A Sit-downer's Story
Harold Kile was still a teenager in 1933 when he started working for General Motors in Flint, Mich. He made 50 cents an hour on the third shift assembling engines.
Times were tough and so were plant managers. Kile, now 91, recalls being kicked in the leg by a supervisor for not standing up straight enough.
“That’s one of the reasons I joined the union,” he said. “They would hire you one day and fire you the next. I saw a guy get fired for getting a drink of water on a really hot day.”
But getting involved in union organizing was one of the worst offenses for a worker.
“Management told us if you got a union button on you better be careful because we’re going to fire everybody with a union button,” Kile said. “They thought there was only about 10 or 15 percent union, but it was about 95 percent. After lunch one day, we all put our buttons on and they didn’t say nothing else about firing us.”
Kile was among the first men to join the union at his plant, and one of the courageous workers who helped establish the UAW during the Flint Sit-down Strike. It was winter and strikers faced sub-zero weather, battles with police, power cuts and GM spies as they occupied the factory and walked pickets for six weeks. He remembers hundreds of workers turning over police cars on the street.
“The police had guns and strikers took the guns away from the police and threw them in the river,” he said. “The police got scared and they left.”
Kile credits the workers along with Roy and Walter Reuther for helping the strike to end. On that day he was able to put his picket sign down, go home and enjoy a chicken dinner cooked by his wife, Julia.
Kile retired in 1971 after 41 years with GM. He’s the father of four and grandfather of 12. He still lives with his dog Maddy in the house he built 60 years ago in Flint.
Bob Roth, Region 1C director, said he is honored to talk with sit-downers like Kile whenever they are available.
“I like to hear the sit-downers tell their stories. I think it opens up the eyes of some of our rank-and-file members,” Roth said. “I always tell them that I can’t thank them enough for what they have done.”
