Timeline

1934: September-October
Des Moines workers organize during the Great Depression
In the depths of the Great Depression, members of the American Federation of Hosiery Workers Branch No. 50 wage a strike against Rollins Hosiery Mills in Des Moines. The strike begins as part of a sympathy action in solidarity with a nationwide strike of textile workers, one of several major strikes that would happen that year. In Des Moines, strikers succeed in winning union recognition from the company. Among the strikers is Don Harris, a young worker and organizer who would later go on to work for another union, the United Automobile Workers (UAW). As Harris later told an oral history interviewer about the burst of union organizing that happened in Central Iowa during these years, “We were young gals and young guys, and we was in everything. There never was a picket line or another organizing campaign went on that we weren’t involved in, and there never was a strike that we didn’t put on a dollar assessment and give them money. . . . Anybody needed any help, we had plenty of volunteers. Because the people had a tremendous devotion. . . . All we needed was this little spark that says there’s hope. If you join up, there’s hope.”

1935
A Pivotal Year for the US Labor Movement
In an effort to curb the wave of industrial unrest and stimulate workers’ buying power, the US Federal government enacts the National Labor Relations Act (often referred to as the Wagner Act, in reference to its primary sponsor, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York). While excluding key groups—particularly public-sector employees and domestic and farm workers—the act provides a durable legal framework by which workers can organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers. The act is particularly helpful to mass production workers, like those in the textile, meatpacking, steel, auto, and farm equipment industries, who face both opposition from employers and disadvantages from within the traditional US labor movement, which focuses its attention on organizing workers by craft jurisdiction (with carpenters in the Carpenters union, electricians in the Electricians union, etc.). To support organizing in mass production industries, Iowa-born labor leader John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his allies form the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which breaks away from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the country’s primary—and craft dominated—labor organization. It would later reorganize as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (also CIO). One of the CIO’s early affiliates is a new union, also formed in 1935, the United Automobile Workers (UAW)-CIO.

19 July 1941
Building the Des Moines Ordnance Plant during World War II
Millionaire farmer F. W. Fitch holds an auction of animals and equipment after the US government acquires over 500 acres of his land near Ankeny, Iowa, for construction of an ordnance plant. According to the Des Moines Register, “There were several thousand men, women and children at the sale. . . . Farmers from all over the state and from neighboring states attended.”

The plant would come to be operated by the United States Rubber Co., with workers represented by the United Rubber Workers Local 235. After the plant closes in 1945, many members of Local 235 will go on to work at the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in Des Moines, where they form Local 310 (today a part of the United Steel Workers).

August 1941 – January 1942
Auto Workers Union Expands Its Jurisdiction
UAW leaders inform delegates to its 1941 convention regarding the union’s progress organizing farm equipment workers over the previous year—including the chartering of a John Deere local in East Moline, Illinois. By 1942, the UAW has officially changed its name to the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America.

20 June 1947
Taft-Hartley & John Deere’s Expansion in Iowa during the Early Cold War
The Des Moines Register reports that farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Co. of Moline, Illinois, “the largest single industrial employer in Iowa,” is seeking to acquire the former Des Moines ordnance plant near Ankeny “to relieve the need for space in the [company’s] Moline plow works.” On this day, the paper also reports that US president Harry Truman has decided to veto the Labor Management Relations bill of 1947, better known as Taft-Hartley. The bill proposes major pro-business changes to the National Labor Relations Act. A bipartisan conservative majority in Congress will later overturn the veto and approve Taft-Hartley. Later in 1947, Iowa becomes one of the first states to take advantage of Taft-Hartley to enact a so-called “right-to-work” law, which outlaws union contracts requiring workers in a union shop to support the costs of union representation by paying union dues or other fees. Despite these limitations, some Iowa unions still succeed in organizing majorities and even super-majorities. Another provision of Taft-Hartley restricts access to certain aspects of the NLRA to those unions whose officers file an affidavit attesting that they are not members of the Communist Party. While the UAW International officers accept this provision, officers of other unions, including the Farm Equipment Workers (FE), do not, creating division within the FE and providing an opportunity for the UAW to bring former FE locals into its organization, including Local 94 at John Deere in Dubuque. For more on this process, see ILHOP interviews with Don Harris (who eventually came over to the UAW from the FE) and UAW member Carl Fagan (Dubuque).

