World War II. The URW is also one of the first few unions in the CIO that was founded without financial help from an outside organization. The passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed the right to organize and form unions, helped the CIO form many unions within different industries. But it did not require employers to recognize and cooperate with unions. Goodyear's management, led by Paul Litchfield, did not wish to recognize the URW during negotiations. Goodyear Industrial Assembly The Goodyear Industrial Assembly, founded in 1919, was a local union for employees of the Goodyear Tire plant. Many of the rubber factories had local unions in place to allow the workers and management of individual factories to bargain, and (during this time period) these local unions often existed at the same time as industry-wide unions. Because the Goodyear factory was more than twice the size of the next largest employer, the actions between the workers and management at the Goodyear factory had an effect on how the rest of the industry acted. Goodyear's management and the leadership of the local union were able to cooperate and bargain until late 1935. During the later stages of 1935, Goodyear's management, led by Paul Litchfield, introduced plans to reduce hourly wages, while at the same time moving from six hour shifts to eight hour shifts for its employees. The local union voiced its displeasure to management, but management was adamant on going through with the proposed changes, regardless of how the local union felt. Because the local union was now unable to negotiate with management, its perceived bargaining power decreased in the eyes of the workers, causing the union's support to decrease, and workers began to look elsewhere for union support (with many workers eventually joining the URW). Sit-down strikes The sit-down strike was a type of strike that the rubber factory workers used very frequently both before and after the large picket strike of February–March 1936. The sit-down strike is when factory workers, who are currently working on the assembly line, sit down at their assembly line positions to stop production at their point in the production process. The stoppage of production in one department will cause the next department in the process to stop because that department will have no new products or batches to work with. Because one department decides to sit down, it causes the