Word: unioned
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hoffa's International Brotherhood of Teamsters would not only rival the power of the U.A.W., it would also become known as America's most corrupt union. That the two men, almost polar opposites, should have existed in the same city at the same time is not just remarkable. Their differences would define the deepest schism in American labor, splitting the movement into two irreconcilable camps, one progressive and idealistic, the other conservative and avaricious...
...Reuther was a social activist, Hoffa focused on the exercise of power. The U.A.W. was organizing auto factories that had thousands of workers; Hoffa focused on small trucking companies with a simple two-step campaign. He would threaten to bomb employers' trucks if they didn't enroll in his union. Then he carried out the threat. It got results. His organizers took a cut of the dues and initiation fees of every new member. It was a franchise scheme that attracted Mafiosi and created a feudal structure of warlords...
Government and antitrust lawyers are not the only ones testing Bill Gates' empire these days: union organizers are circling. Microsoft's 260-acre campus is a cool place--you work in jeans, play volleyball on breaks and get good pay, benefits, stock options and job security--if you wear a blue ID badge. Those who wear orange badges (known as "A-dashes" for "Agency" because of their e-mail address prefix) get no benefits, no stock options and no talk about getting on permanent staff...
...nurtured to a devoted commitment to unionism. His father, a brewery-wagon driver and union leader in Wheeling, W.Va., had the family regularly discuss the role of unions, as well as social and economic issues. Like thousands of others who lived in poor regions such as West Virginia, Walter and two of his brothers, Roy and Victor, migrated to the Detroit area to find jobs in the auto industry. Not surprisingly, they became actively involved in the budding United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers Union...
Reuther was 29 in 1936, when he became president of Local 174. It was a tumultuous period in labor history, when the U.A.W. literally fought for survival. Reuther became one of the union's generals, directing a series of sit-down strikes and other guerrilla tactics to try to organize auto plants. He soon gained national prominence and even entry into President Roosevelt's White House. He and his wife May also became great friends of Eleanor Roosevelt's. It's not difficult to see why he was welcome. In 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor, he proposed converting available...