The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW; A Memoir

Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xiv, [2], 523, [5] pages. DJ worn, torn, soiled, chipped with front corner missing. 29 b/w Illustrations. 4 appendices. Index. Inscribed on the front free endpaper, Inscription reads: 3-11-82. To Robert "Buck" Bartley, with all good wishes, Pieter Ruether. 3-11-82. P.S. Your own "populist" background will make many of these pages come to life. This is believed to have been given to the founder of the Bartley Company, a construction firm that was noted for its commitment to safety and its employees. Includes Foreword. Chapters include In Search of Freedom; Farm Hand to Industrial Unionist; Winning and Losing; Wetzel Street to Bethlehem Hill; Awakening; Gathering Forces; Into the Nazi Whirlpool; Crisscrossing; Tooling at Gorky; Anomalies; Eastern Passage; Digging In; Sit-Down in Flint; Anderson Rejoins the U.S.A.; Infighting; River Rough; A Letter from Gorky; War on Two Fronts; Perils of Peace; "Teamwork in the Leadership, Solidarity in the Ranks"; An Unholy Alliance; Justice Aborted; New Dimensions for the UAW; Postwar European Labor; Merger; Labor for Peace Around the World; International Solidarity and Subversion; Under Five Presidents; and Servus. This is the story of the four Reuther brothers--Walter, Roy, Ted, and Victor. The Reuthers grew up in West Virginia, the sons of a poor immigrant who was himself a staunch union man. The author recalls the battles the Reuthers and the UAW fought with Communists and the underworld--and how both Walter and Victor were nearly killed by would-be assassins, murder attempts which J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was reluctant to investigate. Derived from a Kirkus review: Presiding over his first United Auto Workers convention in 1947, Walter Reuther introduced his father Valentine as "an old fighter in the ranks of labor ... who indoctrinated his boys when they were pretty young and told them the most important thing in the world was to fight for the other guy, the brotherhood of man, the golden rule." He also insisted that they have a trade, so Roy became an electrician, Walter became a toolmaker, and Victor, whose forte was words, went to college to study law. Soon and long they would be bulwarks of the oft-cited "most successful union in the world," the UAW; and in their own way as striking an American family as the Kennedys. Soberly Victor tells the story he lived as son and brother, as union organizer, as national and international official. The action is vividly reconstructed by Victor from the vantage point of the sound truck he manned during the Battle of the Running Bulls when "I felt for one quick moment that we were all back in the days of the early settlers, defending a small enclave against the enemy." Also recounted are the time Victor and Walter spent in prewar Europe and their two-year stint at the new Ford-equipped Gorky auto plant; the long internal struggle with Communists in the UAW; Walter Reuther's postwar push for higher wages without higher prices and, later, his innovative programs for retirement funding and a guaranteed annual wage: and then the terrorist attacks that disabled both Walter and Victor and forced all three brothers to live behind barricades. Drawing on his own experience, Victor covers international labor developments from Tokyo to Italy to Sweden. Rich material, and Reuther makes it matter. Condition: Very good / Fair. Large piece missing in the front.

Keywords: UAW, Trade Unions, United Automobile Workers, Labor Unions, Communism, American Federation, AFL, Industrial Organizations, CIO, Collective Bargaining, General Motors

ISBN: 0395243041

[Book #82293]

Price: $125.00

See all items in Communism
See all items by