Sociology 3945: Worksheet--"With Babies and Banners"

1. What was the significance of the Flint sitdown strike of 1937?

2. What was the Women's Emergency Brigade, how did it come into existence, and what role did it play in the sitdown strike?

3. Do you see the women who were involved with the Women's Emergency Brigade as feminists? Why or why not?

4. Despite the passage in 1935 Wagner National Labor Relations Act providing that workers have a right to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers, General Motors had refused to recognize the United Auto Workers. In fact, the company had hired thugs to beat up the Reuther brothers who were leading the organizing effort at General Motors. Why do you think GM was so strongly opposed to unionization?

5. How was sufficient pressure applied to GM to eventually convince management to negotiate a contract with the United Auto Workers?

Sociology 3945: Groups--"With Babies and Banners"

1. What did you learn about the history of organized labor in high school? And if it wasn't much, how do you explain that gap? After all, in the 1930s (the period of this film), Robert and Helen Lynd in their study of Muncie, Indiana, estimated that more than 70% of the population fell into the category they called the working class and the union movement was all about organizing the working class.

2. In my Sociology 2155 class, we recently saw a video, "The First Measured Century," in which we learned that a Gallup poll in the late 1930s (about the time of this movie) showed 82% of Americans opposed to women working, if they had husbands who could support the family? What effects do you think those kinds of beliefs had on the kinds of jobs available to women and the pay associated with those jobs?

3. How did we get from the belief system described above to one in which the vast majority of men and women expect that married women will be in the paid work force? What about the opportunity structure? As recently as my growing up years (not so recently, I admit) few women had jobs in professional or managerial occupations? What were the key factors producing the change? Try to approach these questions from both a functionalist and a conflict theory perspective.

4. Compared to the labor movement in other advanced industrial countries, the union movement in the United States has had more modest goals (better wages and working conditions, but not socialism) but also has often involved more overt conflict and violence? Why?