Talk:Walter Reuther

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Reuther seemed to be dissatisfied, looking for the ability to challenge the injustices that had made the union movement so vital in the 1930s. -- Do we have a justification for this psychological profiling? RickK 03:59, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents 1 Psychological profiling 2 Interesting that he could see current US car makers problems back in the 40s 3 Article reformat 4 bad grammar 5 Was Reuther a Communist in 1930s or a fellow traveller?

[edit] Psychological profiling

The comment is derived from some published reminiscences of Paul Schrade, who was Regional Director for the UAW in California in the 1960's. But I agree that it is a little presumptuous, particularly in as short a piece as this. I will work up a longer version of the entry; right now I am working backward, starting with the CIO, then the UAW, and finally getting back to Reuther himself. Italo Svevo

[edit] Interesting that he could see current US car makers problems back in the 40s

According to labour historian Nelson Licthenstein, when these contracts were first negotiated, UAW president Walter Reuther warned car companies in the 1940s that they were courting trouble by making long-term promises they might not be able to keep, and urged them to support national health insurance instead. [1] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.201.130.236 (talk) 04:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Article reformat

It seems to me that the article is not well formatted, with all the info in one sprawling essay. i think it should be split up into sections, like just about every other article here at wikipedia.--69.248.90.249 22:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] bad grammar

this sentence is nonsensical: Walter P. Reuther was named after a school built in the 1970's, Reuther Middle School in Rochester Hills, Michigan and is a great school of education. All your base are belong to us?

[edit] Was Reuther a Communist in 1930s or a fellow traveller?

Reuther was an anticommunist in the 1940s--the issue was his position in the 1930s after he returned from Russia. His major biographer says:

"It was in these months [in 1935] that Walter Reuther worked most closely with the Communists in Detroit; according to several well-placed observers, he may have actually paid the party monthly dues. William Weinstone claims that Sugar brought Reuther to a weekly district meeting and that shortly thereafter Weinstone asked him to join the party, which he did. Nat Ganley, later the Communist Party whip in the UAW, asserted that it was he who then accepted Reuther's dues. Indeed, Reuther did attend a twelfth anniversary commemoration of Lenin's death in Jan uary, at which the Communist leader Robert Minor spoke, and Reuther made a special note to listen to an Earl Browder radio broadcast in early February 1936. It was at this time that he started speaking on behalf of the Friends of the Soviet Union, and he made a point of seeing Anna Louise Strong when she appeared on the Detroit lecture circuit. The best evidence that Walter became very close to the Communist Party was that he obtained a union membership in Ternstedt Local 86, thanks to the good offices of the party unit chief in that GM plant....Walter Reuther's close connection to the Communists, including a possible brief membership, has a meaning and a legacy that is of more than sectarian interest. To most of his conservative opponents, Reuther's sojourn in the Soviet Union and subsequent alliance with the Communists sustained the accusation that he was simply a red. To union activists this charge was something of an accolade in the mid-1930s, but a few years later, the suspicion among Reuther's left‐wing rivals that he used the CP's influence to advance his fortunes in the UAW lay ehind their frequent assertions that he was a political opportunist at the very birth of his union career." quote from Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor Basic Books. 1995. pp 54-56.

Lichtenstein, a historian of the left, concludes he was close to the Communist party and possibly a full member. Rjensen 07:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

This quotation deals with a few months in 1935-6. If that is all there is to the issue, this is drastically undue weight. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

lot of important things happen in a few months (sit down strikes, for example. Historian Lichtenstein clearly says, "Walter Reuther's close connection to the Communists, including a possible brief membership, has a meaning and a legacy that is of more than sectarian interest." -- that explictly contradicts PMasnderson's personal feeling that it is not very important. There are entire articles in labor history journals on the topic, for example.Rjensen 19:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

At least two; but, having looked at Lichtenstein, who devotes only the one paragraph quoted above to the topic, I affirm that Rjensen's proposal to include "At first a fellow traveller who worked closely with the Communists in the mid 1930s" is an exaggeration of the sources; to place it in the lead is undue weight. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

there are two separate issues: was he a Communist partty member? (maybe); and more important, he worked closely with the Communists all through the 1930s and they dominated much of the UAW and CIO--a key part of the story that deserves the lede. Reuther later turned against them and purged all the Communists circa 1948. Rjensen 23:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

What Devinatz actually says is that he turned against them in August 1939. As Lichtenstein says, cooperation with them was not surprising in the age of the Popular Front, especially since they agreed with him, more or less, on UAW internal politics. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• "called himself" a Socialist Party member is unacceptable. He paid their dues; who denies it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)