The Face-off between Communism and Moral Re-Armament in North American Aviation 1941-1945

The struggle in the early American labor movement over the control of its political orientation has been a topic of academic interest for decades. The focus of this paper is how that struggle manifested itself in North American Aviation’s aircraft manufacturing plant in Inglewood, California, USA during World War II, primarily as a face-off between the principles of communism and Moral Re-Armament (MRA). Self-avowed communist party members had significant and growing positions of power in parts of the union movement during the war. Olszowka (2008) argued that the controversial wildcat strike by Local 683 of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1941 “greatly hindered the UAW efforts in aircraft and opened the door to fierce competition from the rival union International Association of Machinists” (p. 297). The strike ended when President Roosevelt sent in the United States Army. Although this event represented one of the most rancorous moments in U.S. labor history, only a few years later this same plant went on to have incredibly amicable labor/management relationships that allowed it to break records for aircraft production and serve as a model for employee-employer partnership. Labor and management worked together, largely guided by the practices of MRA. This clash represented the “precarious balancing act of appearing stridently anti-communist while still benefiting workers through collective bargaining, which would undermine the appeal of communism by showcasing a capitalist model where workers benefited” (Grimm, 2021, p. 489).