Word: reuthers
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...Reuther went to work as an apprentice tool & diemaker in Wheeling, W. Va., his home town. Fired by the Wheeling Steel Corp. when he tried to organize a protest against Sunday work, he went to Detroit, where he rose to the skilled and highly paid job of foreman in a Ford tool & die room. Fired again in 1932, he went off on a three-year bicycle trip through Europe and parts of Asia with his brother Victor, now U.A.W. representative in Europe. The Reuthers supplemented their funds with occasional jobs, among them a one-year stint in Russia...
Bare Knuckles. Returning to Detroit in 1935, Reuther plunged into union work, and organized a U.A.W. local whose membership grew from 78 to 30,000 in one year. Leader of Detroit's first big sitdown strike at the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Plant, he also played a major role in the U.A.W.'s unionization of Ford. Reuther's bitterest foes were the U.A.W.'s Communists. He won his first major battle with the Communists in 1946, when he took the U.A.W.'s presidency away from R. J. Thomas, whom the Communists had supported. He clinched...
During those bloody, brawling years, Reuther collected two bad beatings and a crippled right arm, the result of an attempted assassination by shotgun. He also developed his talent for bare-knuckle politics, a shrewd publicity sense, and a reputation for brash, effective repartee. (Two weeks ago, when President-elect Eisenhower informed C.I.O. leaders that as a boy he had put in many a twelve-hour workday, Reuther was ready with a quick comeback. "General," said he, "you should have joined the union...
...Reuther's obvious urge to power and his lack of personal warmth sometimes worry his admirers, one of whom has remarked nervously on the U.A.W. president's resemblance to the stereotype titan of industry. Like many a business tycoon, he displays a single-minded devotion to work, which often keeps him away from his wife and two daughters for days at a time. No sooner had he won full dominance over the U.A.W. in 1947, than the nonsmoking, nondrinking Reuther spelled out the new order to his associates. "Now," said he, "there'll be no more...
Last week there were predictions that Reuther would never achieve the unchallenged authority over the C.I.O. possessed by his two predecessors, John L. Lewis and Phil Murray. If these predictions proved true, it would not be for want of effort, audacity or determination on the part of Walter Reuther...