by Berry Craig, Aug 1, 2010

Ermon Harp

When AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke recently at the UAW’s 75th annual convention, he paid tribute to many UAW pioneers—members like Ermon Harp, a tiny woman from Milburn, Ky.

In his speech to the UAW convention in Detroit in June, Trumka said:

“When the auto companies wouldn’t recognize your union, you sat down in the factories.”

Trumka’s speech reminded me of Harp, her strong support of workers’ rights and unions and her place in union history. I had the opportunity to interview Harp before she died at the age of 97 in 1992.

In 1922, she and her husband, Lube Harp, moved to the Motor City from Milburn, near Mayfield. They were looking for work, not a place in labor history. She found both.

Harp joined one of a series of the historic sit-down strikes. It was in 1937, shortly after the famous 1936–1937, 44-day sit-down strike in Flint, Mich., that won UAW recognition from General Motors and paved the way for organizing throughout the auto industry.

They called us communists—and just about everything else you could think of. But it didn’t bother me a particle. We were the United Auto Workers, and we felt like we were doing right.

Harp felt that way until she died.

She sat down on strike at the Advance Stamping Co. Her job was fitting together distributors for car engines. I asked her if she was scared when the 15 women and 48 men stopped working at their machines and wouldn’t budge.

Goodness no. There was nothing to be scared of.

But there was good reason to be scared, though. The year Harp struck, police had stormed one of the struck plants firing tear gas and gunshots before being repelled by the strikers. In another incident, Ford Motor Co. guards severely beat union activists, including Walter Reuther, the UAW’s guiding spirit and president for many years. Said Harp:

Our people were getting beaten up all over town. But nobody got hurt where I worked—I guess it was because it was a small plant.

It all went off as smoothly as you please. There was no rough stuff. People brought us hot food, blankets and pillows. We organized a square dance. Some of  the men played cards, and we turned the radio on to a church service on Sunday.

Harp saw her husband, Lube, a UAW member at a GM plant, during the day. But the strikers stayed in the plant.

We found some big barrels, put some boards over them, spread down our blankets and slept pretty well.

Harp said her experience at the plant where she was fired before landing a job at Advance Stamping led her to became pro-union “all the way.”

I’d worked there 11 years, when the boss came in one day and said, “Ermon, come  pick up your check. You’re through.” Later, I found out he’d given my job to his  girlfriend.

That’s why I went union and why Detroit went union. It was because of things like that that weren’t fair.

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