Fighting Times: Organizing on the Frontlines of the Class War (PM Press: September, 2022) 320 pp., by Jon Melrod
reviewed by Samuel Borgos
The United Auto Workers have been compelled to traverse down a rocky road the last few years, dealing with the indictment of top officials, a referendum on the direct elections of national union officers, and leadership elections themselves. To understand the current struggles of the UAW and its standing as a stalwart of the American Labor Movement, observers would do well to study the history of the union from its inception in the 1930s up through its current moment. Jonathan Melrod is well placed to do this in his memoir of his time in the union Fighting Times: Organizing on the Frontlines of the Class War, a book that explores both the difficulties faced by union reformers and activists as a general group in the labor movement in America.
Melrod was born and raised in Washington D.C. and attended the University of Wisconsin Madison, there getting involved with activist politics around ending the Vietnam War. After a brief time in California, Melrod returned to Wisconsin, getting a job at an American Motors Corporation (AMC) plant in Milwaukee thus becoming a member of UAW local 75. When management of the plant tried to force a work speedup and a six day work week, the young activist and his allies formed a dissident caucus (known as FightBack) to battle violations of their union contract and to better educate the rank-and-file about their rights, both internal and on the shop floor, as members of the UAW.
Melrod himself was fired by his employer AMC in 1973 for union activity protected by the National Labor Relations Act. However, the union leadership refused to represent him or grieve his dismissal, despite the fact that the membership itself had voted for the union to fight back against the employer for his firing. The unionist took his case to the National Labor Relations Board and it was finally adjudicated by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals with Melrod being reinstated at AMC more than two years after his dismissal.
Shortly thereafter, Melrod was transferred to Local 72 in Kenosha Wisconsin and became involved with myriad attempts to reform the union, making it more democratic and more alert to the membership’s needs. Locally, Melrod and his allies ran for union office, worked on the campaigns of reform candidates, and when they succeeded, used the local standing committees to educate the rank and file membership about what the union was doing, how to file grievances properly, and how to bargain. At the international level, Melrod allied himself with dissidents like Victor Reuther of the New Directions Caucus to demand greater democratic representation at the upper echelons of the union leadership. Melrod would even go on to make a quixotic stand for “One Member One Vote” at the 1983 UAW International Convention, almost forty years before that dream would become a reality.
Beyond being an all too rare look into the world of UAW dissidence, Fighting Times is also an entertaining read, full of anecdotes inspiring and funny about the life of a full time activist and troublemaker. Jon Melrod has given the Labor reader an excellent addition to their bookshelf.