- Labor - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- [Photograph; caption reads: Making Jotters was the job of
these employees on assembly line at The PARKER Pen Co.
in 1971.]
-
- Work conditions led to 1937 strike
- Auto workers in Janesville gave their impressions of their
jobs in the '30s, leading to the sitdown
- strike at General Motors in 1937, in an oral history compiled
for the Rock County Historical Society and the Janesville Public
Library.
- The following are excerpts of interviews with autoworkers
selected from the transcript of the oral
- history.
-
- On conditions at the plant:
- Eugene OSMOND, an early union member... "When
I went there at first if you missed a day's
- work you may have a job when you got back or you may not.
- "And I used to have a job where I had to move 65 bodies
on - they were sitting on a truck -
- without help. I had to move those bodies from one line to
another, which was tough on the feet, and I used to go home at
night and my feet would bleed and my mother used to cry and say
that people should not have to do those things. That they would
not let you do them to an animal, why could you do it to people?"
- (OSMOND said leaning and pushing heavy trucks caused
his feet to bleed.)
-
- On formation of the union and the reasons for it:
- Ralph HILKIN, another early union member... "Because
of the speed-up, and I think if you talk
- to any of the early members of the locals, they'll tell you
the same thing: that the speed-up was the determining factor
in forming the union."
- Lou ADKINS... "And what happened was very simple.
We just had a meeting up here at LEIN's
- filling station one night, I forget what day of the week,
and we decided we were going to have a union... We had to take
up a collection among the eight of us that was there in order
to send a telegram to Bill GREEN to send an organizer
in. He did send an organizer in by the name of DILLON,
Francis DILLON, and he's the guy that really put the thing
together, originally."
-
- On the sitdown strike:
- HILKEN... "It was a must. You can't work like
this for the rest of your life. There's got to be
- some changes made, and if I lost my job, I said, I was single
at the time and I didn't have anybody to support. I could have
went back to the farm you know. I was needed there if it came
that far. Then if you couldn't make up your mind, I am sure someone
could have made it up for you that we were going to have to support
this because this is the best thing we had going for us. This
sitdown strike."
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