R. J. Thomas
Roland Jay Thomas (June 9, 1900 – April 18, 1967), also known as R. J. Thomas, was a left-wing leader of the United Auto Workers in the 1930s and 1940s. He grew up in eastern Ohio and attended the College of Wooster for two years. The need to help support his family caused him to leave college and go to work. In 1923, he moved to Detroit, where he worked in a number of automobile plants.
He became active in efforts to organize the automobile industry and was the president of Chrysler Local 7 when it affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) in 1936. He was a leader of the 1937 Chrysler sit-down strike and that same year was elected a vice president of the UAW.
He assumed the presidency in 1938 after the president,
In 1945, he attended the World Trade Union Conference in London alongside many renowned trade unionists.
He was married to Mildred Wettergren on August 7, 1937. and they had one child, Frank. R. J. Thomas died in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1967.
References
Further reading
- Barnard, John, American Vanguard: A History of the United Auto Workers, 1935–1970 (2004) passim.
- Fink, Gary M. Biographical Dictionary of American Labor Leaders(Greenwood Press, 1974). p. 352.
- Kraus, Henry. Heroes of Unwritten Story: The UAW, 1934–1939 (University of Illinois Press, 1993).
- Halpern, Martin. "The 1939 UAW convention: Turning point for communist power in the auto union?" Labor History 33.2 (1992): 190-216.
- Howe, Irving, and B. J. Widick. "The UAW and Its Leaders." The Virginia Quarterly Review 25.1 (1949): 34-47 online
- Lichtenstein, Nelson. Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (1995). a major scholarly biography; online