when ... I could find no other employment ... And todaywe are ¥ain in a serious situation as a result of the iron-elad enforcement of the seniorityruling.!

Harry von Romer, a former striker, appealed to President Roosevelt about theAutomobile Labor Board's failure to enforce the strike settlement with General Motors.This settlement "stated we would be hired back according to our seniority. I and manyothers are still out because of our Union activity and nothing else. I have a wife andtwo children and have been working since 1929. The company has men working thatworked only a few weeks before the strike ... and are hiring new men every day."VonRomer went on to tell the President that he was not complaining from selfish motives,because he "could join the Company Union and go to work tomorrow.. " He pleadedwith the President to help the AFL members being discriminated against "as you helpthe paralytic people of this world.,,18

A Kansas City automobile worker wrote to President Roosevelt with a similarcomplaint charging failure to observe the seniority provisions in calling back formerstrikers: "I have almost 5 years seniority and there is now a man in my place whohas served but from 3 to 6 months with the company...The only solution is theenforcement of the 7A Section of the NlRA on General Motors. If you will do thisour troubles are ended."19

In his capacity as chairman, Leon Wolman made numerous calls and wrote, amongothers to William S. Knudsen. He wrote to Knudsen about a recalcitrant plant officialwhom he told that "the agreement required that the strikers be taken back in orderof seniority, before any new people were employed. He said that he had employedthose people, on the day of the opening of the plant following the termination of thestrike, who appeared at the factory. This action seems to me to have been a violationof the agreement between the Board and the firm at your office. It seems to me tomake no difference where the people were; they should have been called back whetherthey appeared at the plant or not, in the order of seniority, in so far as it was practicableto observe that order.,,20 Later, Wolman wrote to C.E. Wilson in response to a complaintfrom the Kansas City Fisher Body federal labor union about failure to apply the seniorityrules: "This seems to be one of those cases which should be settled by the record.I wonder, therefore, if you could not get in touch with the Kansas City management ...have them check the record, and, if our record is correct, see to it that the seniorityrules are properly applied in this case.,,21

The Automobile Labor Board report of February 1935 indicated that many of thecases brought before it had dealt with seniority matters. "Without the seniority system;according to the report, "no employee would have security of tenure." Under the seniorityrules of the Board, "every worker in the industry is protected by an orderly and legalmethod in layoffs and rehiring, with review by the Board if necessary. He thus findshimself protected not only against the possibility of the lay-off period or the periodof rehiring being used as a method of discriminating against him for ulterior motivesgrowing either out of the struggles about organizing or out of alleged personal favoritismof the lower supervision ... but above all against the general hazards and uncertainties

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AUlOMOBILE WORKERS 467

of layoff and rehiring. Before the system of seniority, these were almost unlimited."22After the NRA was struck down by the Supreme Court in Schechter Poultry Corp.v. United States (295 US 495), this system of seniority was dismantled, to re-emergeonly after negotiation of the first collective agreements under the Wagner Act.

UAW Seniority Origins

In the March 12, 1937 General Motors-UAW agreement, the seniority provisionstook up 35 percent of the contract's modest length of 186lines of typescript (followedby 30 percent for the grievance procedure). The seniority section provided for: (1)a six month probationary period at the conclusion of which employees were admittedto seniority in their department or departmental occupational group from the date ofhiring; (2) seniority was broken by discharge, voluntary quit or twelve consecutivemonths of layoff; (3) management was empowered to set up lists of exempt employeesneeded for model change or inventory; (4) temporary reduction in output was to beaccommodated without layoff by reduction of hours; (5) extended reductions in outputwere to be accomplished by separation of probationary employees before reductionin hours, then reduction of the work week followed by layoffs in inverse order ofseniority, which could be modified to '1ive preference to employees with dependentsover employees without dependents.S

