Book Reviews

Meyer is on firmer ground in addressing the later period. As a reporter for the Rubber & Plastic News, he became acquainted with everyone who was involved in collective bargaining and union politics and utilizes his sources effectively. Like most of the union activists, he was captivated by Peter Bommarito, URW president from l966 to l981. An aggressive and occasionally ruthless leader, Bommarito dominated the URW as no predecessor or successor did. A classic union boss, he emphasized ever more lucrative contract provisions and the role of union militancy in achieving them. He also championed occupational health programs and research into the environmental sources of the cancers that killed many rubber workers. Above all, he was a shrewd politician who kept a close watch on the organization and his fellow officers. 

Bommarito's command of the URW seemed to explain the union's formidable presence in the l960s. Did it also explain the precipitous decline in membership and power that followed in the l970s? The sputtering economy was a blow to the URW and the labor movement generally. Yet Bommarito, determined to keep pace with the United Auto Workers, was unrelenting. In 1976, he called an industry-wide strike, just as the manufacturers were confronting new and potent competition from foreign producers such as Michelin and Bridgestone. Many contemporaries believed that the strike was the kiss of death for the aging Akron and Ohio plants. But as Meyer demonstrates, Bommarito was wholly preoccupied with his own agenda, and hostile to any suggestion that it was no longer appropriate . When his "right hand man," the young president of the General Tire Akron local, refused to cooperate because of the likely effects on his constituents' jobs, he reacted angrily, as if he had been betrayed. Bommarito (and most URW leaders) considered the eventual settlement a triumph because the union won its principal demand, a cost of living escalator, which became (as they foresaw) a source of large wage increases in the following, inflationary years. In the meantime, all the Ohio plants closed, leaving devastated communities and blighted lives in their wake. 

However one views Bommarito's career, it is clear that his successors faced enormous, probably insurmountable challenges. The unassuming, plain-spoken Mike Stone (1981-90) became increasingly unpopular as more and more locals had to accept concessionary agreements. Kenneth Coss (1990-95) was initially the beneficiary of Stone's woes, but he too suffered major defeats at the hands of Michelin (l993-4) and Bridgestone/Firestone (l994-5). The disastrous confrontation with Bridgestone/Firestone brought the URW to its knees and led to a desperate merger with the United Steelworkers. Meyer's account of the maneuvering that preceded the merger convention is first-rate reporting.

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