PROFILE : Rough Rider : Stephen Yokich Takes UAW Reins at a Critical Juncture

The gathering was meant to be a celebration, but Steve Yokich--lips pursed tightly and veins protruding in his muscular neck--was a study in anger.

As the United Auto Workers’ chief negotiator with General Motors Corp., he had come to a meeting in late 1993 to sign a new three-year contract--one billed as symbolizing a new era of labor cooperation between the union and GM.

Yokich, however, was livid. GM, he said, was now balking on local contracts at some plants.

Refusing to speak to the press, he exploded behind closed doors: “The real GM is back and it’s like it was. I know how to get a good agreement, and we’re going to start that Jan. 1.”

True to his word, 11 days into 1994 about 2,300 UAW members went on strike at a GM truck plant in Shreveport, La. Six more local strikes were approved by Yokich in the next 14 months against the financially struggling GM.

Welcome to the combative world of Stephen P. Yokich, a fiery street fighter and savvy strategist who this week is virtually certain to become the seventh president in the 60-year history of the UAW, one of the nation’s largest and most influential industrial unions.

Today the 826,000-member UAW, a bellwether of the U.S. labor movement, stands at a pivotal point in its turbulent history. Yokich will have the seemingly impossible task of staunching UAW membership losses and regaining its clout in a society where unions are increasingly viewed as anachronisms.

“The UAW has a tough row to hoe,” said Dale Brickner, labor professor at Michigan State University. “And the tools of the past will not work.”

Whether Yokich can live up to the rich tradition of past UAW presidents like Walter Reuther, Leonard Woodcock and Douglas Fraser remains to be seen. There is little doubt he will be operating in a far more complex world, where global competition is a constant and the UAW members themselves are better educated and more independent than they used to be.

Yokich, 59, has already proven himself to be a force of moderation by helping to bridge the deep divisions that separate the union’s advocates of confrontation and the proponents of cooperation.

But the UAW’s internal politics remain fierce. The day Yokich was nominated for union president, a Detroit newspaper reported that he was being investigated by the Labor Department for improperly steering UAW eye-care contracts to a friend. Yokich denies any wrongdoing and says the matter was dredged up by union opponents.

His leadership promises to be more confrontational than that of his predecessor, Owen Bieber, a cautious teddy bear of a man who is retiring after steering the UAW for 12 years through one of its most difficult periods.

But while their personalities differ greatly, their basic philosophies on bread-and-butter issues do not. Yokich is likely to continue efforts to increase job security and pension benefits, while making work-rule and staffing concessions to allow auto makers to become more competitive.

Among the rank-and-file, Yokich is known as a strong-willed--even militant--advocate. “He’s someone we can count on to stand up to the company,” said Bob Del Grasso, a UAW worker at GM’s Poletown plant in Detroit.

Despite the image, Yokich is also a wily pragmatist. He has authorized strikes against GM, demanding it hire more workers, while ignoring contract violations that allow the company to shrink and become more efficient.

“Yokich is a strong leader,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at UC Berkeley. “He offers toughness but stability.”

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Yokich has been reluctant to lay out his vision for the UAW before his expected election at the union’s convention, which starts today in Anaheim. (Yokich, endorsed by the union’s international executive board, is the only announced candidate for the job.)

But in a recent interview, he emphasized some of his priorities, which include increased unionization of foreign-owned auto factories and settlement of the bitter Caterpillar strike.

He is likely to continue pushing for national health care, a shorter work week and a curtailment of contracting work out to non-union vendors. Yokich also advocates merging the UAW with other industrial unions and forming a North American metal-workers federation.

“We’ve always been a union that said if you can’t change, you can’t survive,” Yokich said.

The rise of the trim, well-groomed Yokich to the UAW’s top job is the realization of a boyhood dream. But it is also the reward for a life dedicated to trade unionism.

Even as a toddler, Yokich was on a picket line. His mother, a GM employee for 40 years, pushed his stroller when he was 22 months old as she picketed the company. “I’ve been on picket lines ever since,” he said.”

Born in Detroit to parents of Serbian and Lebanese descent, Yokich grew up in a union family. Both his grandfathers, his mother and father, and most of his aunts and uncles were UAW members and activists.

