The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

LABOR UNREST AND STRIKES 
SHOULD BE UNNECESSARY
Ford (1922, p. 250) warned against the kind of union organizer who is
A spokesman who does not work in the shop, who does not work in any 
shop, whose sole ambition perhaps is never again to have to work in a shop, 
is usually the “bargainer,” and it is from what he says or does that many 
employers draw their opinion of the men in the shop.
Furthermore:
It is a truth which every American workman ought to know is that 95 per-
cent of the agitation which they see around them does not grow up out of 
the working people, but it comes down through hired agitators from the 
would-be capitalistic rulers who want to use the workmen themselves to 
break down the very industries on which the workmen depend, in order 
that then the workmen may be thrown on their tender mercies (Ford, 
1922, p. 252).
Ford says instead in this section that “the only true labour leader is the 
one who leads labour to work and to wages, and not the leader who leads 

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228  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
labour to strikes, sabotage, and starvation.” Management has the unequiv-
ocal obligation to provide the fair wages, and Ford lays equal blame for 
labor unrest on “bosses who never did a decent thing for their employees 
until they were compelled.”
How does a labor leader lead workers to high wages? It is not, as the 
United Auto Workers did prior to General Motors’ bankruptcy, by negoti-
ating with management over who would pay what percentage of employee 
healthcare benefits. The UAW could have instead urged management to 
demand that providers of healthcare to GM employees implement the 
kind of quality management systems that GM already demands of its