23 February 1948
UAW Charters Local 450

12 March 1948
UAW Local 450 Wins Representation Election at John Deere, Ankeny
Local 450 wins the election to represent production and maintenance workers at John Deere in Ankeny. The vote is 201 for the UAW-CIO, 80 for the International Association of Machinists, and three for neither union.

2 April 1948
Production Begins at Deere in Ankeny
Production begins at the newly converted John Deere plant in Ankeny. Although the plant would later become known for its work in cotton and tillage, it begins producing corn pickers on this date.

1948: 29 June – 8 July
Strike of 1948
Approximately 135 Deere workers participate in a walkout to protest “speed up” in piece work production. Speed-up refers to an employers’ efforts to reorganize work in ways that increase output per worker without increasing pay. The walkout is the third such “unauthorized” or “wildcat” strike to take place in Ankeny that year. The strikes were unauthorized because they took place outside of the restrictions of the contract and were not officially sanctioned by the union leadership. While such strikes had been a common tool for workers in the days before the Wagner Act, employers took advantage of the law’s emphasis on formal, long-term negotiated contracts and so-called “no-strike clauses” to pressure unions to clamp down on strikes, especially between contracts. Despite this pressure, US workers would continue to strike in a variety of context and in relatively large numbers until the political and economic shifts of the 1980s and 1990s. As historian Eric Loomis notes in his book, A History of America in Ten Strikes, “During the 1970s, there were an average of 289 major strikes per year in the United States. By the 1990s, that fell to 35 per year. In 2003, there were only 13 major strikes.”

1950: 1 September – 17 December
Strike of 1950
Local 450 members join workers from across the Deere chain in the first authorized strike under the terms of their contract. Although the strike is companywide, it is particularly bitter and violent in Ankeny. According to Local 450 leader James Steinbach, “the company picked out what they thought was the weakest plant, and our plant was the newest. They figured being new, being all them young guys, just a variety of everybody, especially around a big city like Des Moines . . . that they stood a chance of breaking the strike and breaking the union.” Ankeny managers provoke violence between workers by opening the plant to replacement workers (“scabs”) and by pressuring individual workers to cross the picket line. Despite the violence, the union emerges victorious. “We were fighting for our jobs and for our union,” Steinbach told an oral history interviewer in 1980. “We put up a hell of a fight, and we won too.” Provisions won in the new contract include a cost-of-living increase plus an additional annual increase, reduction of the probationary period from 6 months to 3 months, a pension plan, life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment insurance, retiree life insurance, and a medical plan with company contributions.

1955: 1 August – 8 August
Strike of 1955
Chainwide strike takes place during contract negotiations. On August 4, the Des Moines Register reports that the average pay for Deere workers across the chain is $2.28 an hour.

1956: 20 January – 29 May
Strike of 1956
Seven-hundred-and-fifty Local 450 members join over 3,000 other Deere workers at four plants in an authorized strike over piece work and incentive wage rates. During this time, the contract permits strikes as the final step in grievances involving incentive rates. According to the union, the company “is setting production schedules so high that workers cannot meet them and therefore can not earn incentive pay.” The workers win a “formula for revising upward disputed incentive standards” and expanded vacation rights. At this time, in 1956, the strike is the longest in the history of the company. Two years before, in 1954, union density (the percentage of US wage and salary workers who are members of unions) hits its estimated historical peak at 34.8 percent.

1961-1979
Two Decades of Strong Contracts
UAW members at John Deere build on the organizing and strike victories of the 1940s and 1950s to win a series of strong contracts. In addition to improvements to wage and working conditions, they include an expanding range of benefits. Examples include supplemental unemployment coverage, income security provisions, a tuition aid plan, a pre-paid prescription drug program, a long-term disability plan, and optional leaves for layoffs.

19 March 1969
Local 450 Supports Civil and Human Rights
Members of Local 450 march in support of legislation to improve living and working conditions for Iowa’s migrant workers. The march was organized by the UAW. It reflects Local 450’s support for the UAW’s progressive stand on African American and farmworker rights during the 1960s, including the union’s high-profile role in the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC.

