In addition to critiquing capitalism, The Flivver King explores the benefits of the labor movement and unionization. The book was so important to the labor movement that the United Auto Workers (UAW) published the book in 1937 in an attempt to convince Ford’s employees to unionize; the Ford Motor Company subsequently entered a collective bargaining agreement with the UAW in 1941. In the book, Sinclair shows how little power individual employees like Abner Shutt have against the inequity and unfair working conditions in Ford’s factories. Alongside this, he demonstrates the power of collective bargaining through Abner’s son, Tom Jr., who rallies fellow Ford workers to demand equal rights and fair wages. In juxtaposing these two ideas, Sinclair argues for the labor movement by demonstrating that individuals will never have as much power to incite change as a union does.
Sinclair establishes the demanding conditions in the Ford factory and demonstrates how individual workers have very little means to combat the increasingly unfair practices. In 1913, Ford institutes the assembly line in his factories to increase production. In subsequent years, he continues to speed up the assembly line, forcing his workers to keep up with the new pace. If the workers complain or take days off, supervisors dock their pay or fire them. Sinclair writes, from the perspective of a supervisor, “If [a worker] is a weakling, there are a dozen strong men waiting outside to take his place. Shut your mouth and do what you're told!” Because there is always a danger of being replaced by someone willing to work under harsh conditions, there is no way for workers to push back against this unfair treatment. Without union oversight, conditions grow worse and worse over time. Because of the increased speed of the assembly line, “men so driven couldn’t handle machinery without accidents.” The plant even has its own hospital, and there is a saying among the factory workers that one man dies every day. Without a union, there is no collective protection to ensure that the working conditions at Ford’s plant are fair and humane. Abner grasps this unfair treatment and lack of benefits when he asks for a promotion. The sub-foreman thinks that Abner is after his job, so he begins to target Abner, reprimanding him if he stays 10 seconds more than his three allotted minutes on the toilet or his 15-minute lunch break. When Abner gets angry over this treatment, he is promptly fired after 22 years of loyal service. As an individual, Abner has very little power to ask for basic worker’s rights; without a union, he is unprotected from this unfair firing.
Abner’s son Tom then tries to argue for the power that unions can have, illustrating that if they work together, they can increase their wages and improve their working conditions. Tom tells the workers about the root cause of their problems: “under the New Deal profits had increased fifty percent while wages had increased only ten percent.” A union of workers, on the other hand, could collectively bargain—that is, organize as a group to negotiate for increased wages. Tom also argues for why the workers need a single union, rather than several unions for the different types of workers. He says, “Imagine Ford's with a hundred different unions, all fighting for jurisdiction; dividing up the River Rouge plant among carpenters, machinists, steam-fitters, glass-workers, truck-drivers! All these workers now had one boss, and let that boss deal with one union.” A single body of workers organizing collectively, he illustrates, would be the most effective in balancing the power with a man as wealthy as Ford. In this same vein, Sinclair states that “A billion-dollar industrial empire such as Ford's could be met and matched by only one thing, a union of the two hundred thousand Ford workers, controlled by the democratic will of its membership. That was what they meant to have, because it was the only way out of misery and despair for the producing masses.” This is the only way, he argues, to fight the unfair conditions and raise wages in line with profits.
The final pages of the book again emphasize the need for collective action: Ford is so afraid of unions that he has a secret police force to quell any possible organizing. These men find Tom and his wife, Dell, and beat them brutally. Because Tom is acting so singularly and visibly, he is an easy target as an individual. But with the power of a collective, the workers would be able to stand up to Ford’s intimidation and unfair labor practices.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Individualism vs. Unionization ThemeTracker
Individualism vs. Unionization Quotes in The Flivver King
In the year after the panic he produced 6,181 cars, a little over three per worker; but within three years he was managing to get thirty-five thousand cars out of six thousand workers.
Of course nobody ever showed these figures to Abner Shutt, and they wouldn’t have meant much to him anyhow. In that period, while learning to make twice as many cars for his employer, Abner was getting a fifteen percent increase in wages, and was considering himself one of the luckiest workers in America. And maybe he was, at that. There were breadlines in Detroit for two winters, reminding him of those dreadful years of his boyhood which had weakened him in body, mind, and soul.
Never had there been such a device for speeding up labor. You simply moved a switch, and a thousand men jumped more quickly. It was an invisible tax, like the tariff, which the consumer pays without being aware of it. The worker cannot hold a stopwatch, and count the number of cars which come to him in an hour. Even if he learns about it from the man who sets the speed of the belt—again it is like the tariff in that he can do nothing about it. If he is a weakling, there are a dozen strong men waiting outside to take his place. Shut your mouth and do what you’re told!
It passed Abner’s comprehension how any man or woman could fail to be grateful for such divine compassion on the part of Mr. Ford. But human nature is notoriously perverse, and many of the men grumbled bitterly against having their private lives investigated, and they changed the name of the new department from “Social” to “Snooping.” Instead of complying loyally with the terms of the agreement, they set to work to circumvent it by diabolical schemes. […] Some of these tricks were caught up with, and the tricksters were fired, and there was not a little spying and tale-bearing and suspicion.
With every month of the depression these things had got worse and worse. The twenty-five thousand workers were driven until they went out “punch-drunk.” Sometimes one went out on a stretcher, because men so driven couldn’t handle machinery without accidents. On no subject had Henry written more eloquently than on the importance of safety; but again and again his “safety department” was overruled by his speed-up department, and there was a saying in the plant that it took one life a day. They had their own hospital, and there was no way to get any figures.
There was a new stirring in labor all over the country; a demand for unions organized according to industries and not according to crafts. It was an old idea, which had had to wait for the workers to realize the need. In the midst of mass poverty and mass unemployment thousands of workers in the Detroit area had started discussing this fundamental idea, that there must be one big union of workers in the motor-car industry, regardless of what kind of work they did. Henry Ford, master of the labor of two hundred thousand men, would deal with one union of that number, and not with a hundred small unions.
Tom Shutt couldn’t see any member of his audience, but he could hear them, and they were not slow in letting him know what they thought about his arguments. Were they getting a living wage out of the motor industry? Were they able to buy the products of the factories and the farms? They made plain that they were not; and Tom told them that their troubles could be summed up in one simple statement: that under the New Deal profits had increased fifty percent while wages had increased only ten percent. So the very factor which had caused the depression was working faster than ever, leading them straight to another smashup, unless they could find a way to increase wages at the expense of profits.
The gangsters were making a professional job of it. They had Tom on his side and were kicking him in the small of his back to loosen his kidneys.
“Chassez out,” called the prompter; the old-timers always pronounced it “Shashay.” And then, “Form lines.” The dancers moved with perfect grace, knowing every move.
The chief executioner was now kicking his victim in the groin, so that he would not be of much use to his wife for a while.
“Six hands around the ladies,” called the prompter. Such charming smiles from elderly ladies, playing at coquetry, renewing their youth.
