- For the Baseball player Walter Ruether, see Dutch Ruether. Baseball is a Bat-and-ball Sport played between two teams of nine players each Walter Henry Ruether (born in Alameda California; September 29, 1893 - May 16, 1970) was an American Baseball
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Walter Philip Reuther (September 1, 1907 – May 9, 1970) was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic party in the mid 20th century. The labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better New Unionism is a term which has been used twice in the history of the labour movement both times involving moves to broaden the union agenda The proletariat (from Latin la ''proles'' "offspring" is a term used to identify a lower Social class; a member of such a class is proletarian Social Movement Unionism is a trend of theory and practice in contemporary trade unionism Syndicalism is a type of movement which aims to degrade capitalist societies through action by the Working class on the industrial front Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the Means of production and distribution Timeline of Organized labor history 1790s - 1800s - 1810s - 1820s - 1830s - 1840s - 1850s Labor rights or workers' rights are a group of Legal rights and claimed Human rights having to do with Labor relations between Workers Child labor is the employment of Children at regular and sustained labour The 8-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement (aka the Short-time movement) had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where Occupational safety and health is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the Safety, Health and welfare of people engaged in Collective bargaining is the process whereby workers organize together to meet converse and compromise upon the work environment with their employers A trade union or labour union is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas such as wages hours and working conditions forming This is a list of Trade unions and Union federations by country This is a list of federations of Trade unions. Those federations listed under each country are also known as National trade union centres and are organisations formed Unions have been compared across countries by growth and decline patterns by violence levels and by kinds of political activity Inaugural Congress The founding and first congress of the ITUC was held November 1 - 3 2006 in Vienna TemplateInfobox Union for usage -->The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU was established in the wake of the Second Template talkInfobox Union for usage --> The International Workers' Association ( IWA) ( Spanish: Strike action, often simply called a strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal by Employees to perform work. The following is a list of deliberate absence from work related to specific working conditions ( strikes) or due to general unhappiness with the political order ( General strikes A general strike is a Strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city region or country A sympathy strike is a Strike action that is initiated by workers in one industry and supported by workers in a separate but related industry or profession A sit-down strike is a form of Civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers usually employed at a factory or other centralized location take possession of Work-to-rule is an Industrial action in which Employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of a workplace and follow safety or other regulations to Sidney Hillman ( March 23, 1887 - July 10, 1946) was an American labor leader Ion Costache Frimu ( &mdash) was a Romanian socialist militant and politician a leading member of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR and Tanong Po-arn was a Thai labor union leader who disappeared following the National Peace Keeping Council's 1991 military Coup against the elected government Sarah George Bagley (April 19 1806-1883? was a nineteenth century labor activist in the United States Labor history (or labour history) is a broad field of study concerned with the development of the Labor movement and the Working class. The field of industrial relations (also called labor relations) looks at the relationship between Management and workers particularly groups of workers represented Labour law (also known as employment or labor law is the body of Laws administrative rulings and precedents which address the legal rights of and restrictions Events 462 - Possible start of first Byzantine indiction cycle. Year 1907 ( MCMVII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Events 1457 BC - Battle of Megiddo (15th century BC between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Year 1970 ( MCMLXX) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Labor unions in the United States function as legally recognized representatives of workers in numerous industries Template talkInfobox Union for usage -->The United Automobile Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America International The Democratic Party is one of two major Political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party. He was a socialist in the early 1930s; he became a leading liberal and supporter of the New Deal coalition, then in the 1940s became a leading anti-Communist and supporter of the Cold War and the Vietnam war. The New Deal coalition was the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932
Contents |
Early life
Reuther was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, the son of a socialist brewery worker who had immigrated from Germany. Wheeling is a city in West Virginia, in the United States. Most of the city is in Ohio County, with a small Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the Means of production and distribution Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. In his entire career he was close to his brothers and co-workers Victor Reuther and Roy Reuther. Victor G Reuther ( January 1, 1912 &ndash June 3, 2004) was a prominent international labor organizer Reuther joined the Ford Motor Company but was laid off as the Great Depression worsened. He and his brothers went to Europe and then worked 1933-35 in an auto plant at Gorky in the Soviet Union. Nizhny Novgorod (Ни́жний Но́вгород Nižnij Novgorod) colloquially shortened as Nizhny, is the fourth largest city in Russia The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 While a committed socialist, he never became a Communist. Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based At the end of the trip he wrote, "the atmosphere of freedom and security, shop meetings with their proletarian industrial democracy; all these things make an inspiring contrast to what we know as Ford wage slaves in Detroit. Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system What we have experienced here has reeducated us along new and more practical lines. "[1] Unhappy with the lack of political freedom in Russia, Reuther returned to the United States where he found employment at General Motors and became an active member of the United Automobile Workers (UAW).
