Leon E. Bates Sr. (December 3, 1899 – July 25, 1972) was an American labor union leader with the United Auto Workers union (UAW) from 1937 to 1964 when he retired as an "International Representative" of the UAW. He was one of the first African-American union organizers to work for the "UAW-CIO" (Congress of Industrial Organizations).
Biography Leon Bates was born in Carrollton, Missouri, to Werner Bates and Matilda (White) Bates. He attended the Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City, Missouri, for one year before moving to Detroit with relatives to seek work in the manufacturing plants during the boom years around the First World War. At the end of the war, he remained in Detroit while his relatives returned to Carrollton. In Detroit he met and married Anna L. Perry; they had two children. In his own words he had many different jobs in the years between the World Wars, including cab driver, common laborer, and he even considered trying his hand at home-made liquor during Prohibition. However, his bootleg liquor-making thoughts were very short lived as he was convinced that every knock at the door would be the police. The Detroit Police Department had a very long and well-deserved reputation of police abuse and abusive tactics, and he had no desire to go to prison.
By 1935, Bates was working at the Briggs Manufacturing Company of Detroit, Michigan; a company founded in 1909 by Walter Briggs, Sr. Walter Briggs, Sr. had worked his way up to Vice President of the B.F. Everitt Company (car body makers) in 1906. In 1909 he acquired the Everitt Company and incorporated it in to the newly formed Briggs Manufacturing Company. Briggs Manufacturing would later become one of the country's largest auto body manufacturers; supplying parts to Ford, Chrysler, Packard, Hudson Motors, Studebaker and many others. Briggs Manufacturing became a division of the Chrysler Corporation in 1956.
Organizing Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, labor movements in the United States saw progress through hardship. The United Mine Workers would be involved in one of the longest and bloodiest fights of their history in 1920 and 1921. The violence began on May 19, 1920, when simmering hostilities between mine workers trying to organize and the private detectives hired by the mine owners trying to keep the union out, boiled over in the tiny community of Matewan, West Virginia in what has come to be known as the Battle of Matewan. The violence culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain where 10,000 to 15,000 armed miners confronted police, militia, and private detectives in August 1921. It finally took military intervention by the Federal government to restore peace to the area.
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was organized by the predominantly Negro Pullman Porters in 1925. The "BSCP" suffered through a lengthy fight to achieve recognition by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1935. BSCP signed its first collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company in 1937.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, formerly known as "International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America", had been involved in an intense struggle to organize since 1901. Between 1901 and 1935, the Teamsters engaged in countless small and large bloody and deadly confrontations over the right to organize and collectively bargain for wages and working conditions. As their early name implies, the Teamsters took in the related workers in order to strengthen its bargaining position with owners and management.
UAW years While at Briggs, Bates became involved in the organized labor movement, he worked passionately for the organized labor cause at Briggs. By 1937, the UAW-CIO had organized and signed a collective bargaining agreement with the Briggs Manufacturing Company. Through that effort Leon Bates became one of the most outspoken union stewards of UAW Local #212. In 1937 Briggs was the fourth largest employer of Negroes in the Detroit area with more than 1,300 or approximately 10% of its total payroll. The UAW-CIO was keenly aware of this fact; so their leadership made the decision to include the Negro workers in the organizing efforts. This decision ran contrary to the social, economic, and business norms of the day as the vast majority of labor unions were segregated at that time and simply would not accept Negro membership. The UAW-CIO was so concerned about the issue of Negro participation that the UAW-International Office sent out a letter encouraging each local to elect at least one Negro delegate to its 1937 convention. Leon Bates was one of two Negro delegates elected to represent Local #212 at the 1937 UAW convention. Even though the UAW had organized Briggs, not all of its employees were union members; in 1937 Local #212 renewed its efforts organise the remaining employees. Placing special emphasis on the Negro employees Local #212 formed a "Negro organizing committee" composed of the Negro union stewards. Each of them was tasked with recruitment in department and assigned areas without a steward. At the time Chief Steward Leon Bates, had 81 men [Negro men] assigned to his department on his shift, all but two were members of Local #212.
1937 was a big year for the UAW. They had organized Chrysler and General Motors and they were having a significant amount of success with organizing the smaller parts suppliers and manufacturers, i.e., Midland Steel Products, Kelsey-Hayes, Bohn Aluminum, Fisher Body, and Timken Axle.