The contractual provision giving management discretion to ignore seniority inscheduling workers for retooling, inventory and starting up new model productionbecame a source of conflict. Under a headline "UAW CHALLENGES G.M. PET LIST~

the union paper charged that of "the company's some 80 plants there were three orfour where no special lists were established. Outside those few plants where localmanagement is fair ... there is abuse of the list on a large scale." At Chevrolet-Flint,"there were over 1,900 'indispensables' on the 'preferred' list, including by coincidenceof course most of the men who had acted as strikebreakers last year, strongarm menand so-called loyal workers." After the union indicated that a complaint would bepresented to the NLRB, 750 of the 1,900 names were removed from the preferred list.The union contended that "the men with the longest seniority are perfectly capableof handling the change-ove1 thus cutting out the necessity of a preferred list, exceptfor a very few operations." 4

The union's perception of seniority as a safeguard against unjust personnel decisionswas nowhere more graphically elaborated than in a United Automobile Worker articledescribing conditions before collective bargaining. Rather than acquiring greatersecurity, "the longer a man worked in a plant, the more insecure his position became;'the author asserted. If management "thought it was possible to replace an older manby some younger man ... the older man, who had given the best part of his life tothe industry, was turned out on the street .. ?'Foremen had complete discretion withrespect to who would work, with the result that workers "paid sums of money to formenin order to protect their jobs ... presented gifts to foremen ... [and] did personal jobsfor foremen, such as repairing their cars, cleaning their basements, painting theirhouses." The women workers "who had the most security and received the best paywere the ones who went out with the foremen after working hours. Many of thesegirls were told that if they did not step out occasionally with the foremen they wouldnot have jobs." When rumors of a layoff began to circulate, "the worker had no wayof knowing whether or not he wasgoing to be laid off, inasmuch as he had no protectionor security whatsoever, ...would put his nose to the grind-stone and work harder thanbefore, hoping that the foreman would notice his greater effort and reward him bykeeping him on the job and laying off his fellow worker. Every worker in the departmentdid likewise and, ... the production in that department increased greatly the day or

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two before the layoff."25 Thus, a larger proportion of the work force could be laidoff than had been anticipated. Thus the argument was presented that seniority notonly served to abate discrimination and favoritism, but that it was a kind of socialinsurance against the effectsof aging and that it help to limit competition among workerswho would otherwise undercut conditions by offering to produce more or accept lowerwages in order to retain their jobs.

Just as increases in production present a choice between scheduling overtime andhiring more workers, so do reductions in output involve choices between sharing theavailable work among the existing labor force and reducing the number of workersto maintain the customary work week of those who remain.

There was considerable opposition to extreme work sharing, i.e., cutting the workweek below 32 hours. The arithmetic of this "sharing of misery" was spelled out byUAWleader Emil Mazey. "In a plant working 24 hours per week with an average wageof one dollar per hour, if we worked one shift, each worker would receive $24 perweek. If this work was equally divided by working two shifts, the average incomewould be $12." He advocated instead that one shift of workers should continue to earn$24 and the unemployed should turn to the public sector, drawing the WPA minimumof $15 per week, for an average in the whole group of $19.50per week instead of $12."It is readily seen that this arrangement is the best for the workers as a whole; insteadof the worker carrying the burden of the crisis, by. sharing misery and poverty, thebosses should be forced to pay for the depression."26 Need, as this argument clearlyshows, can be better served in some instance by layoffs under the principle of seniorityrather than by sharing the work, provided that adequate transfer payment schemesare in place.

GM's William Knudsen inveighed against the seniority principle in 1939, evokingthe specter of feudalism in the process. The trouble with seniority, according toKnudsen, was that if "an entire city is organized, the man practically is becominga serf to the company that gavehim his first job. Ifhe is laid off, he cannot go elsewhereunless he starts at the bottom of the seniority list - and if he does go elsewhere hehas to leave if he is called back to his original job, or forfeit his seniority standing.The net result is that seniority protects the poorer worker and hamstrings the goodmechanic who hesitates to throwaway his seniority standing to get a job more to hisliking. . ?'Zl

