By David Runk
Associated Press
Monday, February 25, 2008
DETROIT -- Douglas A. Fraser, who led the United Auto Workers union through dark hours in the U.S. auto industry in the 1970s and '80s, has died. He was 91.
Mr. Fraser died Feb. 23 at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Mich., his wife, Winnie, said. She said he had emphysema and went into the hospital with breathing problems, but a cause of death wasn't determined.
With his mischievous smile and gregarious, easygoing manner, Mr. Fraser was popular with the union's rank and file, who appreciated his candor and accessibility. Everyone called him Doug.
"Everybody thought he was wonderful . . . and he really was," Winnie Fraser said.
He also was a shrewd and pragmatic negotiator who won the respect of Big Three executives. In the 1960s and '70s, he helped win comprehensive health care and improved working conditions.
But he faced challenges as UAW president from 1977 to 1983, a period of severe financial hardship for the industry that forced the union to make unprecedented concessions.
"Doug was a friend, a mentor and a counselor to so many within the UAW and the larger labor movement," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a statement. "His integrity and his enduring commitment to protecting the rights of workers will continue to inspire us."
Mr. Fraser considered his finest achievement the UAW's campaign to obtain $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for Chrysler in 1979, which saved the automaker from bankruptcy.
"At the time, he was probably the most respected labor leader in America, and he had great political charm, as well as substantive commitment," said former Michigan governor James Blanchard, who knew Mr. Fraser for more than 30 years and as a congressman worked with Mr. Fraser on the efforts to guarantee Chrysler's loans. "He was really key in everything that happened to save Chrysler."
Mr. Fraser's decisions to give contract concessions to Chrysler in 1979 and to Ford and General Motors in 1982 were opposed by many UAW members but contributed to the U.S. auto industry's recovery.
As part of the agreement for concessions, Chrysler gave Mr. Fraser a seat on its board, making him the first major union chief on the board of a large corporation. He donated his board salary to Wayne State University in Detroit.
A lifelong Democrat, Mr. Fraser proudly called himself a liberal. He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. He supported school busing to achieve racial integration, a position strongly opposed by many UAW members. He pushed the Big Three and an often reluctant UAW to recruit more minorities and women. And he fought for national health insurance.
Mr. Fraser retired in 1983 but kept active in politics and union issues. He served as a professor in the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs at Wayne State. He also served on the boards of several organizations and as an AFL-CIO arbitrator in jurisdictional disputes between different unions.
After the UAW reached historic agreements with the Detroit automakers last fall that include a lower wage scale for new hires and the union taking on retiree health care for the companies, Mr. Fraser said the deals were necessary to keep the companies afloat and competitive with their Japanese rivals.
"I frankly don't know any other alternative," Mr. Fraser said in an interview in November, praising Gettelfinger for finding creative ways to help the struggling companies while preserving as many UAW jobs as he could.
Born Dec. 18, 1916, in Glasgow, Scotland, Mr. Fraser immigrated to Detroit with his parents six years later. His father, an electrician, was active in unions and frequently took his young son to political meetings.
Mr. Fraser dropped out of high school in his senior year and joined the UAW in 1936.
He said he was fired from his first two jobs for union organizing but eventually found steady work as a "ding man," smoothing out dents in body panels at Chrysler's DeSoto plant. At age 25, Mr. Fraser was president of a UAW local.
When he returned from serving in the Army during World War II, DeSoto executives offered him a management job. He instead joined the UAW staff in 1947 and steadily moved up the ranks through the 1950s and '60s.
He was considered a potential successor to Walter Reuther, the longtime UAW president and labor movement icon. But after Reuther died in a plane crash in 1970, Mr. Fraser narrowly lost a poll of the executive board to Leonard Woodcock, head of the big GM unit.
Mr. Fraser withdrew his bid for the presidency rather than divide the union, and he served with Woodcock as vice president.
He succeeded Woodcock in 1977.