This story is part of a monthlong Black History Month series about the impact of Black people in automotive history.
Rory Gamble was a union loyalist right down to his fingertips, which is why he accepted the job of United Auto Workers president in December 2019 after his predecessor resigned in disgrace — a first for the union.
His elevation to the union presidency, a role he accepted reluctantly, was an outgrowth of the scandal resulted in more than a dozen senior union officials pleading guilty to a myriad of charges, all centered on the misuse of UAW funding.
However, in the process, he became the first Black person to become what had been one of the most powerful and influential unions in the United States. It should be noted his successor, Ray Curry, is also Black.
Shifting demographics bring change
Gamble began to rebuild the UAW’s shattered reputation but his ascension to the top job in the union also underscored the organization’s important role in the fight for civil rights and the expansion of the Black middle class.
It also is a symbol of the changes in the blue-collar culture in the U.S., which is moving from majority white to “majority minority” within the next decade.
Brian Rothenberg, the UAW’s communications director, says the UAW does not maintain records on the race of members. However, the U.S. Department of Labor reports that a larger percentage of Black workers belong to unions than white workers now.
In addition, demographics are rapidly changing composition of the American workforce and pointing to a more diverse blue-collar workforce anchored by Black workers.
The changing demographics is already evident among the percentage of young, teenage workers entering the workforce for the first time is becoming more diverse very rapidly, according to Diane Swonk, chief economist for Grant Thornton and an expert on labor markets.
John Russo, visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor, Georgetown University, said estimates show the majority of blue-collar workers in the United States will be minorities as soon as 2029. Other statistics underscore Swonk and Russo’s commentary.
The U.S. Army Recruiting Command, which focuses on finding high school graduates willing to serve in the U.S. Army, reported that the majority of recruits entering the U.S. Army Reserves belong to minority groups, offering a glimpse of the impending changes in the larger U.S. labor force.
New recruits for the Regular U.S. Army are also very nearly a majority minority, according to the recruiting command. Demographic shifts point towards a potential change in blue collar culture that now dominates American political and blue-collar culture.
Changing times led to alliance between Blacks and the UAW
Overcoming racism, inequities and conflicts have been part of the history of Black workers in the UAW from the very beginning.
Throughout the years, Black workers made up a smaller percentage of employees in the skilled trades in the auto industry. In 2007, Ford Motor Co., Visteon (a components business spun off by Ford in 2000) and the UAW agreed to pay $1.6 million and provide other remedial relief to a class of nearly 700 African Americans to settle a major race discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The EEOC charged that a written test used by Ford, Visteon and Automotive Components Holdings (a collection of plants transferred back to Ford control from Visteon in 2005) to determine the eligibility of hourly employees for a skilled trades apprenticeship program had a disproportionately negative impact on African Americans.
The UAW was also a defendant in the case because the test was used to select apprentices in the Ford-UAW Joint Apprenticeship Program and the lawsuit settlement affects people covered by the union agreement.
From the beginning
Black Americans, though, have played an important part of the history of the United Auto Workers since the union was first organized back in the 1930s, taking part in one of the union’s first sit-down strikes at Midland Steel in the 1936 and at strike in Flint in 1936-37 and Chrysler, according to histories of the UAW.
The UAW was successful in organizing workers at General Motors and Chrysler in the late 1930s, but Ford held out against the union. Black workers made up only 6% of the Detroit-area workforce between 1920 and 1950, but they comprised 20% of Ford’s workforce during the same time span.
But the UAW recruited Black organizers to help make the case for the union at Ford’s sprawling Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan, just west of Detroit, workers Black employees represented a significant part of the workforce.
Active in more than just the UAW
The effort paid off with a union victory in 1941 and spawned a generation of union activists, such as Sheldon Tappes, Oscar Noble, Walter Hardin, Horace Sheffield Jr. and John Conyers, who went on to hold a variety of union, civic and political offices. Coleman Young, another member of the union cadre, became a Michigan State senator and served five terms as Detroit mayor.
But it was another 20 years before a Black served on the UAW’s executive board when Nelson Jack Edwards became an at large member of the board. Marcellus Ivory became the first Black regional director in 1968 and Marc Stepp became the first director of the UAW’s Chrysler Department in 1974 after the DRUM-led uprisings in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Edwards served as UAW President Walter Reuther’s emissary to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and Reuther was a major supporter of the drive for Civil Rights in the 1960s. Reuther’s commitment to Civil Rights helped cement the loyalty two generations of Black autoworkers to the union, paving the way for Gamble whose father was a UAW member.
The Civil Rights movement, coupled with pressure from the UAW, also forced open the door for more Black supervisors and managers and executives across the auto industry’s manufacturing base.