The sit-down that is not there, and the strike that was: 1967–68

1936–1968 · THE LABOR SET-PIECE, WITH ITS TEST PRINTED

The test: The sit-down strike is the set-piece the 1930s are supposed to have left in every rubber town, and Mishawaka was a rubber town. The record was tested hard for one — in the city's commissioned history, in the Ball Band fragment's labor course, in the valley's labor record — and no Mishawaka sit-down stands. No source read places Ball Band's workers inside their plant in 1937 or any other year.Sit-Down (1937), treats as the first overnight sit-down of the auto industry; its own duration is disputed in the accounts reached — the UAW's organizing history has the workers out "after six days," on a tentative agreement, while Seidman's narrative has the victory won "in a week" — and both figures are printed as found. South Bend Bait Company's workers likewise staged a sit-down among their two 1937 strikes, on the History Museum's record. Those are South Bend's events. Mishawaka's absence from the sit-down record is itself the finding, and it is printed as one.

The set-piece the city actually has: Mishawaka's labor set-piece is a generation later and twice as long as any sit-down: the long strike of 1967–68 at Ball Band, by then Uniroyal. Its fullest surviving account is a family's. Miles G. Beard worked the auto-mats division on the 11 p.m.–7 a.m. shift and was, his family's memoir records, "a pro-union man until 1967–1968, when there was a six-month strike. That strike killed his spirit and took every nickel he had, and the big 'win' from the strike was a five-cent an hour raise, across the board." During the strike his family took surplus food — cheese, canned powdered eggs — from relatives who were on welfare. "It was a humiliating time for him." He retired in 1980, after more than three decades at the plant, calling it "an ill-thought-out strike" to the end.

The duration dispute, printed both ways: Against the family's six months stands the contemporaneous wire and archival record of the United Rubber Workers' national strike against Uniroyal in 1967 — and the two do not reconcile. The union's strike against the company began April 21, 1967; on Wednesday, July 26, 1967, the wire services reported a tentative agreement at Cincinnati ending what they called the longest strike in the history of the rubber industry, and the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire's Uniroyal records put the nationwide strike at 97 days. The national settlement carried 43 cents an hour over three years, with a further 10 cents for skilled workers in the first year — against which the Beard family's remembered five-cent "big win" also stands unreconciled. Ball Band's Local 65 was a local of the same United Rubber Workers, and Miles Beard's strike is the Mishawaka face of that fight; but no Mishawaka-datelined account of the local's own first and last days out was reached, and so the record prints both calendars without choosing: six months, 1967–68, in the memory of a family that lived it in this city; 97 days, April 21 to July 26, 1967, in the wire record of the national strike. The settler is the South Bend Tribune's and Mishawaka Enterprise's 1967 runs, with Local 65's own records, where the Mishawaka picket lines' dates would be set down day by day.

Sources:

1. Sit-Down (League for Industrial Democracy, 1937) — the Bendix sit-down at South Bend from November 17, 1936, and the victory "in a week"; with the UAW organizing history's account — about 1,000 workers in the plant, evacuated after six days on a tentative agreement.
2. The History Museum, South Bend — the South Bend Bait Company's two 1937 strikes, one of them a sit-down.
3. Alice Marie Beard, the Miles G. Beard family memoir (alicemariebeard.com) — the six-month strike of 1967–68 at Ball Band/Uniroyal, the five-cent raise, the surplus food, and Beard's thirty years at the plant.
4. Albert Lea Evening Tribune, July 27, 1967, wire report — the Uniroyal tentative agreement of July 26, 1967, "the longest strike in the history of the rubber industry," 43 cents over three years; with the Uniroyal, Inc. Records finding aid, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire — the 1967 nationwide strike "lasting 97 days."
5. National Labor Relations Board, Rubber Workers Local 510, 186 NLRB No. 106 (1970) — the 1967 Uniroyal strike's dates as found by the Board in a sister local's case: out April 21, 1967, settled July 26, 1967.