FLINT, MI -- Today marks the beginning of the 80th anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike.

The strike began Dec. 30, 1936, when about 50 men sat down on the line inside General Motors' Fisher Body Plant 2, protesting the transfer of three inspectors who refused to quit the union.

It ended 44 days later on Feb. 11, 1937, when both sides reached an agreement that allowed the United Auto Workers union to act as the bargaining representative for hourly workers.

This is the first year there are no known strikers to talk about it.

The last known surviving Sit-Down striker, Richard Wiecorek, died earlier this year at the age of 99.

Wiecorek had worked at the company's Fisher 1 plant on Saginaw Street for about a year when the strike began.

As the strike dragged on for more than a month, the 20-year-old Wiecorek came down with pneumonia and missed a week of the 44-day strike that ended on Feb. 11, 1937.

He worked in the auto industry for 51 years before retiring in 1986.

"I'm a union man, and that's it," he said in a February 2011 Flint Journal article. "With the union ... you have no fear for being laid-off or fired. You felt some security. You could buy something on time."

"I don't see how people can work without a union," said Wiecorek.

Nine days after the strike started, police took a more active role by making arrests in front of Chevrolet's Plant 9 at West Kearsley and Asylum streets following a "pitched battle" there, according to The Flint Journal's archives.

A couple of days after the first arrest, police fired tear gas outside and inside Fisher No. 2, according to "Sit-Down," a book detailing the history of the Sit-Down Strike by the late Sidney Fine.

The conflict escalated Jan. 11, 1937, during the "Running of the Bulls" at Fisher No. 2, when occupying workers clashed with police in bloody fighting that injured 28, according to The Journal's archives.

"On Jan. 11, violence began outside of Fisher Body 2, when company police shut off the heat, locked the gate to the plant and removed the ladder used to supply food to the strikers," according to the book "The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37: Witnesses and Warriors."

"When the sit-downers forced the gate open, the company police called in the Flint police to help and they responded with tear gas and bullets," the book says.

Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy then brought in 1,200 national guardsmen by train and truck the next day, saying, "Law and order will be maintained in Michigan," The Flint Journal reported at the time.

The clash continued on Jan. 31, when workers took over Chevrolet No. 4.

"In addition to the Fisher Body plants, the strikers today are holding possession of Chevrolet plant No. 4, a motor assembly division on Chevrolet Avenue, near Glenwood," The Flint Journal wrote at the time. "They took charge of this plant late Monday afternoon after more than 25 persons had been injured, one of whom is in serious condition...

"Monday's outbreak was the climax of unrest, which has been smoldering beneath the surface in Flint for several weeks and marked the first attempt by the majority of workers who are opposed to the strike and its out-of-town leadership to fight for their jobs," The Journal story said.

GM President Alfred P. Sloan took out a full-page advertisement in The Flint Journal on Jan. 27, 1937, that said the company had "earnestly striven to do everything possible to develop negotiations with the group that has attacked us." The ad said idled workers had been "deprived of the right to work by a small minority who have seized certain plants and are holding them as ransom to enforce their demands."

Fifteen days after the ad ran, GM and the UAW signed the first agreement between the two sides - and recognizing the UAW as the union as the collective bargaining agent for hourly workers.