Walter Philip Reuther (September 1, 1907 – May 9, 1970) was an American labor union leader, who made the United Automobile Workers a major force not only in the auto industry but also in the Democratic Party in the mid 20th century. He was a socialist in the early 1930s becoming a leading liberal and supporter of the New Deal coalition.
Reuther was born in Wheeling, West Virginia on September 1 ,1907, the son of a socialist brewery worker who had immigrated from Germany. Throughout his career he was close to his brothers and co-workers Victor Reuther and Roy Reuther. Reuther joined the Ford Motor Company in 1927 as an expert tool and die maker but was laid off in 1932 as the Great Depression worsened. His Ford employment record states that he quit voluntarily, but Reuther himself always maintained that he was fired for his increasingly visible socialist activities. He and his brothers went to Europe and then worked 1933-35 in an auto plant at Gorky in the Soviet Union. While a committed socialist, he never became a Communist. At the end of the trip he wrote, "the atmosphere of freedom and security, shop meetings with their proletarian industrial democracy; all these things make an inspiring contrast to what we know as Ford wage slaves in Detroit. What we have experienced here has reeducated us along new and more practical lines." Unhappy with the lack of political freedom in Russia, Reuther returned to the United States where he found employment at General Motors and became an active member of the United Automobile Workers (UAW).
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Reuther, Walter Filmography
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2012, role: actor , character name: Himself
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2011, role: actor , character name: Himself
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1989, role: actor , character name: Himself
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1973, role: actor , character name: Himself - with JFK and King at the White House
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1964, role: actor , character name: Himself
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1952, role: actor , character name: Himself
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1950, role: actor , character name: Himself - Labor Leader
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1944, role: miscellaneous crew
Famous quotes by Walter Reuther:
"If you're not big enough to lose, you're not big enough to win."
"There is no greater calling than to serve your fellow men. There is no greater contribution than to help the weak. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well."
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