Walter Philip Reuther

American labor leader Walter Philip Reuther (1907-1970) pioneered in unionizing the mass-production industries. In a movement traditionally preoccupied with bread-and-butter goals, he dedicated his career to broadening labor's political and social horizons.

Walter Reuther was born on Sept. 1, 1907. His father headed the central labor body in Wheeling, W.Va., and the five children spent their evenings earnestly debating social problems. Walter left school at the age of 15 to work in a steel mill; 4 years later he moved to Detroit, resumed his schooling, and worked at night as a tool-and-die maker in automobile factories.

Reuther began preaching unionism before President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal put a legal foundation under collective bargaining. The result was Reuther's dismissal from the Ford Company in 1933. On a trip around the world he worked for over a year in a Soviet auto plant. Returning to Detroit, he helped build the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the union that became the launching pad for his influence in national affairs.

The dynamic redheaded Reuther slithered through national guard lines in the 1937 sit-down strikes at General Motors; he was beaten by Ford Company guards in a strike later that year. Even after the UAW was well-established, thugs made him a target. In 1948 a shotgun blast fired through a window of his Detroit home left his right hand permanently crippled. Later his brother, Victor, the union's education director, lost an eye in an almost identical attack.

Under Reuther's leadership the UAW grew to 1.5 million members. It pushed collective bargaining into innovative fields that provided workers and their families with cradle-to-grave protection as an adjunct of their regular pay. Perhaps the most spectacular success was a 1955 employer-financed program that gave auto workers almost as much take-home pay when laid off as when at work.

Reuther consistently fought corruption, communism, and racist tendencies within labor. Convinced in 1955 that the American Federation of Labor (AFL), led by George Meany, had also become a foe of such influences, he renounced the presidency of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to accept a secondary role in a merged labor movement. However, disenchanted by what he considered the AFL-CIO's standstill policies, he led his union out again in 1968.

The UAW joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the biggest American union, in forming an Alliance for Labor Action. Its aim was to organize the working poor, especially in ghetto areas, and crusade for far-reaching social reforms. This venture reflected Reuther's social vision, but it died a year after his own death.

Reuther always looked forward to transforming the economy along lines of industrial democracy and social justice. He authored dozens of "Reuther plans" for the solution of problems ranging from housing and health to disarmament. Yet he found himself increasingly isolated from the general labor movement. He was killed in an airplane crash in Michigan on May 10, 1970.

Further Reading

A well-balanced study of Reuther is William J. Eaton and Frank Cormier, Reuther (1970). More specialized is Alfred O. Hero, Reuther-Meany Foreign Policy Dispute (1970). Older studies are Irving Howe and B. J. Widick, The UAW and Walter Reuther (1949), and the section on Reuther in Paul Franklin Douglass, Six upon the World: Toward an American Culture for an Industrial Age (1954).

Additional Sources

Barnard, John, Walter Reuther and the rise of the auto workers, Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

Carew, Anthony, Walter Reuther, Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press; New York: Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1993.

Lichtenstein, Nelson, The most dangerous man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the fate of American labor, New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995. □

REUTHER, WALTER PHILLIP 1907-1970

President of the cio

Early Career

Walter Reuther, long associated with the United Auto Workers (UAW), established his legitimacy in a May 1937 leaflet distribution outside the River Rouge plant at Ford where he and several others were physically assaulted and hospitalized. His commitment to the labor cause, combined with his organizing skills, made him a natural leader, although early in his career he was an avowed Socialist. By 1938, however, Reuther had abandoned the Socialist party; even so, his close connections with Communists opened him to allegations from the Dies Committee, predecessor to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), that he was a Communist.

Anticommunism

When World War II came, Reuther helped to isolate and expose the Communists in the UAW, showing that they supported "the brutal dictatorships, and wars of aggression of the totalitarian governments.… "He devised a plan to adapt automobile mass-production methods to producing warplanes, but the head of the government's Office of Production Management, former General Motors president Bunkie Knudsen, thought the plan far-fetched. President Franklin Roosevelt never supported the plan, despite considerable public acclaim for it. Unlike some union leaders in the subsequent postwar period, Reuther's patriotism and strong anticommunism insulated him from charges of Subversion. Business management could not use such accusations against him in negotiations or to influence relations with the federal government or the public. Reuther's anticommunist influence remained through the Vietnam War, when union workers, known as "hardhats," steadfastly supported Presidents Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's handling of the war, then through the 1980s when many voted for Republican Ronald Reagan, despite the endorsement of Democratic candidates by union officials, including Reuther.

Socialist Background

Nevertheless, in the 1950s Reuther's socialist background consistently led him to emphasize public coordination instead of private solutions, income distribution instead of wealth creation, and national planning as a way to maintain an economy free of business cycles. He supported a mix of auto sizes, including small cars, as early as 1949.

Split With the AFL-CIO

Reuther disagreed with AFL-CIO president George Meany on support for the war in Vietnam. In 1968 Reuther and the UAW board separated from the AFL-CIO over "fundamental trade union differences." Ironically, then, Reuther left a legacy of a union free from any hints of subversion, yet he also developed a membership base that frequently tended to support political candidates other than those the union endorsed. A union leader who had succeeded largely because of his determination to keep communism out of the unions, he left the AFL-CIO in a disagreement over a war against communism. Reuther died on 9 May 1970.

Source:

John Barnard, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Workers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983).

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 (1907–1970), labor leader.Walter Philip Reuther was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, the son of German immigrants. His father, a trade unionist and socialist, taught his sons that workers needed unions and capitalist society needed reform. A diemaker, Reuther worked for the Ford Motor Company (1927–1932) and then spent three years abroad, including a stint in a Soviet factory. Back in Detroit, he organized for the infant United Automobile Workers (UAW), served on its executive board, and participated in its strikes, often in collaboration with his younger brothers Roy and Victor. In May 1937 Reuther and other UAW organizers were brutally beaten by Ford Motor Company security thugs in front of a Ford plant.

From the directorship of the UAW's General Motors Department (1939–1946), he became the union's vice president (1942–1946) and, in 1946, its president (until 1970). Concurrently he headed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1952–1955) and was vice president of the combined AFL‐CIO (1955–1967). A Cold War leader of the anticommunist left, he helped expell communist‐dominated unions from the CIO in 1949.

An eloquent speaker, Reuther was also a bold strike strategist and nimble negotiator. During his presidency the UAW won numerous benefits for its members, including cost‐of‐living and productivity wage increases, pensions, health coverage, and supplementary unemployment benefits during layoffs. The union brought auto workers a middle‐class living standard and protection from some hazards of an industrial economy. As a social democrat, Reuther sought a more egalitarian society, enlisting himself and the UAW in efforts for social betterment, culminating in the Great Society and civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. Breaking with other labor leaders, he opposed the Vietnam War. Despite his untimely death in a plane crash, Reuther's legacy lived on in the UAW's continuing commitment to social reform.
See also Anticommunism; Automotive Industry; Labor Movements; New Deal Era, The; Sixties, The; Socialism; Strikes and Industrial Conflict.

Bibliography

John Barnard , Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Workers, 1983.
Nelson Lichtenstein , The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor, 1995.

John Barnard

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.