The United Automobile Worker took issue with Knudsen on this subject. "PapaKnudsen seems to think the UAW-CIO is making a mistake in writing iron-clad seniorityclauses into its contracts. But the union members don't think so. Seniority is not slavery.It is security...The guy who wants to better himself by working elsewhere can stilldo so if there's an opening - but he can't keep a string on his old job at the sametime. He can't have BarH opportunity and security." Acknowledging the problemsof young workers in the labor market, the UAW paper asked, "does Papa Knudsenpropose that the older men should be bumped off?" Recognizing that decision rulesbased on length of service purchase benefits for senior employees at the expense ofjunior ones, the article concluded that if Knudsen were to support the CIO proposalof retirement benefitsof sixty dollars per month at age sixty, his expressions of concernfor the young and ambitious worker might merit some attention.,,28

As part of its campaign to win the allegiance of Ford workers, a campaign thatculminated in a landslide victory in the May 1941 bargaining election, the UAWpublished a full-page article in FORD FACTS entitled "How UAW Seniority Will Workat Ford's."29 It stressed that the "seniority rights of all workers are respected equally,irrespective of race, color or creed. There is only one list. All the workers are onit. And all workers get equal protection and equal treatment;" Under a collectively

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negotiated seniority rule, the "foreman can't send you home in April and then keephis brother-in-law all summer. The foreman can't set up a patronage system so thatthe boys who buy him drinks get to work and the boys that won't lick his boots getlaid off."The importance of seniority rules governing transfer from one job to anotherwasalso stressed. "Weall know the system...used ...even after the Wagner Act becamelaw, when management wanted to get rid of a certain worker. They couldn't fire himwithout being penalized by the labor board. But they could still transfer him to theworst job they could find." Then the worker could either be forced to quit if he couldnot endure the conditions of the new job, or, if he could not keep up with the workmanagement would have a pretext for discharge.

The Impact of World War II

Two concerns which arose in the automobile industry during World War Il involvedthe seniority status of women and minorities recruited to the war-time labor force andthe seniority claims of veterans discharged from military service. Women andminorities, excluded from many plants and job classifications before the war andsubsequently hired to meet the labor shortage during the national emergency wereinclined in many instances to oppose the last-in, first-out principle because their placesin the seniority queue reflected the earlier unfair hiring pattern. Veterans on the otherhand argued that they were entitled to preferential seniority status in recognition ofthe sacrifices and risks they incurred in the armed forces.

The dilemmas over allocating scarce opportunities in response to competing seniorityclaims underscore the essentially conservative nature of the seniority principle as anelement of the workers' moral economy, because it accepts as given the scarcity ofopportunity. The contest pitted various groups of workers against one another, whichwas a far cry from effective support for full employment. Seniority claims alwaysentailacquiescence in scarcity and to debate whether this acquiescence reflects realism or"false consciousness" would be fruitless in the present context. What we shall try toillustrate is how transitory job opportunities in war production and their impendingdisappearance generated conflict over the allocation of places in various seniorityqueues.

In 1937 GM-UAW agreement specified that in departments where "both men andwomen are employed, they should be divided into separate non-interchangeableoccupational groups."3u During the labor shortages of World War II, people previouslyexcluded or relegated to "separate, non-interchangeable" job categories willy-nilly hadto be admitted to first class industrial citizenship. The antidiscrimination movementsof the time focused on the question of whether this access was to be preserved inpeacetime or whether minorities and women would be thrust out after the war. Theproblem was compounded by contention over the criteria for returning demobilizedmilitary personnel into civilian seniority queues.

As the end of World War II approached, proposed seniority policies regardingveterans were heatedly discussed by organized labor, industry, government, and thepublic.

Four alternatives proposed were:(1) Veterans could return to a job previously held with no loss of seniority for the

time spent in the service. (2) Veterans who had not worked at a job before inductionwould receive seniority credit for their service time once they were hired. (3) Veteransshould have seniority credit for their time in service as a criterion for being hired.They could displace any worker with less seniority than the veteran's service timein the armed forces. (4) Any WWII veteran was entitled to reinstatement to his formerposition or one of like seniority, status and pay, even if this meant the discharge of

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workers with more seniority than the veteran had accummulated through his workand/or service time. Brig. General Lewis Hershey, Selective Service Director, gavethe last of these as his interpretation of the Selective Service Act in May. 1944.

