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Look Back: Emerson sit-down strike
Date: 3/4/2010 Album ID: 956222
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
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Emerson Electric workers voted to abolish their “house union” in 1937, and their new union held at “sit-down” strike for 53 days at the motor plant at 2018 Washington.
Sit-down strikers inside the Chevrolet-Fisher Body plant at Union Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue wave to supporters on Feb. 19, 1937. One month before, the workers had joined a national strike that recognized the United Auto Workers at Chevrolet. They returned to work here on Feb. 17, but several were beaten inside the plant by opponents of the union. Workers took over the plant in a brief sit-down strike. That action inspired workers at Emerson Electric Co., just west of downtown, where company executives had refused to talk to the leaders of their new union, Local 1102 of the United Electrical and Radio Workers. Emerson president Joseph Newman said he would only deal with the Emerson's company union, called the Employees' Plan of Representation. On March 7, 1937, Local 1102 members voted to abolish the company union and go on strike. (Post-Dispatch)
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Some of the Local 1102 members who took over the Emerson motor plant at 2018 Washington Avenue with a sit-down strike on March 8, 1937. That morning, Local 1102 leaders walked the foremen out of the plant and took the keys. About 200 of the 2,000 strikers stayed inside, refusing to let management in. The sit-down strikers slept on cots and packing crates, patrolled the eight-story building in shifts, played cards, made their own music and held daily prayer meetings. Strikers outside passed in food through a union-controlled door. Emerson finally agreed to begin talking to Local 1102 leaders on April 15. On April 27, the company filed suit in St. Louis Circuit Court, demanding its building back. Two days later, the 150 sit-down strikers still inside walked out of the plant. Their 53-day demonstration was one of the longest sit-down strikes in American labor history. Emerson and the union agreed to a contract on May 14. (Post-Dispatch)
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Emerson sit-down strikers enjoy one of the meals that their fellows delivered through the door on March 9. An article that day does not specify what they drank, but strike leaders prohibited alcohol inside the building. (Post-Dispatch)
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Some of the leaders of Local 1102's strike against Emerson, from left: Oscar Debus, local president, 17-year employee and a former officer of the company union; William Sentner, organizer for the Congress of Industrial Organizations; and Robert Logsdon, local recording secretary and a three-year employee. Sentner, then 29, organized workers at several local electrical plants. A son of Russian immigrants, he graduated from Central High School and Washington University before becoming active in Depression-era union efforts. In 1948, he was expelled from Local 1102 for his Communist Party membership during the 1930s. In 1954, he and four others were convicted here of conspiring to advocate overthrow of the American government, but the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the verdicts. He died in 1958 at age 51, and is buried at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City. (Post-Dispatch)
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Frank Schlieman, leader of the sit-down strikers, leads the morning prayer service inside on March 11, 1937. The sit-down strikers read Bible verses and sang hymns. (Post-Dispatch)
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Emerson strikers and relatives gather at Union Station on March 18 to greet a returning delegation of local Chamber of Commerce members from a goodwill trip to the South. The strikers thought Emerson president Joseph Newman had gone with the chamber delegation, but he wasn't among those who arrived at the station. The man at center stands next to a funeral floral stand and holds a sign, The Death of the Company Union. (Post-Dispatch)
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Schlieman addresses strikers in a building across Washington Avenue from the Emerson motor plant on March 23. (Post-Dispatch)
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The crowd listening to Schlieman on March 23. A few sympathizers mug for the photographers. (Post-Dispatch)
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Strikers from Emerson and four other local companies occupy the waiting room of the St. Louis Relief Administration, 2309 Locust Street, on April 1. They were protesting the relief office's policy of refusing to aid strikers. Said William C. Connett, chairman of the St. Louis Citizens Relief Committee, Public support may be obtained to aid the jobless, but not to engage in controversies. A story in the Post-Dispatch that day said one striker played a guitar while two women sang duets. The relief office was five blocks from Emerson. (Post-Dispatch)
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Emerson strikers march outside the Relief Administration office on April 1 to protest the refusal to provide relief for strikers. (Post-Dispatch
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Emerson sit-down strikers catch a breeze from a second-floor window ledge on April 14, when the temperature reached 77 degrees. (Post-Dispatch)
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Sit-down strikers carry their bedrolls from the Emerson motor plant at 2018 Washington Avenue on April 29, after having controlled the building for 53 days. (Post-Dispatch)
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Sit-down strikers wave to fellow strikers and relatives after they left the building. To the right of the man wearing the tall paper top hat is Frank Schleiman, sit-down strike captain. (Post-Dispatch)
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Employees of Century Electric Co. line up at 17th and Pine streets on May 6 to cast ballots for recognition of the United Electrical and Radio Workers Union, the same union that already represented the Emerson workers. The vote was the first in St. Louis under the new federal Wagner Act, which outlined procedures for forming unions. Century's two plants, at 1806 and 1817 Pine, were five blocks from Emerson's. Some of Century's workers had gone on strike on April 12, while others kept working. The employees recognized the union and won a contract. (Post-Dispatch)
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Emerson strikers and friends gathered in the federal courthouse downtown on May 13 for a hearing before a National Labor Relations Board examiner on union charges that Emerson engaged in unfair labor practices. (Post-Dispatch)
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Emerson workers gather outside the Washington Avenue door at Emerson's motor factory on Monday, May 17, to return to work. The union and company had settled the Friday before. (Post-Dispatch
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Members of the American Radio and Telegraphists Union on strike inside the Postal Telegraph-Cable Co. office at 408 Olive Street on Nov. 23, 1937. It was one of a wave of strikes in St. Louis and across the country during 1937, as a return of rising unemployment after seven years of Depression and the new federal Wagner Act combined to increase labor-management strife and encourage workers to take collective actions. (Post-Dispatch)
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St. Louis detectives arrest pickets for the Committee for Industrial Organization on April 2, 1939, for demonstrating outside the home on 705 Rutger Street of Clayton Brown, who had refused to join their union. Shown are, from left, pickets Oliver Green and R.L. Barrett, detectives Lyman E. Price and Herman Rennekamp, Brown (holding a paper), and detective William H. Dunman. (Post-Dispatch)
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Children of striking Century Electric workers take their signs to police headquarters downtown on July 23, 1940, after police Capt. Albert Wetzel refused to let them walk the picket line. Wetzel said their presence would be disruptive. (Post-Dispatch)
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Police escort non-striking employees of Century Electric through the picket line on Aug. 1, 1940. (Post-Dispatch)
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