Reuther was a Socialist party member; he may have paid dues to the Communist Party for some months in 1935-36; he has been accused of attending a Communist Party planning meeting as late as February 1939. [2] Reuther cooperated with the Communists in the later 1930s; this was the period of the Popular Front, and they agreed with him on internal issues of the UAW; but his associations were with anti-Stalinist Socialists. A popular front is a broad Coalition of different political groupings often made up of leftists and centrists who are united by opposition to another group [3]
Reuther remained active in the Socialist Party and in 1937 failed in his attempt to be elected to the Detroit City Council. However, impressed by the efforts by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to tackle inequality, he eventually joined the Democratic Party.
Union career
In 1936 he became president of tiny local 174 (with 100 members), which on paper had responsibility for 100,000 auto workers on the west side of Detroit, Michigan. Reuther led several strikes and in 1937 and 1940 was hospitalized after being badly beaten by strike-breakers. He also survived two assassination attempts, and his right hand was permanently crippled in an attack on April 20th, 1948.
He had a highly publicized confrontation with Ford security forces on May 26, 1937, also known as The Battle of the Overpass. The Battle of the Overpass was an incident on 26 May, 1937, in which labor organizers clashed with Ford Motor Company Security guards The By this time, thanks to the sit-down strikes, UAW membership had exploded and Local 174 was a power inside the UAW. As a senior union organizer, Reuther helped win major strikes for union recognition against General Motors in 1940 and Ford in 1941. A union organizer is a specific type of Trade union member (often elected or an appointed union official
After Pearl Harbor, Reuther strongly supported the war effort and refused to tolerate wildcat strikes that might disrupt munitions production. Pearl Harbor is a Harbor on the Island of O{{okina}}ahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. He worked for the War Manpower Commission, the Office of Production Management, and the War Production Board. He led a 113-day strike against General Motors in 1945-1946; it only partially succeeded. He never received the power he wanted to inspect company books or have a say in management, but he achieved increasingly lucrative wage and benefits contracts. In 1946 he narrowly defeated R. J. Thomas for the UAW presidency, and soon after he purged the UAW of all Communist elements. He was active in the CIO umbrella as well, taking the lead in expelling eleven Communist-dominated unions from the CIO in 1949.
As a prominent figure in the anti-Communist left, he was a founder of the Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. Americans for Democratic Action ( ADA) is an American political organization advocating liberal policies. He became president of the CIO in 1952, and negotiated a merger with George Meany and the American Federation of Labor immediately after, which took effect in 1955. In 1949 he led the CIO delegation to the London conference that set up the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in opposition to the Communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions. International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU TemplateInfobox Union for usage -->The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU was established in the wake of the Second He had left the Socialist party in 1939, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s was a leading spokesman for liberal interests in the CIO and in the Democratic party.
Reuther delivered contracts for his membership through brilliant negotiating tactics. He would pick one of the "Big three" automakers, and if it did not offer concessions, he would strike it and let the other two absorb its sales. Besides high hourly wage rates and paid vacations, Reuther negotiated these benefits for his union: employer-funded pensions (beginning in 1950 at Chrysler), medical insurance (beginning at GM in 1950), and supplementary unemployment benefits (beginning at Ford in 1955). Ruether tried to negotiate lower automobile prices for the consumer with each contract, with limited success (The Brothers Reuther, P. 249).
