But on April 10^th, Michigan Governor Murray Van Wagoner intervened and the strike was suspended.  Mr. Ford was beat.  For a brief time he pouted and moped around his 1,300-acre Fair Lane Estate in Dearborn - even threatening to shut his whole company down.  But his wife Clara disabused him of the notion.  And in a secret ballot – emphasis on that word secret – Ford workers elected to go into the UAW by a 97 percent vote. 

Now, fast-forward sixty-seven years to current day.  There is a curious and ominous piece of legislation floating around Washington, D.C. called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which has been nicknamed the “card check” bill.  In effect, it would eliminate the idea of using the sanctity of the secret ballot for elections when employees of a company vote on the issue of whether or not to join a union. 

So imagine you are working one day – and a guy comes along and says, “sign this.”  Would you feel the pressure and the potential for intimidation? 

Sadly, the UAW has in some ways become what they used to fight against – autocratic, coercive, intimidating, and manipulative.  If such a bill passes and is signed by our 44^th president, Harry Bennett wannabes will be back on the job, only this time they will twist arms for the unions.  Even someone whose liberal bona fides are as unimpeachable as George McGovern thinks this is a terrible idea.

President –Elect Obama supports the EFCA.  I would hate to think that democracy in America might one day find itself on a slippery slope toward becoming a “thugocracy.”

We are now at a crossroads.  Labor unions grew during the Great Depression and peaked just after the Second World War.  They have been in decline for years, but now as the economy tanks they seem to be getting another lease on life.  The current scenario with the auto companies asking for money in Washington with one hand, while in the grip of the UAW with other, is going to yield powerful and revealing clues as to what the future will look like for American businesses.

The corporatism that came out of the New Deal, and took decades to even begin to undo, is knocking at the American door once again.  And the man who, after January 20^th, will be in a position to let labor back into the economic living room has already given every indication that he has a pro-union welcome mat in the moving van. 

Be prepared to hear much more talk about “fair” competition than “free” competition.   They are both four-letter words, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Long after the 1941 strike was settled (by the way, the company offered more generous terms than those the union was seeking), Henry Ford met with UAW leader Walter Reuther to congratulate the man now representing his workers.  During an odd exchange, he told Reuther, “It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got UAW into this plant.”  Caught by surprise by the comment, he asked, “How do you figure it?”

Henry Ford then told the man who became for a generation - Mr. UAW: “Well, you’ve been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you are here, and we have given you a union shop and more than you got out of them.  That puts you on our side, doesn’t it? We fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?”

His analysis may have been flawed – but then again, maybe the old man was on to something.  I wonder what Henry Ford would think about company executives jetting privately to Washington to beg for money to “save” an industry he invented in his little backyard shop?