9 January 1982
Recessions and Layoffs in the 1980s
The Des Moines Register reports that 530 workers are to be laid off at the Deere plants in Moline, Illinois, and at Ankeny. According to a company spokesperson, “the layoffs result from a shift of production schedules from one type of combine to another,” but they also come during a deepening recession. As the paper reports, “nearly 9.5 million people were out of work” the previous month. President Ronald Reagan, who, in 1981, signaled a pro-business shift in federal policy by firing air traffic controllers engaged in an unauthorized strike, denies that the high unemployment rate is part of a “deliberate policy” to fight inflation or to promote any other purpose. By the end of the year, the overall unemployment rate has reached over 10 percent, its highest peak since before World War II. In January, the unemployment rate for Black workers is already over 17 percent.

August 1986 – February 1987
Strike/Lockout of 1986-87
In retaliation for strikes at three Deere facilities, Deere & Co. closes fourteen plants. The UAW maintains that it had a right to strike the three plants over local issues and that the closures are a lockout. The strike/lockout is the longest in the company’s history. Despite the difficult economic conditions, workers succeed in winning a strong contract that includes cost of living increases and improvements to pensions. In February 1987, Don Page, president of UAW Local 838 in Waterloo tells the Des Moines Register, “[Deere & Co.] underestimated the character of their workers, and unfortunately they created wounds that will take a long time to heal.”

September 1994 – February 1995
Concessions Catch Up in the 1990s
Beginning negotiations nine months after the start of the new North American Free Trade Agreement, UAW members and Deere & Co. agree to continue negotiating rather than strike. According to the Ottumwa Courier, the 1995 contract includes “lump-sum payments instead of annual raises and lower starting salaries for some unskilled workers.” “New employees in unskilled positions got 70 percent of the maximum rate of their job classifications, but that pay was to advance through the term of the contract until they were getting the full rate. The contract also introduced for the first time a teamwork-linked pay system dubbed CIPP [pronounced ‘Kip’]. Under CIPP, employees could increase their pay through working in teams to improve productivity.”

1997: October
The 1997 Contract and the Beginning of Two-Tier
UAW Deere workers ratify a new, longer six-year contract that includes significant pay increases for current workers but also establishes a second tier for new hires. On the whole, UAW Local 74 president Jon Neis tells the Ottumwa Courier, “People aren’t happy.” “Part of [it is] the downsizing and outsourcing going on throughout the country. They (Deere) said they needed more competitive wages to hire . . . and that’s what this contract is about. . . . I don’t want to shed a good light or bad light on it (the contract). It’s just the way things happened.” Under the new agreement, base pay for current workers at the Ottumwa plant range from $14.42 to $22.02 an hour. The range for new hires is from $10.47 to $17 an hour.

2009: October
Negotiating during the Great Recession
UAW workers ratify a new six-year contract with Deere & Co. On October 6, The Journal Record, a national pro-business newspaper, reports, “Deere has been battered by the slumping global economy, which has depressed sales of its tractors, bulldozers and other products. But while the company has laid off hundreds of workers since the economic downtown worsened last year, it has avoided the sort of large-scale cuts seen at other large manufacturers.”

2021: 14 October – 17 November
Strike of 2021
Local 450 members join more than 10,000 Deere workers across fourteen plants in the first authorized strike against Deere & Co. since 1986. The strike is the largest in Iowa since 2004, and the largest in the US since the UAW’s strike against General Motors in 2019. It also forms the single largest strike in a series of labor actions in the fall of 2021 that commentators dub “Striketober.” The first tentative agreement, announced on October 1, would have increased wages for current workers between 5-6 percent but, in an echo of the 1997 contract’s second tier, would have also eliminated pensions for new hires. Workers across the chain reject this agreement by approximately 90 percent, setting the stage for the strike. Following several weeks in which public opinion polls report strong, bipartisan support for the strike, workers again reject a second tentative agreement that would have, among other things, doubled the proposed raise for current workers and maintained pensions for new hires. On November 17, workers at most of the plants, including Ankeny, approve a third agreement, which includes improvements from the second agreement as well as boosts to the incentive program for certain workers. Taken as a whole, the strike produces the most significant contract win for Deere workers in decades. The victory not only raises hope for better living and working conditions for Deere workers and their neighbors in the future, but it also inspires workers across the US and around the world. At the same time, however, the strike leaves some internal divisions over whether or not it had been settled too soon, and, tragically, it is also marked by several worker deaths, including that of Local 450 bargaining committee chair Curtis Templeman, who dies of COVID-19 on November 18.