Word: reuthers
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This year old feuds burned in the new fires of U.A.W. strategy in the postwar drive for higher pay. They burned brightest over the G.M. workers' red-haired Walter P. Reuther, leader of 175,000 members in the strike against G.M. Last weekend the heads of 17 Michigan auto locals issued a call to draft Reuther for the U.A.W. presidency to succeed bumbling, good-natured R. J. Thomas. The ambitious leader of the G.M. strikers said he "would be guided by the democratic will of . . . the union...
...whole ideological battle, in which Walter Reuther had fired the opening shots, had subsided, at least temporarily. The day after Ford and Chrysler signed with U.A.W., even Walter Reuther spoke in strangely subdued tones. Gone were his cries of "let's see the books" and "ability to pay." He now was content to get his wage raise of 19½? an hour and go back to work...
...fact that the postwar decline in take-home pay, on which Reuther based his famed demand for a 30% wage increase, had stopped far short of Reuther's figure. Latest Department of Labor figures show that take-home pay for all industry dropped only from $45.45 in wartime July to $41.02 in October...
...other blow to Reuther's crusade was the fact that hardly any U.S. citizen, jingling the money in his pocket and noting the help-wanted ads, could get very worried about depression. Walter Reuther had tried to justify his demands by claiming that wages had to be kept at wartime levels to avoid deflation and unemployment. At the moment, both seemed some distance away...
...problem was to get production going. Walter Reuther's arguments about looking at the books and avoiding depressions might set long-term precedents, but they were beside the point as long as labor was in an economic position to demand more...