His own children were brought up on a steady diet of political debate. “Dinner discussions we’re so lively we couldn’t eat without having Robert’s Rules of Order at the table,” said daughter Tracey Yokich, a Michigan state representative. His son, Stephen Jr., is a lawyer for the UAW in Washington.

When only 23, Yokich headed the political action committee of UAW Local 155, a contentious skilled-trades local where his father had been a shop steward. As a young tool-and-die apprentice, the salty-tongued Yokich was arrested for involvement in picket-line scuffles. At a party once, he threw a woman into a swimming pool for expressing anti-union sentiments.

Yokich became a member of the UAW’s international staff in 1969. By 1980, he had become vice president of the international union, in charge of the union’s agricultural implements department.

There he oversaw the bitter 205-day strike at Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar that ended in 1983. Yokich was soon labeled a firebrand. Critics blame his tough-guy posturing for prolonging the strike and nearly bankrupting the company.

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“It’s one of my worst experiences and something I will never forget,” he said, recalling the toll the strike took on the workers and their families.

Yokich, an early Bieber loyalist, moved next to Ford, where his appointment was greeted with fear, since the company was struggling to right itself from $3.3 billion in losses during the early 1980s.

But Ford officials soon found that they could work with Yokich. “We cried when he came and we cried when he left,” said Peter Pestillo, Ford’s executive vice president of corporate relations.

The reason is that although Yokich was wary of teamwork, he backed employee involvement programs already in the Ford contract. He agreed to work-rule concessions in exchange for job-security pledges. Yokich left for GM in 1989.

Meanwhile, dissension was growing in the UAW. New Directions, a union splinter group, called for more confrontation. It argued that cooperation with management--through so-called jointness programs advocated by UAW Vice President Donald Ephlin--had led to concessions without job security.

Yokich has tread cautiously around the jointness debate. While not openly espousing teamwork, he quietly supports cooperation as long as it is not co-option in disguise.

Soon after Yokich moved to GM, labor relations became badly strained. The company, facing a recession and bleeding red ink, announced it would close 21 plants and lay off 74,000 UAW workers.

Before John F. Smith Jr. became GM chief executive after a boardroom coup, Yokich was barely on speaking terms with the auto maker’s top negotiators, whom he distrusted. Since then, relations have warmed noticeably.

Still, Yokich has allowed seven local strikes against GM in the last 18 months. The work stoppages focused on outsourcing and health and safety issues, such as overtime and staffing levels. Some had political overtones.

In March, for instance, Local 594 in Pontiac, Mich., headed by Don Douglas, a former New Directions leader and now a Yokich backer, walked out for six days, demanding that GM provide new work for 1,700 laid-off workers. GM caved in and Yokich gained important support just prior to the UAW elections.

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Such actions have helped Yokich silence the union’s dissidents. “He has effectively co-opted New Directions,” said Fraser, former UAW president and now a labor professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Yokich’s political instincts are impeccable. In frequent visits to plants, he still listens closely to the rank-and-file at the same time he comfortably socializes with some Big Three senior executives.

A complex personality who can be charming one minute and intimidating the next, Yokich likes to keep opponents off balance. At times his positions appear inconsistent. While opposing much of the Saturn experiment--GM’s small car company that provides joint management-union decision making on all levels--he has pushed Saturn-like provisions in contracts at other factories.

When GM proposed closing its inefficient Wilmington, Del., assembly plant, 2,500 UAW jobs were threatened. The decision was reversed recently when union members approved an innovative contract supported by Yokich. It provides more production flexibility by reducing the number of skilled-jobs classifications from 50 to seven and assigning workers to teams.

Still, some critics question whether Yokich has the ability to be a statesman in the tradition of a Walter Reuther. They argue that he lacks the temperament to be a great leader. He can be vindictive to opponents. Yokich appears uncomfortable with the press and grants few interviews.

But supporters say that comparisons to past leaders are unfair. After all, they point out, the legendary Reuther ran the union from 1946 to 1970 when the economy was usually booming, work conditions were harsher and the political environment was more favorable.

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There is no question that times have changed. The UAW has lost nearly half its membership in the last 15 years as the auto industry was buffeted by recessions and foreign competition.

