UAW's Walter Reuther the Man that fought for National Healthcare

[Ichingcarpenter]

Men with queazy stomachs had no place one afternoon last week on the overpass at the No. 4 gate of Henry Ford's great River Rouge plant." So began TIME's account of the Battle of the Overpass, the confrontation that made May 26, 1937, a red-letter day in labor history and brought to national attention a young United Auto Workers official named Walter P. Reuther.

That morning Reuther and his colleagues suspected the day's events could escalate into something historic as they prepared to hand out organizing leaflets (slogan: "Unionism, Not Fordism") to the plant's 9,000 workers. Reuther had put on his Sunday suit, complete with vest, gold watch and chain. He had invited newspapermen, priests and local officials to be witnesses. When Reuther and three other officials arrived at the gate, Ford company police charged at them and delivered a brutal, prolonged beating. Pictures of the battered victims were published across the U.S., a huge P.R. victory that would slowly but surely lead, several years later, to U.A.W. organization at the plant.


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In the1950 United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther urged the automobile manufacturers instead to join the UAW in demanding from the government the kind of agreements that were being made in Europe, by which the state assumed responsibility for universal health care and retirement protection for all citizens.

If business had accepted Reuther’s proposals, a federal welfare system would necessarily have been funded from taxes, as in Europe.

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20080718_william_pfaff_on_general_motors/

Long before medical costs became a national issue, Reuther was advocating universal health care. He organized the Committee of One Hundred to put the issue on the national agenda and set the stage for congressional action. At the same time, he helped establish one of the early HMOs, an association that eventually became the Health Alliance Plan, a major health-care provider in the metropolitan Detroit area. Whether testifying before Congress or elsewhere, Reuther threw his weight behind the public issues of the day. He called for a Citizens Crusade Against Poverty, federal aid to housing and education, the peaceful use of atomic energy and a national minimum wage. Trade unions have a mixed record in civil rights — but not Reuther, who from early on was an ardent advocate. He organized the Citizens Committee for Equal Opportunity and worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. Reuther was one of the few non-African Americans invited to speak at the March on Washington in 1963. A favorite anecdote concerned his introduction to the crowd. Standing close to the podium were two elderly women. As he was introduced, one of the women was overheard asking her friend, "Who is Walter Reuther?" The response: "Walter Reuther? He's the white Martin Luther King."

In 1955, as president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Reuther negotiated a historic merger with the American Federation of Labor, headed by George Meany. Reuther then headed up the AFL-CIO's Industrial Union Department, but 13 years later, sharp differences over policy and programs led to the U.A.W.'s withdrawal from the organization — it would stay out until reaffiliating in 1981.

For Reuther, unionism was not confined simply to improving life at the workplace. He viewed the role of the union as a social movement aimed at uplifting the community within the guarantees of democratic values. After his untimely death, with May, in a plane crash in 1970, waves of downsizing devastated cities and created problems for labor that still exist today. You can just imagine him wading into the fight against wanton job destruction, done for the sake of propping up corporate balance sheets.

One of his favorite slogans was "Progress with the Community — Not at the Expense of the Community." What is unmistakably clear is that Reuther, in his lifetime, fulfilled his own philosophy of human endeavor.


http://www.time.com/time/time100/builder/profile/reuther.html