Douglas Fraser - UAW Presidency

UAW Presidency

Fraser was president of the United Auto Workers from 1977 to 1983. He was elected president after Woodcock reached the mandatory retirement age of 65.

He is best known for his role in negotiating a greater voice for the union in corporate governance with Chrysler during the company's 1979 bankruptcy crisis and subsequent government-sponsored loan. Fraser mobilized UAW members and heavily lobbied Congress in a move that proved critical to convincing the government to provide $1.2 billion in federally guaranteed loans that enabled Chrysler to avoid bankruptcy. He used Reuther's "equality of sacrifice" formula to convince UAW members that major concessions were needed to save the company. Fraser then negotiated wage cuts of $3 an hour and waived restrictions on layoffs which allowed Chrysler to shed nearly 50,000 jobs (or about half its workforce). In an unprecedented move, Chrysler Corporation named Fraser to its Board of Directors, on which he served from 1980 to 1984. He was the first labor leader to sit on the board of directors of an important American company.

Fraser negotiated another round of concessionary contracts in 1982. The early 1980s recession hit the Ford Motor Company particularly hard. To help save the company, Fraser negotiated significant wage and benefit cuts. The same wage concessions were given to General Motors, as Fraser sought to keep wages uniform across the industry in order to avoid giving one company a cost advantage over another.

Some deeply criticized Fraser's 1979 negotiations, however. They argue that the Chrysler agreement set off a wave of concessionary bargaining among automobile manufacturers which then spread into steel, mining, trucking, meatpacking, airlines and rubber. These critics claim that a 30-year truce between labor and management broke down after 1979, leading auto manufacturers to abandon pattern bargaining and seek an end to job protections and cost-of-living increases.