Word: unionizing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...well as amiable respectability. He is a man expertly versed in change of pace; yet he is nonetheless a hard-core Red. In Asia, he was denouncing "certain colonial powers, particularly the United States." As if the cold war were a U.S. aberration, he says now: "The Soviet Union has no intention of imposing its ideas on any people by force." From sunup to bedtime, he goes about his rounds with a U.S.-style, U.S.-accented smile...
...along with Herbert Kohler's paternalism went a steely sternness and a pride that bristled when his employees heeded outside labor organizers. When Kohler workers who had joined an A.F.L. union struck for recognition in 1934, Kohler hired 400 guards, set out to break the strike. On July 27, 1934, guards fired into a crowd outside the main gate, killing two men and wounding about 40 men, women and children. The strike failed...
After the one-year Kohler contract ran out, the union demanded a broadened agreement, including a seniority rule in layoffs, dues checkoff, binding arbitration of differences. U.A.W. also called for a wage increase, but that was not a basic issue: pay scales at Kohler were about in line with the rest of the plumbing-fixture industry...
...With his union's prestige, and his own, committed to the Kohler strike, Walter Reuther saw to it that for two years U.A.W. supported some 2,000 strikers, providing them with rent, food and medical care, plus $25 a week "jingling money." But in 1956 U.A.W. had to give that up as too costly (to date, U.A.W. has poured in a fantastic $10 million), urged strikers to take new jobs. To find work, many of them had to move to other cities. Only 200 strikers are still drawing U.A.W. benefits...
...picketing his plant and harassing his workers, Reuther & Co., with Kohler-like Germanic stubbornness, undertook a nationwide boycott of Kohler products. Today U.A.W. has more than a dozen full-time employees scattered around the U.S. who do nothing but urge plumbers, contractors, municipal officials, to boycott Kohler fixtures. Under union pressure, governing bodies in Boston, Los Angeles County and a scattering of small towns have passed resolutions against installing Kohler products in municipal building projects. U.A.WT. insists that all this is hurting Kohler badly. The family-owned Kohler Co. claims to be operating at a profit, but refuses to give...