Interview with Tom Jelley

Q: When did you first come to Ford?

Jelley: In 1923. I was 16. Ford had a lot of East Indians here at that time... and I got aquainted with them because my mother was from India. I met one of the Hindus that was assistant supervisor for Ford steel mills, and he says to me, he says, "Jelley," he says, "why don't you learn a trade instead of trying to learn to be a missionary." And he says, "you can learn to be a missionary afterwards, but learn a trade because Ford has got plants all over the world, you know." So, he says, "I can get you in the Henry Ford Trade School." They had a two-year waiting period, and he got me in there within a week. And so that was in 1925. I was 16 years old. And trade school, you graduate when you are 18.

Q: What do you remember about the trade school?

Jelley: Well, you learned to run all the different machines. And you learned math, trigonometry.... You learned to run the machines that you would be running out in the shop. I was in the trade school for two years and then... in 1925, I went into the shop on an apprentice course for four years. And it was in this building that I served that time.

Q: I understand you met Henry Ford.

Jelley: Henry Ford really inspired me. He was a good man. I had spoiled a job on a milling machine, and the foreman was balling me out. And old Henry Ford was standing about ten feet away. And when he saw him, why, the foreman got louder trying to impress the old man. And when he got through, why Ford come over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, "Son, you show me a man never made a mistake and I will show you a man never did anything." And that foreman, if there was a hole in the floor, he could have really sunk in it.

But the only trouble [with Ford] was the people that he hired to run his business for him.... Ford made the mistake of hiring a guy by the name of Henry Bennett [who] used to go to the prisons and get these prisoners out, put them under plant protection. And [these prisoners] would break into our toolbox on weekends, and our tools would be gone, and we would have to go up on Michigan Avenue to the pawn shops and buy them back.

[Bennet] had the whole say of running the plant. And his goons -- and that is what they were -- they would go into these toilets there, and you were sitting down there, and they would [tell you to get out] just like that. No dignity at all. So, as far as I am concerned, that is one thing that brought the union in there.

Q: Tell me about the assembly line.

Jelley: They were running, well the length of the building like, you know, and like carrying parts. Say you were carrying it by hands, why the conveyors would carry it on the lines, and it was really marvelous the way things moved. Not one brain was doing that. There was a lot of brains working together. But Ford had such a long vision on it. And I guess we, we forget about what they have to do, and money being involved and all that there. And they try to hire people for as cheap as they can too. But Ford did give the first living wage to his employees when he gave $5 and $6 a day.

Q: Do you remember the $5 day?

Jelley: Yeah. I remember that. They were coming here from all over the world. But I know, from this country, all the different nationalities that were piling in here for the five and six dollars. And [Ford] was the first one that gave them that living wage. But then inflation keeps moving up. And the best part that I remember was when the Depression was here, when Roosevelt was elected President. At that period he had froze everything. And that was good for the country.

Q: Did the men on the line feel the pressure of those outside, waiting for a job?

Jelley: Oh yes. Yes. Sure, they would see it was easier for the company. If you wanted more money, with the people standing outside, they could let you go and hire somebody else. That's why we really had to have unions then.

Q: Was it easy to get fired?

Jelley: Oh yes, just on the spur of the moment. If you didn't do what they told you to do, you were out of a job.

Q: Could the men on the line keep up?

Jelley: They would speed up the lines, yeah. And you know, we are all different. [Some would] have a lot of trouble there. Some of them would even pass out, you know, when you start rushing. Yeah.

Q: Were there accidents?

Jelley: Oh yes. There's all kind of safety hazards in a big place like this, with different chemicals and acids and all that which you are breathing.

Q: Do you remember the Sociological Department?

Jelley: Yes I remember. Ford did stick his nose in your affairs, but I can see why, too, because even today your children, they don't know how to handle money. What they want they go ahead and buy and then they don't have any money. So it was happening in that day, and Ford wanted to see that when he was giving them this living wage, how they were spending it, or if they were saving it, or what.

Q: What did the Sociological Department do?

Jelley: Well, they questioned you [about] how you were spending your money and [they would] look around through your house, you know -- and some people appreciated it and others didn't. You already did your job, and you were paid for it there. What business is it of [their's]?

Q: What was working on the line like? Was it monotonous?

Jelley: When you are doing the same thing over and over, in your mind you could even fall asleep doing the same thing over and over all the time.

Q: What could the line workers do to make it less boring?

Jelley: They didn't have a chance to talk to anyone. You [couldn't] sit down and be social and talk to the next person. No, you didn't have a chance. You were far enough away, and you were just engrossed in your jobs, and you had to do it. Or you wouldn't do it.

Q: Did they talk or joke?

Jelley: No, no, no. You weren't allowed to talk. You didn't have a chance to talk -- or time. You had a job to do because if you were just talking around, you wouldn't be doing your job. You wouldn't be concentrating on what you were doing.

Q: What happened if a man took too long on a break or talked?

Jelley: He was finished. If they had trouble with you... with that, they would fire you. That was it. With the lines outside, they, the companies had their choice of hiring new people all the time.

Q: Did the men resent their working conditions as degrading?

Jelley: Yeah. Some [did]. There [were] degrading jobs.

Q: Why did they put up with it?

