Walter Philip Reuther

Walter Philip Reuther , 1907-70, American labor leader, b. Wheeling, W.Va. A tool- and diemaker, he became shop foreman in a Detroit automobile plant, meanwhile completing his high school work and attending college. Discharged because of his union activities, he and his brother Victor spent some years (1932-35) in Europe (including the Soviet Union) and in East Asia. Active in the organization drives (1935-37) of the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW) and in the sit-down strikes, he became director of the union's General Motors department (1939) and union vice president (1942). In World War II, he favored active support of the war by labor and evolved a plan for airplane mass production in automobile plants.

In 1946 Reuther was elected president of the UAW and also became a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO; see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations ). After 1945 he led the auto workers in several major contests for wage increases and social welfare programs, while gaining undisputed control of the UAW. His importance as an anti-Communist labor leader grew. He was severely wounded by an unidentified assailant in 1948, as was his brother Victor the following year. Reuther succeeded (1952) Philip Murray as president of the CIO. An engineer of the merger (1955) of the CIO with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), he became a vice president, a member of its executive board, and head of its industrial union department.

In the following years, Reuther had many disagreements with George Meany , the president of the AFL-CIO. For example, in 1963, Reuther strongly supported the civil-rights march on Washington, but the AFL-CIO executive board, led by Meany, would only express sympathy with civil-rights objectives; the board refused to endorse the march itself. By 1968, after a dispute with Meany over the direction and structure of the labor movement, Reuther led the UAW out of the AFL-CIO. In 1969, Reuther attempted an ill-fated merger with the Teamsters Union (a union he had been instrumental in having removed from the AFL-CIO in 1957); known as the Alliance for Labor Action, it was dissolved, after his death, in 1972. Reuther was killed in a plane crash. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1995.

Bibliography: See F. Cormier and W. J. Eaton, Reuther (1970); J. Gould and L. Hickok, Walter Reuther (1972); J. Barnard, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Autoworkers (1983); N. Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (1995).

Reuther, Walter Philip (b. 1 Sept. 1907, d. 9 May 1970). US labour union leader Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, he left school at 16 to become an apprentice, but was dismissed for protesting against Sunday work. In 1926 he went to Detroit and became a foreman at the Ford Motor Company. Dismissed for trade union activity in 1932, he soon joined General Motors, where he helped found the United Automobile Workers' Union. As its President from 1946 until his death, he pioneered negotiations for guaranteed employment, wage increases tied to productivity, and welfare provisions for his members. A strong anti-Communist, in 1952–5 he was President of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which had been tainted by Communist associations in the 1940s and 1950s, and fought strenuously to rid unions of corruption and racketeers. In 1955 he led the reunion between the CIO and AFL. However, disagreement with George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, led him to take the UAW out of the organization in 1969. Shortly before his death he formed a short-lived Alliance for Labor Action with the Teamsters. A strong supporter of civil rights, cooperative organizations and the Great Society, he fought for the right of organized labour to participate in industrial planning. In his belief that trade unions had to take stands on non-industrial policy issues, he became an important influence in the Democratic Party. He was also in the vanguard of attempts to link unions to business with productivity bonuses for workers and index-linked wage increases and pension benefits. He died in an aeroplane crash.