Fraser's gambit: In a sense, Doug Fraser was the most important leader the United Auto Workers has e

Fraser's gambit: In a sense, Doug Fraser was the most important leader the

United Auto Workers has ever had.

By Jack Lessenberry

Created Apr 16 2008 - 11:50am

Once, years ago, I speculated impolitely on the reasoning behind some

now-forgotten boneheaded move the United Auto Workers union had made. Doug

Fraser, then a professor of labor studies at Wayne State University, ripped

the column out of the Metro Times and circled the worst part of what I said.

He sent it to Millie Jeffrey, who had been the first woman vice president of

the union. In the margin, he wrote: "Find out who's been telling him our

secrets!" This was one of the greatest labor leaders in automotive history,

a man who fought and won huge battles.

Yet he had a sense of perspective and could laugh at himself. He treated

everyone with warmth, courtesy and respect. Once, I gave a speech on

economic conditions in Michigan and was stunned to find Doug and his wife,

Winifred, in the audience. (That struck me a little bit like John Maynard

Keynes crashing a freshman econ seminar.)

He died in February of emphysema, and they had a vast memorial service for

him on campus last week. I had interviewed him on the radio just weeks

before he died; his lungs were going fast, but his mind was still sharp. He

knew what was happening to his beloved union, and to the auto industry, and

he didn't envy current UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

In a sense, Doug Fraser was the most important leader the United Auto

Workers ever had. That would be regarded as blasphemy by most people - maybe

even including Fraser - who regard Walter Reuther as the ultimate labor

saint.

Reuther was, indeed, all that. Brilliant, incorruptible, flawlessly honest;

he built up the UAW, made it what it was, was bloodied at the Battle of the

Overpass, and never ever forgot about his workers.

Yet he died tragically early, in a May 1970 plane crash, when the union was

at its zenith. Nobody then foresaw oil shocks and the rise of the Japanese,

let alone China.

Doug Fraser, who came here from Scotland at age 6, was only nine years

younger than Reuther. His family was poor; he quit high school to work in a

Detroit machine shop, where he was fired for union activity. He fought and

he clawed and he organized.

When Reuther died, there was considerable sentiment to have Fraser succeed

him. When the executive council narrowly chose Leonard Woodcock instead, he

wholeheartedly supported him.

By the time Doug Fraser got his turn, in 1977, trouble had begun to surface

for the U.S. auto industry. He had to cope with problems Reuther never

imagined, especially the near-collapse of Chrysler.

Fraser somehow steered the union through that crisis. He got his union to

agree to wage and layoff concessions in order to get Congress to consent to

federal loan guarantees.

That was the first time the UAW had ever consented to any givebacks. Today,

it is hard to imagine how alien that concept seemed to union workers. But

they trusted Fraser, and he got them through. He told me later how much he

hated doing it. But he reasoned that "A union president's first duty is to

save the jobs of the members." If Chrysler had gone under, no one would have

anything.

Most people expected the "bailout" would fail. It succeeded so well the loan

guarantees were paid off early. The press tended to lionize Lee Iacocca, and

give him credit for saving Chrysler.

That was one of the few things that really irked Fraser. "That's bullshit.

The Chrysler workers saved the Chrysler Corporation."

The egocentric Iacocca, incidentally, said the real hero was Doug Fraser. As

part of the deal to save the company, Fraser got a seat on the Chrysler

board of directors. He was the first labor leader ever to sit on the board

of a major corporation, and did well.

Everything is different now. Chrysler was sold to the Germans a few years

later, then chewed up and spat out. It is now a rapidly downsizing private

company. The United Auto Workers union now has fewer than one-third the

members it did in 1970.

Last fall, the UAW's current leader, Ron Gettelfinger, had to agree to new

concessions that included the union taking over retirees' health care, under

a deal that is almost certain to include reduced benefits in the long run.

Worse, they had to agree to a new two-tier pay scale, under which most new

hires will be paid less.

I talked to Doug Fraser about this not long before he died. He didn't like

what was happening at all, but wasn't about to second-guess the current

leadership. I asked what Reuther might have done. "I don't know what Walter

Reuther would do, but I do know he would be fighting for the workers

somehow."

He knew times had changed. He hoped they would someday change again. But he

was a realist, which is what made him such an effective leader, that and the

elfin grin and the common touch.

Back in 1999, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney defended the union movement by

saying "there is no more corruption in unions than there is in business or

in Congress." That wasn't good enough for Doug Fraser. "Business is about

making money, but labor unions are supposed to be about helping workers."

That's who he was. Now, the industry and the union need a new visionary. A

few days ago, I talked with Sean McAlinden, who has a doctorate in economics

and is the chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research. The latest

sales figures show steep declines.

What are the No-Longer-So-Big Three's goals, these days? "Surviving until

2010. That's when they have an explosion of new models that will have better

power trains and get better mileage."

Better than the so-called-foreign cars, I asked? Well, no, but maybe as good

as them. Will the domestic auto industry survive?

Well, yes. Ford will eventually be much smaller, and to survive long term

Chrysler badly needs "another hyphen," a partner like their ex-spouse, Herr

Daimler. The shorter-term news is worse, at least until they get the

American Axle strike resolved.

Someday the majority of American autoworkers may actually be working for

"transplant" factories that build Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. That may

not be ideal, but it will mean at least some Americans will have jobs making

cars ... even if not in Detroit.

We might not even have the transplants, except for the fact that back in the

day, a politically powerful union leader told the Japanese that if they

expected to continue to sell cars here they should make them here. The

Japanese realized that if they did so, it would be essentially impossible

for protectionist politicians to cut them off.

The labor leader's name, by the way, was Doug Fraser.

On a lighter note: The puckish Berl Falbaum, WSU professor, journalist and

PR man, has just come out with The Definitive Guide to Organizational

Backstabbing, Vol. II (iUniverse, $14.95), which is exactly the kind of book

you want to put in the bathroom, if you have more than one bathroom.

Falbaum, the only native Detroiter around who grew up in Shanghai, has seen

it all.

I would especially recommend it for people who want at least one of their

children to become financially successful Republicans. This book also ought

to help you understand some of why the auto companies are in the shape they

are in, even if that wasn't the author's intention.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson