The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions

Roger Keeran's solidly researched book moves the quarter-century debate over the role that Communists played in the organization and early years of the United Automobile Workers to a more fruitful and politically meaningful level. Along with Bert Cochran, but in greater detail, Keeran demonstrates the extent to which the very formation of a strong and permanent industrial union in the automobile industry depended upon the dedication of a cadre of individuals whose own social vision far transcended the union movement itself. Relying on internal party documents, numerous oral interviews, and a wide range of labor archives, Keeran clearly demonstrates that Communist activity in the automotive industry provided an unbroken link between the revolutionary dual unionism of the late 1920s, the American Federation of Labor federal locals of the mid-1930s, and many of the strongest UAW locals thereafter. In this context Communists easily moved into influential posts as the UAW grew in size and strength. As Keeran emphasizes, their "legitimacy" as trade-union militants in the UAW arose out of their day-to-day work in building the union itself.