The Dodge Main Wildcat

Dodge Main, the plant John and Horace Dodge moved into in Hamtramck in 1910, grew into a Chrysler complex of dozens of buildings that employed tens of thousands at its peak. By 1968 its workforce was by one estimate seventy percent Black, under a management, a union local and a city hall that one observer described as essentially Polish. In May 1968 a walkout over line speed led to the firing of seven workers, five of them Black, and out of that dispute came the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, or DRUM, led by among others the autoworker General Baker. On 8 July 1968 DRUM called a wildcat strike against conditions in the plant. Three to four thousand workers stayed out for two and a half days, and about 3,000 cars went unbuilt. DRUM was aimed at the United Auto Workers as much as at Chrysler, charging that the union that had marched with Martin Luther King had kept Black workers out of its own leadership. The idea spread to the Rouge and to Chrysler's Eldon Avenue plant, and those groups joined in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in 1969. Within a few years the plant-level movement had largely collapsed. Dodge Main closed in January 1980, was sold for a dollar, and was demolished the following year.