Wyndham Mortimer (1884 - 1966)

Tue Mar 11, 1884

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Wyndham Mortimer, born on this day in 1884, was an American communist union organizer active with the United Auto Workers union (UAW). After refusing to follow an anti-strike line from UAW leadership, he was ousted in 1941.

Wyndham Mortimer was born March on 11th, 1884 in Karthaus, Pennsylvania, the son of a coal miner who was organized with the Knights of Labor, an early American labor union. He later recalled that one of his earliest memories of life involved “walking behind parades of striking miners.”

Mortimer left school at age 12 to work in the mines of Pennsylvania as a coal trapper. In 1900, still a teenager, he joined the United Mine Workers of America in 1900. In 1908, Mortimer joined the Socialist Party of America after hearing a campaign speech by the party’s Presidential nominee, Eugene V. Debs.

Today, Mortimer is best remembered as a key figure in the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike, during which he was Vice President of the UAW. Also a member of the Communist Party USA, Mortimer was a vehement critic of the efforts of the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) to control the union.

In 1941, Mortimer’s refusal to follow the anti-strike line of the UAW’s governing Executive Board during a controversial work stoppage at a California aircraft factory led to his termination by the union, effectively bringing an end to his career.

“The [Walter] Reuther-Murray-Roman Catholic hierarchy has plans for us. They plan to make the American labor movement the staunch ally of monopoly capitalism in its war against the exploited and poverty stricken peoples of the world. And here at home, their witch hunting, disrupting, and raiding of other unions, is treason to the American working class.”

- Wyndham Mortimer, in his autobiography "Organize! My Life as a Union Man"