Shawn Fain is not the first UAW president to get a little, uh, political. In the latest edition of her Forgotten Book series, Amity Shlaes looks at the career of Walter Reuther, an earlier (and highly influential) UAW leader. As always with Amity, it’s well worth a read.
Here’s an extract:
Reuther’s main goal in the 1960s was to reconfigure not just Detroit but all America on the social-democratic model. He built out the UAW education department and sent union members, willy-nilly, to collect votes in countless campaigns. The outcome of the 1960s election is disputed to this day, with many claiming Richard Nixon as the winner. Not disputed is that votes from the million-odd UAW membership gave Kennedy the numbers he did garner. Postelection, a grateful new president made a point of publicly praising Reuther’s expansionist vision, telling a vast group of workers, “This organization and this union has not interpreted its responsibilities narrowly. You have not confined yourself to getting the best possible deal at the bargaining table.”
Such endorsement was all the Reuther brothers needed to spend millions of union dues on national policy, entering areas a stunning distance from the shop floor….
It’s interesting to speculate what Reuther and his brother, Victor, would have made of today’s efforts to “force” people to buy electric vehicles (EVs), a switch of limited interest to consumers (so far) that will mean disaster either for workers in the auto sector (EVs require far fewer people to manufacture) or for the Big Three, or for both.
Echoing comments from the automakers, Fain has complained (rightly) about the pace at which the switch to EVs is being pushed through but is unwilling to pose a fundamental challenge to it. At the very least he should be making the case that changes on this scale should not be left to the EPA but should involve Congress.
Instead, he is essentially going along with the administration’s program, trying to get union-friendly measures attached to taxpayer-funded loans and grants to the EV sector while attempting to heap costs on carmakers that, for their part, already risk crumbling under the demands of the rushed, reckless, and coerced transition to EVs. It’s not likely to be a strategy that will work.
That the UAW finds itself in this position is not without its ironies. Walter Reuther was something of an environmentalist.
From a UAW post marking “Earth Day” two years ago:
Now an International event, Earth Day has been celebrated since April 22, 1970 and its origins are here in the United States. In fact, this annual celebration wouldn’t exist without legendary UAW leader Walter Reuther.
In 1970, environmental protection was gaining momentum as an urgent national issue. Nationwide environmental teach-ins were held in the spring and, with the help of activist Denis Hayes, who coined the name “Earth Day,” more than 20 million people marched in support of protecting the earth from environmental destruction. UAW President Walter Reuther took notice and pledged the UAW’s financial and membership support for the first Earth Day.
President Reuther had already spoken out in favor of environmental protection. At the UAW’s convention in Atlantic City that year, he told UAW members the environment is not a faraway place with scenic beauty only for vacationers but home to all of mankind, including union women and men. The auto industry and all polluting industries, he said, have forced humans to take concrete steps to prevent irreversible damage. That includes using the UAW’s collective bargaining power to get companies to change their environmental practices.
Reuther pledged member support for Earth Day and environmental protection. He also became a key organizer and financial backer of that first Earth Day. “Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!” said Hayes.
Reuther died in a plane crash just three weeks after that first Earth Day, but his commitment and vision for environmental protection lives on as the UAW and industry work together for the environment and good jobs for working men and women.
Reuther, however, was operating in an era when a commitment to protecting the environment was very different from the climate fundamentalism we see today. The latter is a clear and present danger to the jobs and futures of not only the UAW’s members, but of many other people besides.