The Reuthers' Cause

...But Victor overstates the achievements of the Reuther brand of social unionism in effecting reforms in the labor movement or American society...

...This is also the central theme of the memoir and the legacy of the Reuther leadership of the UAW...

...The Reuthers' sense of social reformism was inherited from their German-born parents, to whom the book is appropriately inscribed and about whom Victor writes with deep respect...

...Reuther concedes that his is not objective history, and historians, as well as some labor unionists, will find plenty of areas in which to debate his version of how it all happened...

...And the UAW has actively and openly cooperated with the U.S...

...Neither shooting was ever solved, and Reuther elaborates the mismanagement of the investigation by the Detroit police and the FBI: he suggests a conspiracy of abortive justice involving an anti-union alliance of business, the Detroit underworld, and law enforcement agencies...

...He is currently writing a book about labor and foreign policy...

...Under Walter's guidance," he writes in but one of many examples which appear throughout The Brothers Reuther, "collective bargaining became more than the instrument with which the workers could win economic equality and decent working conditions...

...HENRY BERGER For Victor Reuther, now retired from the United Auto Workers, this book, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UA W: A Memoir, is the fulfillment of a book which he and his brother Walter had intended to write shortly before the tragic death of the UAW president and his wife in a Michigan air crash in May 1970...

...Nor have they changed the essential purposes of labor unions which are necessary to their survival in the current American scene...

...It has also apparently avoided the covert dirty money, dirty tricks involvement of the AFL-CIO with the CIA and other government agencies to subvert foreign labor organizations and governments...

...Though others have covered the ground before, Reuther supplies fresh detail and his own point of view to such episodes as the sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, the battle of the overpass at River Rouge, the furious infighting for control of the union organization in the 1930s and 1940s, the long strike against General Motors in 1945-1946, and the unhappy relationship between the Reuthers and the superannuated elite of the AFL-CIO...

...However, Reuther's account is remarkably free of sentimental lamentings which frequently characterize memoirs of this sort...

...The UAW has been a better union than most — cleaner, more tolerant of dissenting views, and more socially responsive concerning a variety of issues beyond the narrow trade union concerns...

...The reader, however, is carried through most of the major events which marked the development of the UAW from its precarious and tempestuous existence during the Depression era to the more sanguine days of established union power after World War II...

...Louis, where he teaches labor history and U.S...

...it became a tool for the UAW to use in organizing the workers' power and strength so that they might reach out beyond the workplace and gain for themselves and their families a larger measure of security and dignity...

...But neither the Reuthers nor the UAW have ever challenged the structure or basic character of the American economic and political order in which the corporations wield dominant power and everyone else little or none...

...Drawing principally upon his memory and the extensive labor archives at Wayne State University in Detroit, Reuther provides an engaging and provocative account of the experiences of the three brothers (Roy was the third of the trio) whose adult lives became so completely synonymous with the dynamic and often turbulent history of the union they helped to create and eventually to manage...

...And Reuther leaves no doubt that they, especially Walter, shaped the structure and philosophy of the UAW leadership...

...Reuther disclaims any intention of having written a history of the UAW...

...Victor is convinced that "this heritage is a compass that can hold us on a steady course now and in the days ahead" and that others will carry "the torch...

...in pursuit of social justice...

...This is not a pretty picture, but neither the threat of violent death nor the physically taxing and emotionally draining demands of their careers stemmed the determination and drive of the three brothers...

...To do otherwise would involve a more radical change of ideas and vision than was possible for the Reuthers...

...Reuther's book is a tribute to the UAW's record...

...Henry W. Berger is associate professor of history at Washington University, St...

...Theirs was a dangerous calling, and Victor recalls in chilling passages the attempted murders of Walter and himself (within thirteen months of each other) and the slow, agonizing recoveries each of them had to endure...

...With their dedication to the cause of trade unionism, the Reuther brothers had time for little else, including uninterrupted family life...

...foreign relations...

...If so, it will bring closer the dream of "a better world" which Victor Reuther argues was the goal of the three brothers...

...Walter himself imagined the union to be capable of even greater things: "We are the vanguard in America in that great crusade to build a better world," he declared in 1947...

...Government to advance American foreign policy abroad...

...Perhaps the new generation of leaders to whom Victor says the torch has been passed will make the effort...

...He also exaggerates the degree to which the UAW differs functionally from other trade unions in a capitalist society...

...This is precisely the kind of noble sentiment which earned Walter Reuther the gratitude of liberals and the snorting condemnation of George Meany and other hidebound conservative trade unionists of the AFL-CIO...