The Men Sat Down

The Women Stood Up

This game simulates the Flint Sit-Down strike of 1937. Autoworkers occupied several facilities critical to General Motor's operations, crippling the company and forcing GM's management to recognize the United Auto Workers as the sole representative of GM's workers. This was a major victory for the American labor movement. You play as a UAW labor organizer, and you must secretly organize the takeover of GM's factories. This will be difficult because management has spies all over Flint, and GM controls Flint's local government.

The Flint Sit-Down Strike has a lot in common with a military campaign. The occupation of GM’s factories required a high degree of operational secrecy. There was a battle when Flint police officers tried to enter one of the factories. However, this was essentially a struggle that resembles an insurgency. Like most companies in the first half of the twentieth century, General Motors used aggressive anti-union tactics to keep workers from organizing. GM ran its factories and the town of Flint like a police state, complete with a KGB like organization that collected intelligence on union activity. The Flint police department was basically a private police force for General Motor’s management. In past strikes, management could also call upon the Governor to send in the National Guard to break up strikes. Since many labor activists were Communists, Washington was lukewarm on labor unions at the best of times, giving management a free hand to operate as it pleased. GM was effectively a state with an army, a police force and an intelligence service at its disposal. As a union organizer, you will need to use stealth and political savvy to overcome all of this.

This is about as close as America would come to a communist revolution.

Good luck.