Walter Reuther

Walter Reuther

Walter Philip Reuther (born September 1, 1907 in Wheeling , West Virginia , † May 9, 1970 in Pellston , Michigan ) was an American union leader . It gave the United Automobile Workers great influence in both the auto industry and the Democratic Party in the mid-20th century . He was a socialist and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal .

Live and act

Reuther was hired by Ford in 1927 and fired in 1932 during the Great Depression . Together with his brother Victor, he traveled to Europe and from there to the Soviet Union , where he worked for GAZ in Gorki until 1935 . He returned to the US, found employment with General Motors, and became an active union member of the United Automobile Workers (UAW). He organized several strikes and in 1947 founded the political organization Americans for Democratic Action together with Reinhold Niebuhr , John Kenneth Galbraith and others .

Under his leadership, the UAW achieved the so-called "Treaty of Detroit" in 1950, in which a 20 percent wage increase over five years, a pension plan and a health insurance contribution were established.

In 1952 he was elected chairman of the Congress of Industrial Organizations . Also in 1952 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

As a strong supporter of the American civil rights movement , Reuther stood by Martin Luther King's side when he gave his legendary speech I Have a Dream .

He died in a plane crash on approach for landing at Pellston Regional Airport .

In 1995 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton .

literature

• John Barnard: American Vanguard. The United Auto Workers during the Reuther Years. 1935-1970. Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2004. 607 pp. ISBN 0-8143-3297-8 .
• Kevin Boyle: The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism. 1945-1968. Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1995. 338 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3064-X .
  • Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1998. 360pp. ISBN 0-8014-8538-X .
• Anthony Carew: Walter Reuther. (= Lives of the Left. ) Manchester University Press, Manchester 1993. ISBN 0-7190-2188-X .
• Murray Kempton: The Reuther Brothers. In: Part of Our Time. Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties. Simon and Schuster, New York 1955. 334 pp.
  • Modern Library, New York 1998. 425 pp. ISBN 0-679-60310-7 .
  • New York Review Book, New York 2004. 340 pp. ISBN 1-59017-087-3 .
  • New York Review Book, New York 2012. 360 pp. ISBN 978-1-59017-087-8 .
• Arthur William Kornhauser, Harold L. Sheppard, Albert J. Mayer: When Labor Votes. A Study of Auto Workers. University Books, New York 1956. 352 pp.
  • Literary Licensing, Whitefish, Mont., 2012. 352 pp. ISBN 978-1-258-38446-3 .
• Bill Goode: Infighting in the UAW. The 1946 Election and the Ascendancy of Walter Reuther. (= Contributions in Labor Studies ; Volume 44). Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn., 1994. 165 pp. ISBN 0-313-28904-2 .
• Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit. Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor. Basic Books, New York 1995. 592 pp. ISBN 0-465-09080-X .
  • University of Illinois Press, Champaign, Ill., 1997. 608 pp. ISBN 0-252-06626-X .
• Michael Parenti, Peggy Norton: The Wonderful Life and Strange Death of Walter Reuther. In: Dirty Truth. Reflections on Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnik Life and Class Power. City Lights Books, San Francisco 1996. pp. 192-208. ISBN 0-87286-317-4 .
• Robert H. Zieger: The CIO. 1935-1955. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1995. ISBN 0-8078-2182-9 .
• Henry M. Christman: Walter P. Reuther. Selected papers. The MacMillan Company, New York 1961. 330 pp.
  • Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, Mont., 2009. 334 pp. ISBN 978-1-104-83680-1 .
• Victor George Reuther: The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW. A memoir. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1976. 523 pp. ISBN 0-3952-4304-1 .
• Martin Halpern: UAW Politics in the Cold War Era. New York State University Press, Albany 1988. 361 pp. ISBN 0-88706-671-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary , New York Times , May 11, 1970.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Timothy G. Borden: United Auto Workers. In: worldhistory.biz. May 5, 2015, accessed on August 26, 2018 . 

Web links

Commons : Walter Reuther  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Walter Reuther in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Walter Philip Reuther in the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia
• Brothers on The Line: The story of the Reuther Brothers on YouTube
• United Auto Workers