Lester Washburn, union organizer and former officer in the Allied Industrial Workers (AIW) union, talks about labor law, negotiations, union organizing, and the successes and failures of organized labor. Washburn reminisces about his childhood, life in Lansing, MI, going to work at the R.E. Olds Motor Works (REO) as a carpenter in the fall of 1927, his early union involvement, being elected to the AIW executive Board in Detroit in 1935, and in 1936 assuming the presidency of Amalgamated Local 182 AIW in Lansing. He describes his role in the June 7, 1937 Lansing Labor Holiday, other strikes and arrests, traveling around Michigan, Indiana and Ohio to assist union organizing efforts at several factories and shares a conversation he had with Walter Reuther about the creation of Labor-Management Production Committees. Washburn is interviewed by Ken Germanson, labor activist and president of the Wisconsin Labor History Society.
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