Book Launch: The Truth About the ’37 Oshawa GM Strike

Author Tony Leah reveals what actually took place at the Oshawa GM plant in 1937 through the voices and actions of rank-and-file workers and shop-floor activists that have been covered up for decades. We need to study the lessons of the ’37 strike; it can provide a guidepost for workers today who are striving to revive a fighting labour movement that can win.

“Oshawa has fallen!” wrote the monthly New Commonwealth. “One week ago it was known as ‘The Home of General Motors.’ Today it belongs to the United Automobile Workers, International Union.”

How did autoworkers at the GM plant in Oshawa in 1937 beat a rabidly anti-union government, a hostile press, and the world’s largest corporation? The conventional wisdom popularized by academic Irving Abella has obscured the truth about the ’37 strike for 50 years. Abella claimed the international UAW was a hindrance, not a help. He downplayed the role of both reds and rank and file workers. And Abella completely ignored the role of women strikers, stewards and bargainers.

0:00 Introduction with Itah
2:11 Robin Philpot (Baraka Books publisher)
8:15 Tony Leah
32:56 Q+A

Recorded in Toronto, 30 October 2024.

Oshawa Book Launch
Thursday, December 5, 2024 from 7-9 pm
44 Bond St. E., Oshawa
(This building was built by the union and was the UAW/CAW Union Hall from 1951 to 1990.)