Jelley: When you have to make a living, you have to have the money to live on, so that is why you put up with it there. And then things got so bad. That is why we got the unions. Solidarity forever, and that is the best thing that ever happened to us. Well , we weren't the first country to have it, but I think we have had the best unions here.

Q: Do you remember when men began to talk about the union? Did they talk to you openly?

Jelley: No. You can't do things that way .... One instance happened to me, and this was in 1940. I was out in the shop, out in the die rooms. You worked on a job outside of the die rooms where production is, maintaining the dies and the presses. And when the dies break down, why, the [foreman] would at different times tell me to go back in the die room and ... the die leader, he was off that day.

And this one day, he told me, "...you are going to be the leader in the die room there." "Oh no," I said, "I don't want to take [his] job." "Well no," he says, "you will have to," he says, "because it don't do me any good. He is off on a drunk." I said, "Well no, I don't want his job." So they sent me to the manager then.

So I went up to the manager, and I never will forget [this]. His name was Lindstrom. He says to me, "Why don't you do what your foreman tells you to?" And I says," I don't want to take his job. He is not here today, I will do it today," but I says, "I don't want to take his job." So he says, "Go to the employment office." "Well," I says, "[if] the question is going to the employment office or being out of a job," I says, "all right. I will take it." And he says too late. He says, "You should have spoke up before." So I went to the employment office, and never will forget it. Funny, you remember these certain things. [The] man's name at the employment office was Miller. And I said to him, I says," I am being fired...because I belong to the union. He says, "We have no contract with the union." "Well," I says, "I am going to report [this] to the National Labor Relations Board. He says, "We have no contract with the UAW, you know."

So I was out a year. I worked in a job shop then -- made more money than I did at Ford. And as soon as I heard about the strike in '41, as soon as it come over the radio, I took my apron off. The foreman said, where are you going, and I said, I am going over to Ford. So the National Labor Relations Board put me back to work. And of course Ford tried to put me in a different building other than where I was fired from. Where I worked, that was the second largest die room in the plant. So the company tried to put me in some other place that was smaller. And I insisted on going back to where I was fired from. So the National Labor Relations Board helped... put me right back where I was. And I was elected Committeeman then there in 1941.

Q: What kinds of things did you do as Committeeman?

Jelley: There was one incident I had...while I was in the Rouge. One of the trial men that I represented, I was his committeeman. He come to me, he says, "Jelley," he says, "they won't block up the press properly." So I went over and looked at it, and this was a double-action press. They had the block, the safety block under the punch, but then [on] the outer ring there was no block on that, and it had been double safe because when the punch would come down the outer ring would hold.

And I spoke to the production foreman. I says, "Why don't you put a block under the outer ring." And he said, "It's safe." Well I says, "You know the company policy," I says, "that the man must feel safe in order to do a good job." So I says, "Why don't you just go ahead and block it." He says, "It's safe" and they wouldn't block it up.

So they sent the man home. I wrote a grievance on [the foreman]. The afternoon shift come on. Same thing happened. Man refused to go in there without two blocks -- the outer ring and the punch. So they sent him home, so the afternoon committeeman wrote a grievance. And here I am -- there the two shifts now. So the midnight shift come in, and the same thing happened. They sent him home, and the grievance was written for the midnight man.

So the next day we all wound up at the American Road Board headquarters, and our people from the local and solidarity headquarters, they were hammering on the desk and swearing, and I thought, "Well I had better quote some scriptures here to them." And I says, "I don't know why we are out here," I said. "It could have been settled right in the plant." I said, "The Bible says in James IV:17 that 'to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it no, to him it is sin.'" "Now", I says, "it would have been good if they had blocked up the press properly -- the man would have felt safe and done a better job, see." So the company head said that it [was] going to be settled in the plant.

So we went back into the plant -- nothing more was said, they paid off the grievances, and we started the next day like nothing ever happened.

Q: Did you feel well off back then, with a good job and a good wage? Was it still hard?

Jelley: Well it was still hard because you couldn't do exactly what you wanted, you know, but [because] you had credit, that did help. You were going to get assurance that tomorrow you would have a job and get paid. You had that assurance, and that was one reason why we had to have a union because you couldn't have made it otherwise. We never really squandered anything. When we got the unions, we got vacations. And we really looked forward to those vacations. [And our jobs] helped us to enjoy life.

Q: I understand you were thought to be a communist.

Jelley: I was hauled before the [House Un-] Americans Committee in 1951. One bad thing that we did have in our union [were] these factions -- the right and left wing, see. And they called me a left-winger, and before I knew it I was called a communist.

So during this McCarthy regime here, I was called before the Americans Committee and my lawyer had told me, "Mr. Jelley, you had better take the Fifth Amendment, because if you are going to squeal that somebody so and so is a communist and you leave one out, they are going to get you for contempt."

So, I says, I took the Fifth Amendment and told them I didn't want to incriminate myself. So they let me go.... And when I got back to the local, I was removed from office. And then the president told me to go back [because] they had to appoint someone from my district,... and no one would take the job, so I said, "No, no, I can't go back on."

So he [asked] why. "Well," I says, "you made me a foreign agent," I said, "my kids are having trouble now in school." "And no," I says, "I don't know if [the men] even want me now."

So he says, "what do you want?" So I said," I want election." So they had the election, I was re-elected, and I was on for ten years before I had any opposition.

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