Yokich himself had to deal with the loss of 35,000 jobs at Caterpillar, 60,000 at Ford and more than 100,000 at GM. The union also has been buffeted by the loss of tens of thousands of aerospace jobs, particularly in Southern California.

In such an atmosphere, some union members are clamoring for new approaches to today’s problems. They worry that Yokich will continue a containment strategy--give concessions in exchange for job security for aging members.

“His strategy has been to maintain the status quo, to slow down the process of job losses,” said Mike Bennett, president of Local 1853 at Saturn. “But there is no strategy for competing on a global basis.”

Others say he may be bolder and more imaginative than expected. “I am giving him the benefit of the doubt,” said Local 599 President David Yettaw, a New Directions leader and past critic of the UAW leadership.

To Yettaw, the most critical issue facing the UAW is its bitter strike with Caterpillar. The company’s 14,000 UAW members have been on strike for a year, but Caterpillar is making record profits with a makeshift work force.

“Yokich can only be perceived as successful if he can eliminate this tremendous black eye,” said Yettaw.

Another potential bruise for Yokich could come from the probe of eye contracts for UAW members at Ford and GM. A federal grand jury is looking the awarding of the contracts to Yokich’s friend Avery Sterling.

If nothing else, the probe is an unwanted distraction as the UAW’s new leadership focuses on such pressing issues as organizing.

Labor experts say that unless the UAW can organize the transplants--Japanese and German auto factories in the United States--it will be difficult for the UAW to maintain hard-fought wage and benefit levels. Past UAW efforts to organize these plants have largely failed and labor specialists see little chance for success in the near future.

Yokich, who hangs pictures of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy in his Detroit office, says that the UAW is not just a collective bargaining unit but also a social movement dedicated to boosting the standard of living of all workers. As such, it will continue its fight for national health care and a cut in the 40-hour workweek, he said.

If there is anything that rankles the bespectacled Yokich, it is the suggestion that the UAW is inflexible. He notes that the union made concessions--sometimes stepping backward--to help Chrysler, Ford and GM through their darkest days of the 1980s and early ‘90s. With the Big Three generally healthy again, he expects the UAW to go forward with them.

“When you climb a mountain,” he noted, “you don’t go straight up.”

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Bio: Stephen P. Yokich

He is expected to be elected president of the United Auto Workers union on Thursday, replacing the retiring Owen Bieber.

Age: 59

Born: Detroit, 1935.

Education: Attended Wayne State University in Detroit; completed four-year tool-and-die apprenticeship at Heidrich plant in Oak Park, Mich.

Family: Lives with wife Tekla in St. Clair Shores, Mich. They have two children: Tracey, a Michigan state representative, and Stephen Jr., a labor lawyer with the UAW.

Resume: Served in Air Force from 1952-56. After apprenticeship, joined UAW and worked as tool-and-die maker at an independent shop. Elected to succession of local offices at UAW Local 155 beginning in 1962. Appointed to union’s Region 1 staff in 1969, becoming director in 1977. In 1980, appointed vice president of international union, serving as head of union’s agricultural implements division until 1983; headed Ford division from 1983-89 while also directing national organizing efforts. Has directed negotiations at GM division since 1989.

Activities: Member of Democratic National Committee and officer of Michigan Democratic Party State Central Committee. Member of NAACP and Coalition of Labor Union Women. Serves on boards of Economic Alliance of Michigan, Michigan Blue Cross-Blue Shield and Michigan Cancer Foundation. Hobbies include golf, boating and fishing.

Management style: Has a reputation among the rank and file as combative and confrontational, but his record shows him to be a pragmatist. Seeks to develop trust with auto company officials. Can be vindictive toward opponents.

Quote: “Everybody has their own style. I’m going to continue doing it my way.”

Labor Pains

Membership in the United Auto Workers union has fallen 45% since 1979 as foreign competition and economic recessions have dramatically shrunken the domestic auto industry and the UAW has proved unable to organize Japanese-owned plants.

In millions of people:

1994: 0.826

1986: *

* The 122,000-member Canadian Auto Workers union breaks away from the UAW.

Source: United Auto Workers