Akron rubber workers began staging sit-downs in 1934, when John L. Lewis was only the hard-boiled boss of the hard-boiled Miners' Union. Akron was then known as the toughest anti-union town in the U. S. outside of Detroit. United Rubber Workers of America, later to join C. I. O., moved in in 1935. By the time this year's Sit-Down epidemic struck, both Akron's workers and Akron's businessmen were past the primary grades, thoroughly accustomed to the idea and practice of unionism. When Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. and its U. R. W. employes came to an impasse over exclusive bargaining recognition early last March, both sides behaved calmly. Instead of sitting down, the unionists peacefully walked out. Instead of hiring strikebreakers, grizzled Harvey Firestone quietly shut down his plants. Akron remained a rock in the seething Labor sea during the eight weeks of negotiations which followed. There was no violence by 11,000 idle workers, no alarmist shouting by employers or press.
Last week company and union came to terms, signing U. R. W.'s first contract with a major rubber concern. Firestone agreed to bargain with the union, to stop financing its company union. U. R. W. agreed not to "cause or tolerate" Sit-Downs and other strikes, not to coerce prospective members. Included in the contract (to run for one year) was provision for the first standard 36-hour week ever adopted in a major U. S. industry, with a promise that before layoffs are made hours will be cut to 24 per week for eight weeks.
While Akron was giving the country an object lesson in Labor maturity, New Jersey last week displayed a rampant example of freshman unionism. On petition of some 500 non-union employes, its officials decided to reopen the Thermoid Rubber Co. plant near Trenton, closed since April 8 by a strike of United Rubber Workers. Returning workers were hooted and stoned by picketers, and when they sent out the first truckload of their products, the strikers tossed more rocks to stop it. Returning tear-gas bombs, police charged into battle. The scuffle stopped when the truck retreated into the plant. The strikers jeered the sheriff when he appeared to read the Riot Act. For safety's sake, the non-union workers decided to stay inside.
In Trenton, muscular Governor Harold Giles Hoffman, who had sworn to resist the Sit-Down with "the full resources of the State," leaped to the rescue of Thermoid's involuntary sitters, had State troopers convoy a truckload of food and bedding to them. When the sheriff declared himself unable to enforce a court decree ordering the strikers to stop interfering with the company's operations, Governor Hoffman dispatched 30 blue-clad State troopers to stand guard.
¶ In a poll supervised by NLRB, Packard's 14,780 employes voted 4-to-1 to make U. A. W. their sole bargaining representative. Thus forced to become the first major motorman to grant U. A. W. such a privilege, Packard's President Alvan Macauley sagely observed: "We are pleased that the matter has been determined peacefully and with apparent good will all around."