Public Employee Press

Book Review
Lessons for labor in 1937 sit-down strikes

In 1937, 150 young low-wage women retail clerks, and waitresses at the downtown Detroit store of the huge Woolworth's retail chain won a sit-down strike that helped inspire a wave of organizing and strikes that strengthened the labor movement.

Demanding higher wages, job security, union recognition and an end to sexual harassment, the women organized themselves, moved in mattresses and told the bosses to leave. They then affiliated with a hotel and restaurant union that provided logistical support and solidarity with the wider labor movement.

In the booklet, "Women Strikers Occupy Chain Store, Win Big" (available at the Ed Fund Library in Room 211 at 125 Barclay St.), Dan Frank succinctly puts the strike in historical context, recounts how they lived in the store during the occupation and describes the support they got from unions in Detroit and nationwide, including New York City, where the hotel union urged a boycott of Woolworth's stores. In seven days Woolworth capitulated, granting recognition and a contract to workers in all its Detroit stores.

Newspapers, magazines and movie newsreels publicized this Davida and Goliath story of low-paid women taking on the Walmart of their day. The Woolworth workers were part of a wave of strikes and sit-down occupations in factories and stores across the United States. The most famous was the Flint, Mich., auto workers' sit-down strike, which brought mighty General Motors to its knees. Flint and the smaller Woolworth strike helped spark waves of organizing and strikes that built the labor movement.

Recently, a one-day strike by New York City fast-food workers spread to dozens of cities. And there have been militant strikes at today's retail giant, Walmart, other retailers and car washes. Some say mass unionization can't happen today, but that's what many said before the strike waves of the 1930s.

— Ken Nash