As the U.S. auto industry struggles to survive by cutting plants, brands and workers, the wage and benefit concessions won by the United Auto Workers union through decades of aggressive representation and negotiations have come under siege.



But a handful of the union's most senior survivors still recall the early days of the UAW and some of their legendary battles with the automakers in the 1930s during the Great Depression.



Without the UAW, they argue, America would have no middle class. The concessions being made today will only weaken the union, they say.



'Back then (in the 1930s) there was no middle class, there was just the working poor,' said Art Lowell, 91, one of five surviving members of the 'sit-down' strike in Flint, Michigan against General Motors Corp that ran from December 1936 to February 1937. 'I'm proud of what we did. We prospered, the company prospered and the country prospered.'



'If the UAW makes more concessions, a lot of people are going to hurt,' Lowell added, seated in the living room of the home he built for himself in the small town of Clio, Michigan, about 13 miles north of Flint.



The strike in Flint -- once the heart of GM's empire, with more than 100,000 hourly workers compared with 62,000 hourly workers across the entire company today -- is the stuff of legend in the UAW as it spurred on the first contract with an automaker.



Prior to the strike, Olen Ham, 91, recalls working in GM's foundry in Flint where molten iron was poured into molds, for 52 cents an hour amid 'horrible conditions.'



'It was a dirty place, there was no ventilation and the heat was terrible,' Ham said.



'GREAT ADVENTURE'



The Flint strike began on December 30, 1936, when workers occupied two plants. It spread to other plants in Flint and elsewhere.



Events took a violent turn when the police attempted to storm one plant with tear gas and guns. As a result, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy called in the National Guard to keep the peace and ordered GM and the UAW to negotiate.



'If Murphy hadn't called out the National Guard, I'm convinced the police and GM's goons would have killed us all,' Lowell said. 'I never gave it a thought at the time. I was 19 and it just felt like a great adventure.'



When UAW-GM negotiations failed, some 2,000 workers took over Chevrolet plant No. 4 in late January, which was seen as the most important factory in the GM network.



'We got management's attention,' Ham said. 'We hit them in the pocketbook and forced them to negotiate.'



Provided with food by women volunteers, many of the workers in the plant spent much of their time on seats destined for the cars produced there, earning the strikers the name 'sit-downers.'