Reuther pulls the UAW out of the AFL-CIO; American labor splits in two

By the summer of 1968, American labor's postwar consensus was fracturing — and no two men embodied the fault lines more sharply than Walter Reuther and George Meany. On July 1, 1968, Reuther pulled the United Auto Workers out of the AFL-CIO after the two presidents failed to agree on policy direction or reforms to the federation's governance. Twenty-three days later, Reuther joined Teamsters general president Frank Fitzsimmons to launch the Alliance for Labor Action — a rival national union center aimed at organizing the unorganized and pursuing a broader social agenda. The new alliance would last barely three years before Reuther's death in a plane crash near Black Lake, Michigan, on May 9, 1970, cut short everything he had built…