The UAW had been working on organizing the Ford Motor Company employees for some time, then came May 26, 1937 and the UAW's clash with the Ford Motor Company security guards sometimes known as the "Ford Service Department", led by Harry Bennett. This violent confrontation has come to be known as the Battle of the Overpass. Just before the afternoon shift change the UAW organizers were posing for press photographers when they were suddenly and viciously attacked by Ford security guards at gate #4 of the Ford River Rouge Complex. The violence was a publicity nightmare for Ford. Henry Ford had repeatedly stated that he would never sign an agreement with any union. Ford had gone out of his way to undermine the UAW's efforts at his plant. When token donations to Detroit charities and churches were not enough, Ford turned to Harry Bennett and the Ford Service Department with its union busting tactics. Henry Ford also quietly gave money to Negro charities and churches, occasionally showing up at Negro church functions. Henry Ford used these occasions to enlist the help of Negro ministers to influence the Negro community of Detroit against the unions.
For their part, the UAW took some time to heal their wounds and refine their tactics, then they returned to the Ford organizing efforts.
In September 1940 the UAW intensified its efforts to organize Ford with the assistance of the CIO. John L. Lewis president of the United Mine Workers and president of CIO put the full support of the CIO behind the UAW's efforts. The CIO sent Michael Widman to Detroit to head-up the overall organizing drive. The UAW had previously appealed to the Negro workers, but now their efforts were being stepped up. For their part the UAW knew that if they were going to be successful they needed to organize and recognize every man in the plant that they could. At this point the UAW brought in seven Negro organizers, Leon Bates and John Conyers Sr. were the first hired. UAW president R. J. Thomas picked Local #212 president Emil Mazey to be the director of the UAW Negro organizing effort. From the UAW's prospective, Mazey was a logical and a safe choice. Mazey had come to prominence for his organizing work at Briggs during the sit-down strikes. Mazey was respected and trusted by the many Negro workers of Briggs and the Negro stewards. In 1937 Mazey had unseated Local #212's first president Homer Martin an avowed racist. Mazey ended the exclusion of negro workers at union social events and hired a Negro secretary over the objections of the White secretaries in the Local #212 office. Local #212 and had fought to eliminate racial pay differentials for equal work. Still the Negro organizers were not happy that a white man had been put in charge of the "Negro effort" and complained bitterly first to the UAW - Interracial Department and then directly to the UAW Executive Board. In response Walter Hardin (a Negro) was quickly transferred in from a Chicago assignment to be the coordinator.
The UAW divided the Ford organizing drive in Detroit into two separate districts [EastSide and Westside] headed by Leon Bates and John Conyers Sr. Each office had a staff of clerks and secretaries, and latter personnel to handle transportation issues were brought in. Bates and Conyers met with Ford workers in their homes, coffee shops, and restaurants, they met with larger groups at local churches. During the Ford drive the organizers worked extremely long hours, most of them outside of the office. The UAW created a family atmosphere by organizing wives clubs, they also strengthened their relationships with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Urban League, Michigan Democratic Party and the national Democratic Party.
The Ford organizing drive ended June 20, 1941 when the Ford Motor Company signed a collective bargaining agreement with the UAW-CIO. This was six months before the United States entered World War II after Japan attacked the U.S. Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. With the agreements settled between the UAW and the "Big Three Automakers", the UAW-CIO Negro organizers found themselves squarely in the middle of a new battle. The United States was gearing up for the largest military effort in history, a two front war, when the conflict came to head on the home front in the form of "hate strikes" and "Jim Crow" policies. At Packard Motors, White workers had refused to work with Negro workers, after the plant managers refused to reassign the newly promoted and reassigned Negro workers citing the Fair Employment Practices Committee rules and the War Labor Board policies, in protest; the White workers walked off the job. As a result, the Negro organizers found themselves in the unusual position of advocating for their union at the same time fighting to reform their union. Pushed by the Negro organizers, the UAW urged the U.S. Government to sanction the companies for the labor policies and practices. The UAW also enforced its own sanctions on its members; declaring the strikes improper and against union rules and policies, the UAW international ordered the employees back to work, or they would remove the local union leadership, and the UAW would support the termination of any and every participant of the strike who refused to return to work immediately.