Each of the abovepolicies wasput into practice at various times and places. as variousrulings were made by government bodies and changing management-union contractswere signed. Disagreements between the various interest groups continued for severalyears in an emotionally charged atmosphere as union and industry spokesmen soughtto capture public support. The controversy over jobs and seniority was taken to thepress, as illustrated by new articles headlined "Union Rules Seen Harming Veterans"and "War Veterans Picket Plant in Seniority Row Layoffs" with the lead-off sentence:"The fight for jobs has begun in Detroit even before the fighting has ended in Europe.,,31

The basic disagreement stemmed from management proposals that a veteran shouldbe able to use his service time to establish seniority rights as a criterion for beinghired at a job. A subcommittee of the Automotive Council for War Production,representing the auto industry. even stated that merit and ability should be the criteriafor post-war employment, no seniority. "Neither present seniority clauses nor the socalled model contract clause of the UAW-CIO would permit this democratic basis forselection ...veterans who went directly from school into the armed forces and otherswith no exercisable reemployment claims will find a large number of workers hiredfor war production standing between them and job opportunities if present contractseniority provisions are maintained."32 George Romney, the managing director of theAutomotive Council, stated that such union policies would be "an unbelievableinjustice,"for "all veterans have a moral right to good industrial jobs.,,33 Employers also supportedan end to old seniority policies on the basis that they had had to hire "substandard"workers during the war and should be allowed to determine which workers to keepand which to discharge. Some employers even proposed that Congress pass a lawdeclaring that anyone hired after Pearl Harbor have no seniority rights. These goals,however, were generally cloaked in public statements of patriotism and morality: "TheCompany (Ford) has taken the stand that a returning veteran whether he was previouslyemployed or not, has a right to seniority for the time he was in the service. Therecertainly can be no varying degrees of sacrifice among veterans ...One fighting manis just as entitled to a job when he comes home as another." Irving Richter, UAW-CIOrepresentative in Washington, commented: "They [the auto companies] are pretendingto be sympathetic and at the same time trying to destroy the whole seniority system:'

The American Legion, The Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Disabled AmericanVeterans, also backed the super-seniority plan that would give any discharged veteranthe right to replace any worker who had less time at work than the veteran had inthe service. Public debate on the issue prompted Victor Reuther to warn that "effortswill be made to create a cleavage between veterans and organized labor not only todestroy the seniority system. but to destroy all organized labor."34

Hershey thought he had settled the whole matter when he announced that the SelectiveService Act should be interpreted to mean that all returning veterans must be reemployedin a position even if it meant that non-veterans of greater seniority must be discharged.Victor Reuther protested that in some plants "this would mean that all present workerswould be discharged, even WWI veterans and workers with 15or 25 years seniority."35Even some employers thought Hershey's ruling went too far since they wanted to keepsome of their experienced workers. In May of 1945, the War Labor Board made adecision in Atlanta that the Selective Service Ruling should apply rather than a unionagreement with management. The auto companies and most other industries welcomedHershey's ruling and put it into operation. When Hershey's interpretation was declaredinvalid by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1946 (Fishgold vs. Sullivan Corp. 328 U.S. Z/5),

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the Ford Company was ordered by the UAW-Ford umpire to pay employees for lostearnings throu~h layoffs or demotions during the time the company had practiced thesuperseniority. 6

Becauseof the scarcity of jobs and the diverse self-interests of the workers themselves,the UAW faced considerable controversy over seniority policy within its local unions.Deciding exactly how the seniority list would be made up became a touchy problem,especially since the UAW leadership itself often came up with new policies as itstruggled with the problem of veterans' seniority. Emil Mazey, an InternationalExecutive Board member, investigated a "seniority problem" at Local 5, a South Bend,Indiana Studebaker plant, and found three distinctly different opinions among themembership, which had to be resolved before an impending layoff. War veterans whohad worked for Studebaker, veterans without previous employment and Studebakeremployees without military service favored different solutions. Mazey summarizedthe situation: "This seniority problem in Local 5 is based strictly on a desire on thepart of each worker to obtain the maximum amount of seniority for himself and hisfamily."37

