United Auto Workers

The United Auto Workers entered the 1948 contest over the Democratic presidential nomination by joining the movement urging Eisenhower to run. Its participation broadened the anti-Truman coalition, which appeared to bring parts of the old Roosevelt alliance together around a candidate whose views remained unclear.

Political Context

The movement for Eisenhower had grown beyond the Roosevelt family’s initial call. New Dealers, liberal figures, professional Democrats, and labor leaders were among those favoring his candidacy. To Truman and his supporters, the revolt of former New Dealers was especially galling: they believed Truman had carried the New Deal forward and put an exceptionally progressive program before Congress.

The United Auto Workers Joins the Draft Movement

The United Auto Workers and Phil Murray of the Industrial Organizations Congress joined the Eisenhower movement. The account places the union alongside leaders from both labor and electoral politics, making the draft effort look less like a narrow factional challenge and more like a possible reconstruction of the old Roosevelt coalition around Eisenhower.

Significance and Limits

The union’s support helped demonstrate the breadth of the effort to find an alternative to Truman, but it did not resolve the central uncertainty surrounding Eisenhower. At the time, no one knew his position on civil rights, Social Security, taxes, or how to preserve peace with Stalin. The evidence records the United Auto Workers’ participation in the movement, but does not specify the union’s reasons for joining or describe a separate campaign role for it.