DETROIT - Victor Reuther, who along with his brothers Walter and Roy helped make the United Auto Workers union a powerful force in the American labor movement, has died at 92.
Mr. Reuther, who had been living in a hospice near Washington, D.C., died Thursday, union spokesman Roger Kerson said.
Victor, Walter and Roy Reuther left West Virginia to come to Detroit in the 1930s to lead a changing American labor movement. Walter became UAW president, heading the organization from 1946 to 1970, while Roy served as the union's legislative director.
Victor Reuther joined Kelsey Hayes Wheel Co. in 1936 as an assembly-line worker and became a strike leader with his UAW local. He went on to lead the UAW's education department and was appointed director of the union's international affairs department in 1955.
He retired from the UAW in 1972. He titled his memoirs The Brothers Reuther.
John L. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said Mr. Reuther helped build the UAW "into a powerful force for social good."
Walter and Victor were both targets of assassination attempts. In 1949, Victor was sitting in his Detroit home when a shotgun blast fired through a window hit him in the face, throat and shoulder.
Roy Reuther died in 1968, and Walter Reuther died in a plane crash in 1970.
