1970 strike

[Harmon C.]

I looked in the birthday book and found out that their was a strike from Sept.15 to Nov.23 1970.
My question is the cyclinder case in my car was cast I 20 0. That is on a Sunday five days after the strike started. Would the foundry have taken some time to shut down or worked some after the stop of building cars and worked Sunday?
The stamp on the pad is V 1130 seven days after the strike ended.
I will check the cast date again after finding this information and see if it could be I-10-0.
Lyle

[Terry M.]

Re: 1970 strike

One needs to find out why the production stopped, and the extent of the parts chain interruption.

I know one of the production stoppages -- and I am not suggesting it was this one -- was because of a nation-wide teamsters strike. So parts could have continued to be produced for a while, but at some point St. Louis production was halted due to lack of parts.

I don't know how much information is included in "The Birthday Book" about the production stoppages, but one needs to dig a bit below the surface before drawing conclusions.

There was a story in The Restorer about a 1970 model year production halt in which the author, Felix Mozoky (sp?) did a real good job of researching the details of the situation. His methods would prove a good example of what one might do before concluding this or that part is not appropriate for this or that car.

[John H.]

Re: 1970 strike

The 1970 strike was a UAW National strike against GM, and was the longest one since the 30's (it lasted 67 days).

Mark Gorney may have better info, but you can't just "shut down" a foundry on short notice and let it sit for two months with a couple of thousand tons of 2300*F molten iron in the melt cupolas. Wouldn't surprise me if they had a special agreement that allowed them to continue pouring castings until they could shut the complex down in an orderly manner.

Most assembly and conventional manufacturing plants in those days had special provisions in their local agreements that allowed UAW manpower to be retained as a "skeleton crew" in the plant powerhouse during a strike, as you couldn't just shut down a powerhouse either without jeopardizing a lot of process equipment.

[Harmon C.]

Re: 1970 strike

Thanks Terry and John

I took a second look and it is one of those cast numbers that is very hard to tell what it is so a 1 is possible.
Lyle