Lansing Labor Holiday

As the labor movement spread across Michigan in the 1930s, workers in Lansing organized. After a successful strike at REO Motor Car Company ended in April 1937, the Amalgamated United Auto Workers Local 182 recruited new members from small auto shops, including Capital City Wrecking Company, which refused to negotiate a contract. Its workers went on strike, and after the company obtained an injunction against picketing that unionists ignored, Sheriff Alan MacDonald ordered deputies around 2 a.m. on June 7, 1937, to arrest the picketers while he went to arrest labor leader Lester Washburn. When he was not home, MacDonald arrested his wife, Nevah. In response, the union called a Labor Holiday, or general strike, across Lansing. On June 7, 1937, between 2,000 and 5,000 union members and supporters entered downtown Lansing and nonviolently forced shops, theatres, factories, and offices to close, virtually shutting down the city. Union members then marched to City Hall and the Capitol to demand the release of the arrested picketers and Nevah Washburn. Mayor Max A. Templeton said he could do nothing, but Governor Frank Murphy met with officials involved in the arrests, and shortly afterward the arrestees were released. The next day Capital City Wrecking Company agreed to contract negotiations with its workers. Labor historians later called the holiday a rarity, one of the few successful nonviolent general strikes of the early twentieth-century labor movement.

Lansing, Michigan · United States