Finish Fight?

(See Cover)

The glass transom was covered with cardboard. Outside the grey-enameled door stood three husky sergeants at arms. Newsmen, bored yet anxious, lounged on the chintz-covered sofas, listening for sounds from behind the guarded door. Occasionally there were voices, strident and angry; then long stretches of muffled buzz-buzz. Finally there came a burst of applause and then, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a full-throated rendition of Solidarity Forever!

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,

But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel could turn;

We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn

That the union makes us strong.

The newsmen knew what that meant. It meant the first big postwar strike. Behind the door on the mezzanine of Detroit's Barium Hotel, 200 representatives of the C.I.O.'s United Automobile Workers had voted to stop all production at giant General Motors Corp. the next morning.

They seemed exhilarated by what they had done. Slapped on the back by a wellwisher, the U.A.W.'s tack-sharp Vice President Walter Reuther replied: "Just like old times, isn't it?"

Stop the Line. In many ways it was. Next day at 11 o'clock, at the great Cadillac plant on Detroit's Clark Street, workmen laid down their tools. They had turned out 35 finished cars that morning, but at the appointed hour they picked up their coats and hats and walked off the job.

It was the same story, at the same hour, in other sections of Detroit, at Fleetwood Plant, at Chevrolet Gear & Axle. It was the same at the iron foundry in Saginaw, at Fisher Body Plant in Flint, at Delco-Remy in Muncie, Ind., at Delco Radio in Kokomo. It was the same at the warehouses in Los Angeles and Denver, at 80 G.M. plants in more than 50 cities in 19 states. A button had been pushed in Detroit and 175,000 U.S. men & women laid down their tools. Reconversion would have to wait.

In Detroit, red-haired Walter Reuther, scorning a hat but bundled up in overcoat and muffler, mounted a sound truck and went out to hearten the strikers. He did not try to paint a rosy picture. He reminded them that no strike benefits would be paid by the union, but in time there would be soup kitchens and the union would send a doctor to any member who needed him.

"We will travel the road to the bitter end," cried Walter Reuther, "because we know we are right and are willing to fight for what is right."

That certainly sounded like old times. And Reuther assured the strikers again & again that it was just "an old-fashioned strike."

But was it?

Frame the Case. As much as a strike of 175,000 men & women could be said to be the work of one man, it was the work of Walter Reuther. As director of the U.A.W.'s General Motors division, he had planned it, and worked out the moves. He phrased the declaration of war, devised the arguments, the headline-making statements, and also--like any general--left the way open for strategic retreat. He had called the strike even though the U.A.W. president, bumbling R. J. Thomas, thought it should be postponed.

Though Walter Reuther might rally the rank & file telling them it was just an old-fashioned strike, he knew better. It was not a strike for union recognition; it was not a strike of desperation. It was not a strike against outrageous working conditions or starvation pay; no one was starving.

It was a new kind of strike. The workers' demand for more pay had the old familiar ring, and there was even precedent for the union's demand that the company open its books so that its employes could determine its capacity to pay. What made it new was that Walter Reuther had based his arguments on the sweeping effect an increase in pay in the vast motor industry would have on the economy of the country; he said that better pay in the auto industry would step up wages everywhere, take the nation to higher production and abundance.

Four days after V-J day, U.A.W. had asked for its 30% pay increase. Reason: it wanted to keep peacetime take-home pay exactly where it had been during the war. As its primary argument, the U.A.W. did not use the normal reason that it wanted its members to live better. It said (Walter Reuther speaking) that it wanted everybody in the country to live better, and the way to do it was to keep all wages up and all prices down. The U.A.W. was determined to be the guinea pig in this full-economy experiment. It admitted that maybe G.M. could not pay a 30% wage increase without increasing prices. But to have this proved to its satisfaction, the union wanted the company to open its books.

General Motors' answer was stated by Vice President Harry Anderson in a radio debate with Walter Reuther. Said he: "When we sell our products at competitive prices, buy our materials in competitive markets and pay high wages to our employes by all of the usual standards of high wages, what we may make after taxes is a fair profit for our investors."

That profit, Vice President Anderson said on another occasion, is none of the union's business and furthermore the company did not open its books even to its 426,000 stockholders.

That seemed to be that. But negotiations went on, usually around a huge table in Detroit's General Motors Building. There was a battle of handouts, in which the language got more violent. A strike loomed more & more imminent.

Follow the General. If it came to a strike, the union wanted it run by Walter Reuther. With the possible exception of John Lewis, he is the most resourceful labor leader on the U.S. scene. He is on the sunny side of middle age (38), above average in schooling (three years in Wayne University), a skilled phrasemaker. He has worked by hand at the trade he represents. He took out three years (1933-35) to work and study labor conditions in Germany, Russia, China and Japan.

He has gone through the rough & tumble of union organizing (along with U.A.W. Vice President Dick Frankensteen, he was unmercifully beaten by Ford agents in the Battle of the Overpass of 1937), and he has weathered the skull-busting of union politics (a middle-of-the-roader in union politics, onetime Socialist Reuther is under constant attack from the Communists within the U.A.W.).

His life was packed with training for the position he now occupies. His father, a German immigrant and trade-union leader in Wheeling, W. Va., schooled his four sons in the virtues of debate and the blessings of unionism. Walter took his father's precepts to heart. At high school and college he organized social study clubs and led their debates. He lost his first two jobs (at Wheeling Steel and Ford Motor) because of union activity.

His visit to Germany taught him that unions become extinct under dictatorships. His stint as a tool & die maker in Russia's famed Gorky automobile plant taught him that unions thrive only where there is free speech. He returned to Detroit just as the U.A.W. was organizing, in 1935. Naturally, he joined in.

