DETROIT – They still tell the story about the time that Walter Reuther, the visionary leader of the United Auto Workers union, submitted an expense account that included a $1.50 dry cleaning bill.
Back then, whenever any top union official submitted an expense account, someone else in the president’s office reviewed it.
Emil Mazey, the union’s secretary and treasurer, disallowed that dry cleaning bill – and Walter Reuther, famous for running the cleanest of all labor unions, reportedly apologized and paid it.
On May 9, it will be half a century since Reuther, his wife, and the architect Oscar Stonorov died with three others when the small plane they were on crashed in rain and fog outside the airport in Pellston, MI, on their way to a union camp in Northern Michigan.
He was, nearly everyone agrees, a labor leader like no other, an incorruptible visionary whose talents negotiated his workers into the middle class, and went on to be a major force for both civil rights and an early strong voice for the environment.
The labor movement has fallen on hard times since his death, especially the United Auto Workers union. Currently, the union has been torn by the worst corruption scandal in his history.
More than a dozen union officials have pleaded guilty: Gary Jones, who had to step down in disgrace as the UAW’s latest president, has been charged with misusing more than $1 million in union money which he used to support a lavish lifestyle, which included expensive meals and golf outings.
“Walter would be turning over in his grave,” said Alan Reuther, his nephew, an attorney who retired in 2010 after spending many years as the UAW’s chief representative in Washington.
The “union Walter built,” which in the 1970s had 1.6 million members, had 398,429 last year, more than a third of whom aren’t traditional autoworkers at all, but who work in other occupations from casinos to universities and parts suppliers.
The union has repeatedly failed to organize workers at auto plants run by companies other than Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Last year’s figure was a slight uptick from the union’s low point, but when it comes to recruiting new members, as Alan Reuther noted, “obviously the scandals aren’t going to help at all. “
The current pandemic has also sabotaged the union’s plans to remember their greatest leader; plans for a weekend of ceremonies in Detroit were first cut back, and finally postponed at least till fall.
Yet there are still those who are trying to keep his memory and his vision alive, including Bob Morris, the 68-year-old son of a UAW official and the author of Built in Detroit, a well-written 2013 book about an early chapter in union history.
While it would be almost impossible to overstate Reuther’s role in building one of the nation’s most efficient unions, Morris said “there was a lot more to him than that.”
“He was a huge player in civil rights. He wasn’t there to get out in front — he was too smart for that,” he said, noting Reuther’s close friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr. “He was there instead to help shape the strategy and make things happen.”
Walter Reuther did indeed march in Detroit and Washington with The Rev. Dr. King. He also was hugely influential in helping Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, both with their cause and in winning national notice.
But he was also extremely dedicated to the environment, and was instrumental in getting the union to pour money and resources into the first Earth Day celebration, on April 22, 1970. Denis Hayes, its national coordinator, famously said “Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would likely have flopped.”
Then suddenly, Reuther was gone, killed in a crash in the rain and fog on his way to the recreational and training complex he had built for the union at Black Lake, Michigan. His daughter, Elisabeth Dickmeyer, is convinced the plane was sabotaged and her father was assassinated “by Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover.”
No such finding was made, though the National Transportation Safety Board found that faulty parts and wrong parts had been installed in the plane’s altimeter. Reuther had survived two assassination attempts in the past, one of which involved a shotgun blast that shattered the bones in his right arm into 150 fragments.
Reuther was only 62 when he died. What might have happened had he lived? Under union rules he himself had shaped, presidents of the UAW are no longer eligible to run after they turn 65. “He was a statesman for labor. He would have been a great President of the United States,” his son in law, Bruce Dickmeyer, maintains.
That’s unlikely; however; he once turned down an appointment to the U.S. Senate, and made it clear he was not interested in elective politics. Many who knew him think Reuther, who was multilingual, widely traveled and well-versed in international events, might have become a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
What is clear is that he would have continued to work hard to try to make the world a better place. Murray Kempton once famously said that “Walter Reuther is the only man I’ve ever met who could reminisce about the future.” As his union struggles today to find a future, its leaders might do well to reclaim his legacy from the past.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