The post-war years of job scarcity were witness to many such controversies overjob rights and the uses and meaning of seniority. Not only did management squareoff against labor, but also veteran against non-veteran, white against black, male againstfemale, and even single woman against married woman. The effects of pre-wardiscrimination were generally exacerbated by the application of the seniority principle.Manipulations of seniority became a strategy for dealing with scarcity and those whodid not have the preferred characteristics generally lost in the race for job security.Women and black workers in particular lost jobs as defense plants closed down orwere converted to peacetime production. At the end of 1946, the UAW Fair PracticesCommittee reported "Since the mass layoffs following VJ Day, women have sufferedheavy losses in job opportunities in the auto industry. From a wartime peak of 325,000women members, it is estimated that there are less than 125,000 women currentlyemployed in the auto and allied industry:'38

Seniority rights were manipulated to keep minorities and women in the worst jobsand/or to eliminate them from jobs altogether. This was done by the establishmentof separate seniority lists for males and females, for married women and unmarriedwomen, for different occupational categories, and sometimes for black and whites.

At Local 25, A Chevrolet unit in St. Louis, Missouri, the local union had madean agreement with management which stated: "Seniority shall be by departments andthe following non-interchangeable occupational groups: maintenance departmentemployees and colored employees."39 Blacks were confined to two departments: thematerial handlers and the janitors. Furthermore, in 1940, both blacks and whites hadbeen employed in Dept. Zl as material handlers. Subsequently, an agreement betweenthe local union and management created a new department, No. 28, into which allblacks, now called "material unloaders" were placed. The whites in the old DepartmentZl, "material handlers;' received a raise; Dept. 28 workers, all black, did not.

Since each department was a "non-interchangeable occupational group," new blackemployees were always placed in the lower classifications and were frozen there bythis agreement. Whites, almost all of whom were in the better and/or higher-payingclassifications, did not want to change the local agreement on non-interchangeableoccupations groups. Blacks did, and appealed to the Fair Practices and AntiDiscrimination Dept. of the UAW, charging that blacks were "denied upgrading andtransfer preferences because the local union had agreed with management that theirwork classifications should constitute a non-interchangeable occupational group:040

Minority workers not only faced barriers in obtaining employment on the same basisas whites, but also encountered barriers to obtaining equal seniority rights once they

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were hired. Their problems stemmed from both company policies and the prejudicesof many white-led local unions. Blacks felt they were disproportionately laid off afterVJ Day, often in violation of their seniority rights, and that they were often deniedpromotion or transfer according to their seniority status.

Many cases based on such charges were taken to the UAW Fair Practices and AntiDiscrimination Dept. and are documented in their files. In 1945, the departmentreceived charges that Local 14 in Toledo, Ohio, had a gentlemen's agreement withmanagement "to the effect that Negro workers having high pre-war seniority will notbe promoted, upgraded, or transferred to higher paid work classifications or jobs."Finding such a stateof affairs to be generally true, the Fair Practices Committee askedthe Regional Director to use every educational means necessary "to acquaint ourmembership in the Chevrolet Unit with the anti-discrimination policy of ourInternational Union and its binding effect upon all local and regional offices of ourunion."

