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that James T. Johnson was a former Pinkerton agent brought to Baltimore by GM
management, that the anti-strike committee was formed with management
connivance and received management support, and that management was aware
and approving of the ejection of unionists from the plants. These revelations were
extremely damaging to GM, but they did not end hostility to the UAW in the
Baltimore plants. On February 24, production was shut down by workers for 90
minutes when six UAW members appeared on the assembly line, and, as late as
March 5, several union leaders were still unable to enter the plants.^
The national contract between the UAW and General Motors, signed in
March 1937, recognized the union as the exclusive bargaining agent for all GM
workers. Under the umbrella of the national agreement, and in the context of the
national and local strike wave, UAW organizers made astonishing advances in the
Baltimore GM plants. On June 8, 1937, 800 workers sat down in Fisher Body
because the management did not remove an anti-union worker from the production
line. At a meeting of 2,000 workers the next day, the UAW local made its
demands, which included discharge of the non-union worker, reinstatement of all
union workers who suffered discrimination at the hands of the company, an end to
intimidation by supervisors, and (most striking of all) joint control over production
line speed by the management and the union. Chairing the meeting and leading
the struggle was Michael Gallo, president of UAW Local 239, who could not even
enter the plants four months earlier.
Mass picket lines with workers from both plants were put up, and the strike
dragged on for a week. The national UAW representative was visibly nervous,
insisting there was no strike; the national office worried the effect the stoppage
would have on the national contract. Local 239 would not, however, relent.
Finally, State Senator Harry T. Phoebus intervened as mediator, and the workers
agreed on June 15 to return to work with the removal of the non-union worker and
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