Toward the end of his life, when he took the UAW out of the AFL-CIO for a short-lived alliance with the Teamsters Union, and marched with the United Farm Workers in Delano, California, Reuther seemed to be dissatisfied, looking for the ability to challenge the injustices that had made the union movement so vital in the 1930s. The following is a list of protest marches on Washington DC. Pre-1900 April 30, 1894 - Coxey's Army. American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL-CIO, is a National trade union center, the largest federation of TemplateInfobox Union for usage-->The International Brotherhood of Teamsters ( IBT) formerly known by the Template talkInfobox Union for usage --> Overview The United Farm Workers of America (UFW is a labor Delano is a city in Kern County, California, United States. The population was 38824 at the 2000 census He strongly supported the Civil Rights movement; Reuther was an active supporter of African American civil rights and participated in both the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs (August, 1963) and the Selma to Montgomery March (March, 1965). He stood beside Martin Luther King Jr. while he made the "I Have A Dream" speech, during the 1963 March on Washington. Martin Luther King Jr ( January 15, 1929 April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, Activist and prominent leader Although critical of the Vietnam War, he supported Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and met weekly with President Johnson during 1964-1965. The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, or the Vietnam Conflict, occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia He was instrumental in mobilizing UAW resources to minimize the threat that George Wallace would win more than 10 percent of union votes (Wallace won about 9 percent in the North). George Corley Wallace Jr (August 25 1919 September 13 1998 was a Democratic Governor of Alabama for four terms (1963-1967 1971-1979 and 1983-1987 and ran for Reuther, his wife May, architect Oskar Stonorov, and also a bodyguard, the pilot and co-pilot were killed in a chartered Lear jet while en route to the union’s recreational and educational facility at Black Lake, Michigan.
In October of 1968, a year and a half before the fatal crash, Reuther and his brother Victor were almost killed in a small private plane as it approached Dulles Airport. Washington Dulles International Airport is a public Airport located 25 miles (40 km) west of the Central business district of Washington D Both incidents are amazingly similar; the altimeter in the fatal crash was believed to have malfunctioned. When Victor Reuther was interviewed many years after the fatal crash he said “I and other family members are convinced that both the fatal crash and the near fatal one in 1968 were not accidental. ” The FBI still refuses to turn over nearly 200 pages of documents involving Walter Reuther’s death, and correspondence between field offices and J. Edgar Hoover.
Walter Reuther appears in TIME magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Time (trademarked in capitals as TIME) is a weekly American Newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and
Trivia
I-696 In Metro Detroit is named the Walter P. Interstate 696 (I-696 is an interstate highway entirely within the U The Detroit metropolitan area, often referred to as Metro Detroit, is the metropolitan area located in Southeast Reuther Freeway.
Notes
- ^ Lichtenstein, Most Dangerous Man p 44
- ^ Victor G. Devinatz, "Reassessing the Historical UAW: Walter Reuther's Affiliation with the Communist Party and Something of its Meaning - a Document of Party Involvement, 1939. " Labour 2002 (49): 223-245. There is a report of the meeting, clearly unauthorized, which lists Reuther as a member; it misspells several names, mentions some unnamed attendees, and its account of the internal politics of the UAW is disputed. It exists in the papers of one of Reuther's rivals, Jay Lovestone, who saw many more Communists than other evidence suggests; the writer was presumably spying on the meeting for him. Jay Lovestone (1897-1990 was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party Lichtenstein responded that membership this late seems unlikely; Reuther was already criticizing the Communists ("Reuther the Red?," Labour/Le Travail, Spring 2003); Devinatz concurs that he must have left the Party later in 1939. Reuther later insisted he was never a member; there is indirect evidence that he was a member of both the Socialists and the Communists in 1935-6.
- ^ Lichtenstein, Dangerous Man, loc. cit. .
References
Secondary sources
- Barnard, John. American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers during the Reuther Years, 1935-1970. Wayne State U. Press, 2004. 607 pp.
- Boyle, Kevin. The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (1995)
- Kornhauser, Arthur et al. When Labor Votes: A Study of Auto Workers (1956)
- Goode, Bill. Infighting in the UAW: The 1946 Election and the Ascendancy of Walter Reuther (1994)
- Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (1995)
- Parenti, Michael and Peggy Norton. The Wonderful Life and Strange Death of Walter Reuther. (1996)
- Zieger, Robert H. The CIO, 1935-1955 (1995)
Primary sources
- Christman, Henry M. ed. Walter P. Reuther: Selected Papers (1961)
- Ruether, Victor "The Brothers Ruether and The Story of the UAW: A Memoir" (1976)
External links
- Obituary, NY Times, May 11, 1970
- NTSB report on crash
- THE TIME 100: BUILDERS AND TITANS: Walter Reuther
- [1]
- Walter Reuther at Find A Grave
| Preceded by R. J. Thomas |
President, United Auto Workers 1946 - 1970 |
Succeeded by Leonard Woodcock |
| Preceded by Philip Murray |
President, Congress of Industrial Organizations 1952 - 1955 |
Succeeded by none (merged AFL-CIO was led by George Meany) |
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