FPC also recommended that the Regional Director be requested and authorized tonegotiate a new local agreement with management that would ensure "the transfer,upgrading, or promotion of present employees of the plant within departments andto other departments on the basis of seniority and ability to perform the job and withoutregard to race, creed, sex, nationality, or political affiliation.tt41 Such a supplementaryseniority agreement was subsequently successfully negotiated. Getting contractualchanges or amendments which protected the seniority and job advancement forminorities "equal with those applying to other workers" was "a paramount issue facingthe International Union and its locals:' according to the Second Quarterly Report ofthe Fair Practices and Anti-Discrimination Dept. to the International Executive Boardon Dec. 10, 1946.42

Despite UAW's anti-discriminationactivity thousands of minority workersand womenlost their jobs. The UAW International helped negotiate the model clause for veteransand also a 1946"successor clause" with GM which local unions were expected to sign.The successor clause included the provision: "In filling openings from the list, maleemployees will be called for jobs performed by males prior to the war and femaleswill be called for jobs performed by females prior to the war.tt43 In the Fisher Bodyplant in Baltimore, no women were employed before the war, so the clause effectivelybarred women from employment.

Soon after VJ Day, R.J. Thomas issued a rebuke to local unions and staff membersfor laxness in protecting women's seniority rights:

In one case, an entire department stopped working in protest when a woman was placedin the department on a job in line with her seniority and which she could perform. Inanother, until I intervened, the local was giving serious consideration to management'sproposal that women's seniority should be terminated through payment of a bonus inthe form of severance pay. In some locals, plant bargaining committees have failed toprotect the seniority rights of stewardesses and committee women on the same basis asmen. There havebeen instances, too, in which separate seniority lists for men and womenhave been used to layoff all women before any men were laid off.44

Conclusion

Seniority is unarguably an important facet of the moral economy of automobileworkers in the United States. Notwithstanding its individualistic stamp, seniority iscollectively sought as a fair criterion on which personnel decisions should be based.Hierarchies of precedence based on length of service are preferred to unrestrictedmanagerial discretion.

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Nevertheless, there are no unambiguous solutions to the problem of defining theboundaries of "job territories" whose occupants are to form any given seniority queue.Disputes as to department seniority as opposed to plant-wideseniority, plant seniorityversus multi-plant seniority and questions as to what constitutes noninterchangeableoccupational groups inject an element of arbitrariness into establishment of any statusorder based on length of service. However,after the boundaries are drawn, the resultingrank-order in assignment of work is preferred to the vicissitudes of the market.

In the seniority disputes during the time of NRA, as we have seen, strikerscomplained if their place did not reflect the total length of prior employment, whilestrikebreakers wanted their rank in the queue to be adjusted to reward their loyaltyto the employer during a labor dispute. In World War II, former discriminatees whowere admitted to the automobile labor force during wartime personnel shortages soughtplaces in the seniority queues that compensated for their prior exclusion, while warveterans wanted precedence over civilians irrespective of prior service. All of thesecontending worker-constituencies supported the principle of seniority while strivingfor interpretations of that principle most favorable to themselves.

Just as the moral economy of the 18th century English crowd reflected values ofother strata, i.e., of the paternalist gentry, so also does the moral economy of 20thcentury American automobile workers serve the values of employers. Where seniorityagreementsare in place, average job tenure tends to increase, reducing employers' laborturnover costs. Seniority is also an instrument of social control for employers becausesenior employees tend to have fewer disciplinary infractions than their juniors andbecause seniority reinforces employee dependence, thus conferring greater power onemployers. These benefits to the employer are the other side of the coin of greateremployment security and decasualization of automobile labor, the principal goal ofthe workers' moral economy.

University of Rhode IslandKingston, TI02881

University of Wisconsin-WaukeshaWaukesha, WI 53186

FOafNafES

Carl Gersuny

Gladis Kaufman

This inquiry was supported in part by grants from the American Philosophical Society and fromthe College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Rhode Island.

1. New York TImes, March 26, 1934 (emphasis supplied).

2. E.P. Thompson, The Making ofthe English Working Class (New York, 1963), p. 552; JamesC. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, 1976), p. 160.

3. Selig Perlman, A Theory of the Labor Movement (1928) (New York, 1949), p. 269.

4. Ibid., p. m.

5. Frank Tannenbaum, A Philosophy of Labor (New York, 1952), pp. 152-53.

6. Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, Industrial Democracy (1897), (New York, 1965), p. 560.

