Word: frankensteens
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Richard T. ("Dick") Frankensteen pudgy vice president of the C.I.O.'s potent United Automobile Workers, all-out New Deal orator, announced that he had $65,000 backing for a light opera called Gypsy Moon (book and lyrics by Dick Frankensteen). Said he: "The operetta has no connection with the U.A.W.-C.I.O. Ever since I was in college, I've had a desire to produce a stage show...
Finally, after a weekend of wrangling, U.A.W.'s burly, curly-haired Vice President Richard Frankensteen had good news for the workers: Franklin Roosevelt agreed they had been given too short dismissal notice, and had promised to see that Brewster got consideration on any available new contracts...
...what it revealed of Labor's feuds and fears. The 2,100 delegates bet, finagled and politicked in smoke-filled hotel rooms like a typical U.S. political convention, and talked like Labor's Town Meeting. The delegates elected Walter Reuther first vice president over Communist-backed Dick Frankensteen by 345 votes, then turned round and elected Frankensteen second vice president over Reuther's nominee, Dick Leonard, by about 300 votes. Apparently the rank & file seemed to think they could best protect themselves by perpetuating the U.A.W.'s civil war, thus keeping the balance of power...
...Frankensteen was persuaded to abandon Reuther, flop over to Addes' side; he was slated for a new office especially created: U.A.W. vice president. The radical element in U.A.W. was to be let alone. Communists in North American Aviation Corp., who two months before had engineered a wildcat strike (TIME, June 16) and defied U.A.W. and C.I.O. leaders, and whom the Reuther group wanted to hang and quarter, were to be given a thoroughgoing slap on the wrist. The whole program was to be labeled "harmony...
This deal burst like a bomb on the sweltering, restless convention. The Reuther group bellowed: "Cheap politics." Dick Frankensteen's lame explanation that he did not want to "crucify" the North American local got more boos than cheers. President Roland Jay Thomas, as inept as a June bug, bumped his head against both sides. Many a cautious delegate believed that a Red purge might do U.A.W. more harm than good. But the Reuther group, angry at Frankensteen's flipflop, were out for blood...