THE WORKERS' RIGHTS
STRIKE AT THE RIVER ROUGE PLANT
STRIKE AT THE RIVER ROUGE PLANT
"A Communist party decision directed that the strike should be called at the zero hour just as the midnight shift leaves and the day shift enters. This created the impression that all the midnight workers had joined the strike. At the same time, all plans were made to prevent the workers from the day shift from entering the plant. On the night the strike was to be called, hundreds of Communist mobile guards, wearing Ford Company badges, which the Communists procured, entered the plant as regular workers of the midnight shift. Many of them carried baseball bats and other weapons under their jackets. |
|
"He [Ford] did buy union presidents, bribed black ministers, and even built communities for blacks in order to control them." |
Factory owners such as Ford felt they "owned" their employees, just as they owned the machinery used to create their products.
|