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7. C.B. McPherson, The Political Theory ofPossessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962), pp. 84,zn, m.8. "Mr. Ford Doesn't Care;' Fortune VIII (Dec. 1933): 125; "Success Story," Fortune XII (Dec.1935), 115-116.

9. National Recovery Administration, Research and Planning Division, Preliminary Report onStudy ofRegularization ofEmployment and Improvement ofLabor Conditions in the AutomobileIndustry. Mimeographed. Jan. 23, 1935. (Copy in U.S. Department of Labor Library, Washington,D.C.) p. 7.

10. Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: Expansion and Challenge 1915-1933 vol. 2 (NewYork,. 1957), p. 534.

11. National Recovery Administration, Preliminary Report . . . , pp. 5-6.

12. New York Times, March 26, 1934.

13. Frank Eilers' affidavit to Automobile Labor Board (ALB), May 8, 1934, National ArchivesRecord Group 9, Series 374, Box 4104.

14. Edgar P. Engel affidavit to ALB, ibid.

15. Fred McClain affidavit to ALB, ibid.

16. Bert Mueller affidavit to ALB, ibid.

17. Employees' Association of the Fisher Body Plants of St. Louis, Missouri, to Leo Wolman,Sept. 22, 1934, ibid. and Robert H. Winzerling to Representative of Automobile Labor Board,N.D., ibid.

18. Harry von Romer to President Roosevelt, May 29, 1934, Record Group 9, Series 374,Box 4103.

19. Gilbert B. Ward, Kansas City, MO to President Roosevelt, May 24, 1934, RG9, Ser. 374Box 4103.

20. Leo Wolman to W.S. Knudsen, June 6, 1934, RG9, Ser. 374, Box 4102.

21. Leo Wolman to C.E. Wilson, Sept. 14, 1934, ibid.

22. U.S. Automobile Labor Board, Report, March 29, 1934-Feb. 5, 1935, Department of LaborLibrary, ditto, p. 8.

23. Agreement, General Motors-UAW, March 12, 1937.

24. United Automobile Worker, May 14, 1938; June 25, 1938.

25. Ibid., Feb. 26, 1938.

26. Ibid., March 5, 1938.

V. Quoted in Forbes 45 (Jan 15, 1940), 20.

28. United Automobile Worker, Dec. V, 1939.

29. Ford Facts, May 1941.

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AUlOMOBILE WORKERS

30. General Motors-UAW Agreement, March 1937, p. 3.

31. New lbrk TImes, May 10, 1945; Detroit News, April 25, 1945.

32. Quoted in Detroit News,Dec. 10, 1944.

33. New lbrk TImes, May 19, 1945.

34. Detroit News, April 25, 1945, Aug. 4, 1944, April 11, 1945.

35. Detroit TImes, Oct. 12, 1945.

475

36. Detroit Free Press, Aug. 15, 1946.

37. Emil Mazey Collection Box 16,Studebaker Local 15, Seniority Folder, in Archives of LaborHistory and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University Library.

38. Second Quarterly Report of UAW-CIO Fair Practices and Anti-Discrimination Departmentto International Executive Board, Dec. 10, 1946, p. 14; Fair Employment-Women's BureauCollection, Box 2, Folder 17, WSU Archives. See also Nancy Gabin, "Women Workers andthe UAW in the Post-World War II Period: 1945-54," Labor History 21 (Winter 1979): 5-30.

39. Fair Practices Report, Dec. 10, 1946, p. 6, Mazey ColI. Box 11, FEPC 1946-47-2 Folder,WSU Archives.

40. Ibid., p. 2.

41. Fair Practices Committee Decisions, Case 1, Dec. 17, 1946, Mazey Coli., Box 11, WSUArchives.

42. FEPC-Women's Bureau Collection, Box 2, Folder 17, WSU Archives.

43. Mazey Collection, Box 11, FEPC 1946-47-1 Folder, WSU Archives.

44. R.J. Thomas to Local Union Presidents, et al., Sept. 26, 1945,Mazey ColI. Box 13,Women'sDivision Folder, WSU Archives.

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