LABOR: New Boss of the C.I.O.

The C.I.O. last week ended the bitter, public struggle for power touched off by the death of Philip Murray early in November. Unable to reach a behind-the-scenes agreement on Murray’s successor, top union leaders threw the fight on to the floor of the 14th C.I.O. convention. There, in a roll-call vote, the C.I.O. elected its third president, stocky, redheaded Walter Reuther, since 1946 president of the United Auto Workers.

The United Steelworkers’ Union, second in size only to the U.A.W. among C.I.O. member unions, fought Reuther’s election implacably, and the Steelworkers’ candidate, C.I.O. Vice President Allan S. Haywood, was backed by more unions than Reuther. Among Haywood’s supporters, however, were the smaller unions, such unlikely “industrial organizations” as the Barbers & Beauty Culturists, Department Store Workers, the Government and Civic Employees and the United Theatrical Workers. Reuther was backed by most of the big C.I.O. unions, including U.A.W., Rubber Workers, Textile Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and International Union of Electrical Workers. The vote was 3,079,181 to 2,613,103.

Second Generation. At 45, Reuther (rhymes with Luther) is the best known and most resourceful leader in the C.I.O. His ability is not questioned, but many labor (and industry) leaders deplore his tendency toward labor statesmanship, a phrase sometimes used in labor circles with a heavy charge of sarcasm. Though he can be intensely practical when necessary, Reuther is an inveterate shaper of far-reaching “Reuther plans,” which to most labor leaders seem to deal with matters outside labor’s province. His tendency is to make a specific union issue a springboard for broad social and economic questions, e.g., the 1945 negotiations between the U.A.W. and General Motors, during which Reuther based his argument not on the needs of the workers he represented, but on the assertion that the postwar U.S. economy needed higher wages to prevent a slump.

Reuther is a second-generation labor man, the son of a United Brewery Workers organizer. His father, German-born Valentine Reuther, imbued Walter and his three brothers with the class-conscious doctrines of German Social Democracy. As late as the mid-thirties, Walter Reuther was still a professed Socialist. His “Reuther plan” may spring from an old Socialist’s contempt for the American tradition of “pure & simple” trades unionism.

At 15, Reuther went to work as an apprentice tool & diemaker in Wheeling, W. Va., his home town. Fired by the Wheeling Steel Corp. when he tried to organize a protest against Sunday work, he went to Detroit, where he rose to the skilled and highly paid job of foreman in a Ford tool & die room. Fired again in 1932, he went off on a three-year bicycle trip through Europe and parts of Asia with his brother Victor, now U.A.W. representative in Europe. The Reuthers supplemented their funds with occasional jobs, among them a one-year stint in Russia’s Gorky auto plant.

Bare Knuckles. Returning to Detroit in 1935, Reuther plunged into union work, and organized a U.A.W. local whose membership grew from 78 to 30,000 in one year. Leader of Detroit’s first big sitdown strike at the Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Plant, he also played a major role in the U.A.W.’s unionization of Ford. Reuther’s bitterest foes were the U.A.W.’s Communists. He won his first major battle with the Communists in 1946, when he took the U.A.W.’s presidency away from R. J. Thomas, whom the Communists had supported. He clinched the victory in November 1947, when he finally won control of the U.A.W.’s executive board.

During those bloody, brawling years, Reuther collected two bad beatings and a crippled right arm, the result of an attempted assassination by shotgun. He also developed his talent for bare-knuckle politics, a shrewd publicity sense, and a reputation for brash, effective repartee. (Two weeks ago, when President-elect Eisenhower informed C.I.O. leaders that as a boy he had put in many a twelve-hour workday, Reuther was ready with a quick comeback. “General,” said he, “you should have joined the union.”)

Reuther’s obvious urge to power and his lack of personal warmth sometimes worry his admirers, one of whom has remarked nervously on the U.A.W. president’s resemblance to the stereotype titan of industry. Like many a business tycoon, he displays a single-minded devotion to work, which often keeps him away from his wife and two daughters for days at a time. No sooner had he won full dominance over the U.A.W. in 1947, than the nonsmoking, nondrinking Reuther spelled out the new order to his associates. “Now,” said he, “there’ll be no more all-night card games after executive board sessions.”

Last week there were predictions that Reuther would never achieve the unchallenged authority over the C.I.O. possessed by his two predecessors, John L. Lewis and Phil Murray. If these predictions proved true, it would not be for want of effort, audacity or determination on the part of Walter Reuther.