Erwin Baur (1915-2016)

http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4914
Date Written:  2017-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article

Erwin Baur, radical trade unionist and founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), died on November 30, 2016, in Alameda, California at the age of 101. Unlike many veteran unionists of the 1930s generation, Baur made a youthful contract with revolutionary socialism that he never broke.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

After high school, Baur followed his brother into the Brier Hill Works of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, taking a position as a tool and die apprentice in mid-1936. But his time at Brier Hill was cut short by the defeat of Little Steel Strike of 1937.

The strike followed an attempt by the CIO and Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) to reach an agreement with the "Little Steel" companies on terms similar to those just established with U.S. Steel. The smaller firms instead moved to crush the organizing effort, dismissing many union supporters and building up their private arsenals and ties to local police.

When the strike was launched at the end of May, workers were met with intense repression, including the infamous Memorial Day Massacre at Republic Steel's South Chicago mill, where a number of workers were killed by police gunshots.