June 11 - Wildcat at Dodge Truck

On this day in labor history, the year was 1974. 

That was the day workers at the Dodge Truck plant in Warren, Michigan went out on a wildcat strike. 

Workers were fed up with endless attacks from management and disappointing contract negotiations the year before. 

Wildcats had become almost commonplace in Detroit area auto plants the previous summer. 

Arbitrary discipline, deteriorating working conditions and frustration with the union’s response all led to the three-day walkout. 

10 days earlier, 100 workers had staged a sick-in over working conditions. 

When the company threatened firings, more workers dropped their tools.

Now four had been fired, including the second shift chief steward. 

The response was immediate. 

Within an hour, the plant was virtually shut down. 

6000 workers voted to continue the strike. 

Wildcat leaders noted that virtually all the routine antagonisms among workers, young vs. old, black vs. white, women vs. men, had melted away in solidarity. 

Socialist and anarchist workers in the plant published their recollections in a commemorative pamphlet entitled Wildcat: Dodge Truck, June 1974.  

In it they state, “We were excited by the collective decision of thousands of Chrysler employees to deny the authority of daily wage labor and, for even four days, to say no to the demands of the alarm clock, the production line, bosses, union bureaucrats, judges and cops… It was in fact, a total frustration with and rejection of, all the things, inside and outside the plant, which exercise control over our lives.” 

By the time it was over, thirty strikers had been arrested, strike leaders were branded as communist agitators by the union, and area judges issued injunctions to end the picketing.

The wildcat may have failed but workers had pushed back against management offensives.