OLGA MARIE MADAR

 

　

Olga M. Madar (May 17, 1915-May 16, 1996) was the first woman to serve on the United Auto Workers (UAW) International Executive Board.

 

She was born in Sykesville, Pa., one of 12 children of a coal miner and grocer who moved the family to Detroit in search of work when she was 15. In 1933, she found a summer job on a Chrysler assembly line.

Years later she recalled that the line moved so fast she could "never keep up" and had nightmares about it. She said she was apparently kept on the job because of her citywide reputation as a terror on the women's softball team.

 

"There was no union at the plant then," she said, "and the fact that they would hire me when other workers were being laid off -- just because I could play softball -- was incredible. It was my first indication that a union was badly needed." http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/18/us/olga-marie-madar-80-pioneer-for-women-in-automotive-union.html

 

In 1938, she graduated from Eastern Michigan University (formerly Michigan Norman School) with a degree in physical education. In 1941, she joined the UAW(United Auto Workers) Local 50 while working at Ford’s Willow Run bomber plant.

 

Olga believed that while work was important, that non-work time was just as important. "We’ve got to place more emphasis on non-work time. Contributing to community organizations- that’s important." While Olga was the director of the Recreation Department she eliminated racial bias from organized bowling.

According to Doug Fraser, former UAW president, Madar "was a trailblazer in the struggle for equal rights," fighting to end racial discrimination and a champion of women’s rights. In 1947, Madar led a crusade to end racial discrimination in the men and women’s bowling association. Victory came in 1952 when the white-only membership policy was removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Madar

Bowling, a highly interactive sport, was by 1945, a billion dollar industry that touched the lives of an estimated 12 to 16 million Americans. It had reached this status in great part due to its promotion by the U.S. Armed Forces during WWII and because unlike football or baseball anyone with a few dollars and the desire could play. But the American Bowling Congress (ABC), bowling's governing body, had in its bylaws a "white males only" clause which it had strictly enforced since its incorporation in 1893. By 1945, at wars end, a number of civil rights and civic organizations and progressive white individuals concluded that segregation in American society was a baleful social malignancy that had to go. From organizations such as the NAACP, National Urban League, B'nai B'rith and others, plans were formulated to end segregation in America's most popular participant sport.

These organizations joined with the United Auto Workers--Congress of Industrial Organizations (UAW-CIO) and other labor unions in the effort to end the whites-only policy of the ABC.

Olga appealed to the natural ties between the two organizations. "Your organization, as well as ours, is constantly confronting situations which threaten our basic democratic philosophy of fair play," she wrote to Walter White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, in March 1947. She called the exclusionary policy of the ABC a "challenge which cannot be ignored," and invited White to participate in a one day conference at the Maryland Hotel in Chicago on April 1. The UAW-CIO's vision of a broad-based civil rights campaign was clear from Madar's letter. "We are confident," she wrote, "that religious, fraternal, civic and labor organizations can develop a unified program of sufficient strength to persuade the American Bowling Congress to change its policies.

Madar opened the conference with a discussion of the history of bowling describing its rapid growth in the 1930s. She set the tone for the conference when she attacked the ABC for its hypocrisy. She noted that the American Bowling Congress and other promoters of the sport, emphasized the democratic nature of bowling and its accessibility to low wage workers. She denounced the ABC's claims and asserted that if the ABC practiced democracy, it was the "Georgia variety of democracy." She ended her talk by suggesting that one possible strategy was to attack the ABC indirectly by organizing campaigns against owners of bowling alleys. She believed that by applying financial pressure on proprietors, they might be compelled to seek changes in the ABC's policy.
The conference delegates envisioned the campaign against the ABC as a true-grassroots effort.


Madar gave the history of bowling in the United States, noting that in its present charter it had the following clause:


City associations shall be composed of teams with membership of

three or more individuals of the white male sex who are members

of a league or leagues bowling a game of American ten pins
  weekly or bi-weekly.

This clause, said Madar, was the reason for the organization of the National Committee for Fair Play in Bowling, and that, since within the UAW-CIO labor movement there were lots of people of Chinese, Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, and Negro ancestry, the UAW-CIO organization was opposed to this clause in the ABC's charter.

The various members of all the organizations who had participated with the National Committee for Fair Play in Bowling in its sterling efforts to integrate the ABC, could congratulate themselves. They had played a pivotal role in the campaign to integrate the ABC, had worked hard in an ecumenical manner, and had set an important example for other cities in the fight to integrate a major American sport.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+integration+of+the+American+Bowling+Congress%3A+the+Buffalo...-a0135210752

She was also active in organizing community recreation programs. Her projects included preservation of Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains, Sleeping Bear Dune Parks, and the clean-up of Lake Erie.

Many labor unions would show their support of Earth Day and become important constituencies in the modern environmental movement. The UAW led the pack.


"Don't be a 'cop-out' or a 'drop-out' in the struggle for survival. Only if you, in the UAW spirit of concern for the community, join with your neighbors in the fight to control pollution, can we insure the quality of our future environment. "- Olga Madar

Madar was named to the UAW International Executive Board in 1966. She was also the first woman elected as the union’s vice president in 1970.

Olga also started the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and was their first national president. The impetus for the formation of CLUW came in June 1973 when women labor union leaders, led by Olga Madar of the United Auto Workers and Addie Wyatt of the United Food and Commercial Workers met to discuss the formation of a new AFL-CIO body to create a more effective voice for women in the labor movement. More than 3,000 women attended the conference.

Olga was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1989 because of her many efforts throughout her life time.


She dedicated her life to the betterment of the working class, not only in the work place but also in the community.