Word: reuthers
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When the news of Big Steel's surrender reached the United Auto Workers convention in Milwaukee, a listless show stirred to life. Walter Reuther perked up perceptibly. The U.A.W.'s scrappy president is not a man who likes to let George do it-or even Philip Murray. A steel strike sooner or later might have shut down the auto industry; now the auto workers were just where they wanted to be, carrying the C.I.O. ball for a fourth-round increase in U.S. industry. It was a nice forward pass (completed): Murray to Truman to Reuther...
...Reuther swung into action. Telegram after telegram was read to the convention from Ford locals, reporting overwhelming votes in favor of a strike against Ford. Despite the fact that the "news" was weeks old, the delegates roared applause after each reading. When the pitch was right, Reuther asked them to give his executive board authority to levy a special $1-a-week-for-twelve-weeks strike assessment on all employed U.A.W. members. From their seats behind long, banquet-like tables, the delegates shouted approval. It meant a war chest of some $10 million...
...Cried Reuther: "C. E. Wilson [president of General Motors] in 1948 got $516,300 in salary and bonus. He made $258 an hour. General Motors will give him $25,000 a year when he is too old to work but too young to die ... If you make $1.65 an hour they say you don't need it... We say to American industry, if you can afford to pay pensions to people who don't need them, then by the eternal gods you are going to pay them to people who do need them-the guys in the shop...
Just because business was looking a little queasy, the U.A.W. was not going to go easy on it. Reuther came armed with studies showing, he said, that the industry could raise wages 70? an hour and still make 8% on its investment. Said Reuther in one huge gulp: "This is the time for labor to stand up and say we are getting in trouble because the little guy hasn't got enough and therefore he has to fight harder now to get what he is entitled to in order to avoid going into a depression...
With the Ford contract on a day-to-day basis, the United Auto Workers' Walter Reuther insisted that only a surrender by Ford could avert a strike; "We are prepared," cried Reuther, "to use all the weapons possessed by free labor in America." The steel workers talked just as tough, but Big Steel's tight-lipped Ben Fairless showed no signs of yielding. Snapped he last week: "There is no sound or proper justification for . . . a wage increase at this time...