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r apidly expanding defense production, especially in 1942 and 1943, created the need for an expanded workforce for the automobile and parts makers engaged in war production. Industries outside the automobile industry, especially those engaged in building aircraft, ships, and munitions of all types, also developed an enormous appetite for more workers to staff their plants. Simultaneously, the growing manpower needs of the expanding military forces, satisfied through enlistments and the draft, siphoned off millions of workers from the labor pool. Toward the end of 1942, but especially in 1943, many industries struggled to find enough workers to produce the war goods they were under contract to deliver. Most defense industries, including the automobile industry, met their needs for additional workers by tapping previously underutilized pools of labor: white workers from West virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Deep South; African American workers mainly from the South; and women workers primarily from both urban and rural areas in Michigan. The story of how these new workers came to be hired by the auto industry, their experiences working in defense production, and their overall impact on the automobile industry’s performance during the war will be the focus of this chapter. As late as 1940, the U.S. economy was still suffering from the lingering effects of the Great Depression, with 8.1 million unemployed, some 14.6 percent of the civilian labor force. As rearmament got under way in 1940 and 1941, an adequate labor eight The New Workers the new workers 175 supply was not an issue. Unemployment levels fell to 5.6 million (9.9 percent of the civilian labor force) in 1941, to 2.7 million (4.7 percent) in 1942, and then to only 1.1 million (1.9 percent) in 1943. The civilian labor force grew significantly during these years, from 56.2 million in 1940 to 64.6 million in 1943, even though millions were leaving for the military. virtually all of this growth was the result of the influx of African Americans and women into the labor force.1 In 1940, the four branches of the U.S. military (army, navy, marines, and the coast guard) consisted of 458,368 men and women. This number grew rapidly to 1.8 million in 1941, 3.9 million in 1942, and then 9 million in 1943. Troop strength in 1944 expanded further to 11.5 million and peaked in 1945 at 12.1 million men and women. The military branches had planned even larger armed forces and pushed the War Production Board (WPB) to expand defense production to equip these forces. At the end of September 1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved plans for a military force of 10.9 million by the end of 1943. The WPB argued that these military manpower plans were unrealistic and could not be supported by the war economy. Roosevelt supported the WPB and the military forces projected for 1943 were reduced by nearly 2 million.2 The automobile industry and other defense industries solved the problem of severe labor shortages by drawing on untapped pools of labor, mainly white southerners , African Americans, and women. The automobile industry had employed all three groups in limited numbers and in particular types of work before the war, but their numbers exploded from late 1942 on and they began doing types of work they had not done before. Hiring large numbers of new workers brought distinct challenges to the automakers and caused significant adjustment problems for both the new and old employees. White southerners, African Americans, and women faced different experiences upon entering the defense plants. Each group will be considered in separate sections. A major challenge the automakers faced was training these new workers, most of whom lacked manufacturing experience. They were expected to perform tasks that were often new to the automakers as well, including riveting aluminum aircraft components and making delicate castings in aluminum and other unfamiliar metals . To train both new and existing workers, all of the automakers established two distinct types of programs during the war: those geared to train their own production workers in various specialized skills, and programs to teach military and civilian personnel how to repair and service the products each company was making. Ford initially trained workers at the River Rouge plant for various jobs at Willow Run and then opened an Apprentice School at Willow Run in July 1942. There, Ford trained 120,000 civilian workers to perform assembly operations, welding, riveting...

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