His nimbleness in the verbal give & take of negotiations is famous. Sample (from the transcript of the G.M. negotiations):

Reuther: Nothing could be more asinine than to destroy G.M. and destroy the job opportunities with G.M. We want G.M. to be the most prosperous company in this industry.

Harry Anderson (of G.M.): God, what a change is coming over the union!

Reuther: There is no change. We are smarter. Did you guys hear me on the radio?

Stephen Du Brul (of G.M.) : The same record you played in Chicago? Rent her: We changed the needle and it came out clearer.

Du Brul: I got the platter of that debate in Chicago and played it over to some people and they sat back and said, "By God, it is the same speech." Reuther: Of course. Brother, when you're on the beam you can stay on the beam. . . .

(At this point Harry Coen, G.M.'s director of labor relations, enters the room.

There is some kidding because Mr. Coen has been off for a week shooting pheasant in South Dakota. He says it was the happiest week of his life because he did not have to listen to Reuther.) Coen: Is the U.A.W. fighting for the whole world? Reuther: We have been fighting to hold prices and increase purchasing power. We are making our little contribution in that respect.

Coen: Why don't you get down to your size and get down to the type of job you are supposed to be doing as a trade-union leader and talk about the money you would like to have for your people and let the labor statesmanship go to hell for a while? Reuther: Translate that so I know what you mean. ... I understand you think our position makes it more difficult to work out a solution because we are getting into issues here that lie outside the narrow limits of collective bargaining.

Instead of talking about wages, what we want, and sticking to that, we are talking about prices and profits.

Coen: That is very well stated. Nobody else is doing that but you. You are the fellow that wants to get the publicity out of this whole thing. You want to enhance your own personal political position. That is what the whole show is about.

Reuther: I see.

Coen: Do you believe we have to learn to live 50% better, or do you believe first we have to learn how to create that much more wealth? What has that got to do with dividing up profits and reducing the salaries of the people in the corporation?

Reuther: Because unless we get a more realistic distribution of America's wealth, we won't get enough to keep this machine going.

Coen: There it is again. You can't talk about this thing without exposing your Socialistic desires.

Reuther: If fighting for a more equal and equitable distribution of the wealth of this country is Socialistic, I stand guilty of being a Socialist.

Coen: You are wasting your time and our time with all this crap.

Watch the General. Like Coen, many U.A.W. members feel that Reuther is garnering too much of U.A.W. 's publicity for himself and using it to his own advantage in intra-union politics. Ever since his ascendancy in powerful, unruly, and often awkward U.A.W., Reuther has done battle with smart, swart Secretary-Treasurer George Addes, who gets the support of U.A.W.'s Communists, although no Communist himself. Paunchy President Thomas is just the man who happened to be there to keep Reuther and Addes apart.

At last year's U.A.W. convention, Thomas lined up with Addes to try to throw Reuther out of office. The maneuver failed. Since then Reuther's star has risen phenomenally. If. he wins any sort of victory in the G.M. strike, he is certain to press Thomas hard for the presidency at U.A.W.'s convention next March.

Reuther is the kind of man who plays politics by seeming not to play them. He appears content to do his work and take whatever rewards it brings. He works day & night. He lives within his $7,000 salary in a frame house in northwest Detroit. His hobbies are playing with his two-year-old daughter Linda or tinkering in his basement carpenter's shop. At dinner with his wife, who was once his secretary, he is apt to listen to news broadcasts or read union speeches while he eats.

What Strategy? These days he has little time for carpentry. In calling the G.M. strike he has taken on the biggest job of his life. Not a few unioneers feel that, from the union standpoint, he called it too early. To date, G.M. had produced about 20,000 cars; it was nowhere near full production. A stop in production now --even a long stop as the result of a protracted strike--will not hurt the company too much, especially since its top competitors are nowhere near full production (Chrysler has not even started).

The initial Reuther strategy was to pick off each of the three big motor-makers, one at a time, and play them off against each other. As of this week, that strategy appears to have failed. A few weeks ago the U.A.W. had high hopes that it could sign young Henry Ford to a contract with a substantial wage increase (about 23%) and use it as a club to beat G.M. and Chrysler. But that hope faded with Henry Ford's blast at U.A.W. (TIME, Nov. 26).

From the country's standpoint, the strike may have disastrous results. A spokesman for the auto industry warned that a long shutdown at G.M. might shut down the entire auto industry, because G.M. supplies parts to everybody. Reuther pooh-poohed this as an industry threat to break the strike. Meanwhile he has asked U.A.W. workers at Ford and Chrysler to produce as many cars as possible "despite all company abuse."

What Result? The U.A.W. strike will almost certainly set the pattern for others to come. This week the C.I.O.'s United Steelworkers take their strike vote, and no one doubts the outcome. Like the U.A.W., the Steelworkers have asked for a raise ($2 a day) geared to profits. Big Steel has been just as adamant as G.M. in resisting the demand. A steel strike before Christmas is a possibility.

For the first time since Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Government has taken no decisive part in a major strike. One of Labor Secretary Schwellenbach's assistants took a look at the G.M. strike the day after it began, went to Washington the next day. Except for this, and an invitation to U.A.W. and G.M. officers to discuss the strike in Washington, Government has sat tight.

How long can it stay out? Under the Roosevelt Administration in war or peace, labor's certainty in any major strike was that the Government would bail it out. Perhaps U.A.W. still harbors the hope that if its strike is long drawn out, it can be bailed out again. But this week there were no signs; to hear narrow-eyed Walter Reuther tell the story, it was a fight to a finish.

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