10/08/2026
For 44 days in the winter of 1936 and 1937, autoworkers in Flint sat down inside General Motors plants and refused to leave. 🏭 It began on December 30, when workers at Fisher Body took over the line rather than keep working under conditions they said were unsafe and unfair.
Outside, families and supporters brought food to the windows and passed it up. Inside, the men organized shifts, kept the place orderly, and waited. It was freezing, and the stakes were enormous.
On February 11, 1937, General Motors agreed to recognize the United Auto Workers, and a new era in American labor began. The weekend, the pension, and the middle class paycheck that came to define a Michigan job all trace back, in part, to those weeks in Flint. ⚙️
Whatever your politics, the story is part of the fabric of this state, and it still gets talked about at kitchen tables across Genesee County.
Did anyone in your family work in a plant, and what did they say about those years?
