Talk:Walter Reuther

message: Reuther seemed to be dissatisfied, looking for the ability to challenge the injustices that had made the union movement so vital in the 1930s.  -- Do we have a justification for this psychological profiling? RickK 03:59, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: According to labour historian Nelson Licthenstein, when these contracts were first negotiated, UAW president Walter Reuther warned car companies in the 1940s that they were courting trouble by making long-term promises they might not be able to keep, and urged them to support national health insurance instead.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.201.130.236 (talk) 04:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interesting that he could see current US car makers problems back in the 40s 

message: It seems to me that the article is not well formatted, with all the info in one sprawling essay.  i think it should be split up into sections, like just about every other article here at wikipedia.--69.248.90.249 22:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Article reformat

message: Reuther was an anticommunist in the 1940s--the issue was his position in the 1930s after he returned from Russia. His major biographer says:
: "It was in these months [in 1935] that Walter Reuther worked most closely with the Communists in Detroit; according to several well-placed observers, he may have actually paid the party monthly dues. William Weinstone claims that Sugar brought Reuther to a weekly district meeting and that shortly thereafter Weinstone asked him to join the party, which he did. Nat Ganley, later the Communist Party whip in the UAW, asserted that it was he who then accepted Reuther's dues. Indeed, Reuther did attend a twelfth anniversary commemoration of Lenin's death in Jan uary, at which the Communist leader Robert Minor spoke, and Reuther made a special note to listen to an Earl Browder radio broadcast in early February 1936. It was at this time that he started speaking on behalf of the Friends of the Soviet Union, and he made a point of seeing Anna Louise Strong when she appeared on the Detroit lecture circuit. The best evidence that Walter became very close to the Communist Party was that he obtained a union membership in Ternstedt Local 86, thanks to the good offices of the party unit chief in that GM plant....Walter Reuther's close connection to the Communists, including a possible brief membership, has a meaning and a legacy that is of more than sectarian interest. To most of his conservative opponents, Reuther's sojourn in the Soviet Union and subsequent alliance with the Communists sustained the accusation that he was simply a red. To union activists this charge was something of an accolade in the mid-1930s, but a few years later, the suspicion among Reuther's left‐wing rivals that he used the CP's influence to advance his fortunes in the UAW lay ehind their frequent assertions that he was a political opportunist at the very birth of his union career."  quote from Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor Basic Books. 1995.  pp 54-56.  
Lichtenstein, a historian of the left, concludes he was close to the Communist party and possibly a full member. Rjensen 07:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This quotation deals with a few months in 1935-6. If that is all there is to the issue, this is drastically undue weight. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: lot of important things happen in a few months (sit down strikes, for example. Historian Lichtenstein clearly says, "Walter Reuther's close connection to the Communists, including a possible brief membership, has a meaning and a legacy that is of more than sectarian interest." -- that explictly  contradicts PMasnderson's personal feeling that it is not very important. There are entire articles in labor history journals on the topic, for example.Rjensen 19:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: At least two; but, having looked at Lichtenstein, who devotes only the one paragraph quoted above to the topic, I affirm that Rjensen's proposal to include "At first a fellow traveller who worked closely with the Communists in the mid 1930s" is an exaggeration of the sources; to place it in the lead is undue weight. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

text: there are two separate issues: was he a Communist partty member? (maybe); and more important, he worked closely with the Communists all through the 1930s and they dominated much of the UAW and CIO--a key part of the story that deserves the lede. Reuther later turned against them and purged all the Communists circa 1948. Rjensen 23:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What Devinatz actually says is that he turned against them in August 1939. As Lichtenstein says, cooperation with them was not surprising in the age of the Popular Front, especially since they agreed with him, more or less, on UAW internal politics. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Reuther a Communist in 1930s or a fellow traveller? 

message: I see nothing here about Reuther's anti-semitism, the one area in which he and Henry Ford saw eye-to-eye.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.148.218 (talk) 01:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left out?? 

message: This article leaves out practically any mention of his personal and family life. It makes him out as a one dimensional character. 106.51.20.188 (talk) 15:23, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal and Family life 

message: There's some serious problems with the language used in certain sections, which seems to be more emotional rather than informational.  For example this line in the Ford Motor Company section.
"the thugs turned their attention to viciously attack them."
Followed shortly by
"Time magazine published the photographs with descriptions of how the union men and women were mercilessly beaten by Henry Ford's paid thugs"
Another example of this type of language is in the section that recounts Reuther's election as UAW president, where he is described as "a new kind of leader"  This language would be fine if it was actually from a source, but instead it is not in quotes and therefore skews the article.  The source for all these anecdotes is the biography Reuther's daughter wrote of him, which would probably be the reason behind the biased language.  I think that either these accounts should be edited to be impartial while maintaining the content of the source, or they should be deleted completely due to their lack of historical significance and skewing of the article's language.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TankRe (talk • contribs) 21:21, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Good points.  Wikipedia wants the independent analysis of experts, not the loyal daughter. Rjensen (talk) 05:28, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Emotional/Biased Language 

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