‘Roy Reuther and the UAW: Fighting for Workers and Civil Rights’By Alan Reuther Michigan State University Press, 348 pagesRoy Reuther was a key figure in the historic 44-day Flint sit-down strike in 1936-1937, that forced General Motors to recognize the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the sole bargaining agent for its workers. An astute political organizer, Reuther became a close ally of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon Johnson in campaigns for civil rights, Medicare, and other liberal initiatives championed by the UAW and the Democratic Party.There had been earlier sit-down strikes but none as consequential as Flint’s. Reuther commanded workers with his powerful speaking ability and an iron discipline that forbid the violence that often accompanied strikes, as GM in collaboration with local law enforcement, hired strikebreakers, and stool pigeons did everything in its power to resist employing a unionized workforce.With the support of Michigan governor Frank Murphy and from the wives of UAW workers, encouraged by Reuther to take an active part in their husbands’ union organizing, the UAW became a powerful force not only in the labor movement but in liberal politics, led by Roy’s older brother, Walter, who overcame factional disputes and several assaults on his life, including a near fatal shooting, to become the union’s president from 1946 to 1970.Alan Reuther, Roy’s son, writes with a family’s insider knowledge but also with a command of archives and of his own lifelong experience working for the UAW. Although his admiration for his father is clear, Mr. Reuther does not hesitate to show how Roy’s dedication to union work devastated his wife, contributing to a deep depression that she was never able to entirely overcome. Roy was, as well, an absent father, almost never participating in the activities of his sons, and often not even knowing how to talk to them.A commitment to civil rights did not mean, as Alan Reuther shows, a significant understanding of what it was like for black people in Detroit, so that the riot of 1967 that resulted in 43 deaths and the burning of something like 1400 buildings, came as a tremendous shock. Roy’s family, living in the suburb of West Bloomfield, did not realize how little even a liberal Democrat like Mayor Jerome Cavanagh could do to address the grievances of so many of the city’s inhabitants.Not since Thucydides has it been acceptable for biographers and historians to invent dialogue as Mr. Reuther does in dramatizing the tensions between the Reuther brothers and between his parents. That I was not deeply troubled by this decision to make the Reuthers more directly available to readers has to do with supporting evidence from the historical and archival record. The dialogue shows rather just tells what the Reuthers were saying to one another.Perhaps it is telling that Alan Reuther is the only member of the family to have continued a deep involvement in the UAW. At the same time, his view of the Reuthers and the labor movement is remarkably dispassionate. He writes without bitterness or special pleading. Even with his proximity to his subject, he has no trouble dealing with Roy’s worries about being overshadowed by his older brother Walter, who always thought of himself as entitled to lead the union.This biography can also be read as part of a larger context — how an activist’s profound commitment to social and political causes can damage a family. With a proper understanding of Roy Reuther’s times, his son is surely right to suggest that some of his father’s imperceptive behavior is attributable to the poor state of knowledge about depression, for example, and how it should be treated and, specifically, how his mother might have been helped if her mental state had been diagnosed early on.As impressive as the courage and achievements of the Reuthers have been, a first person Epilogue reflects the author’s acknowledgment that the UAW has diminished in membership and importance even as many Americans still recognize the need for unions. The world the Reuthers expected to build has been achieved only fitfully and not nearly as completely as they supposed would be the case. Even so, Mr. Reuther argues, his father’s pioneering organizing methods and unceasing efforts remain relevant to the lives of working people.Mr. Rollyson’s work in progress is ‘A Detroit Odyssey.‘
