Donald Ephlin; UAW Negotiator With Ford, GM

Donald Ephlin, 74, the United Auto Workers union’s chief negotiator with Ford Motor Co. and General Motors during the domestic auto industry’s retrenchment of the 1980s. As head of the union’s GM division from 1983 to 1989, Ephlin negotiated a pioneering contract that was key to the establishment of the car maker’s Saturn division. Under that agreement, which covered the Spring Hill, Tenn., facility, most job classifications were eliminated, which allowed managers and local union officials the flexibility to assign employees to tasks that most needed doing. Workers’ paychecks were partly tied to how many cars were sold each year. Workers at Spring Hill also gained veto power over many management decisions, including the selection of dealers and auto parts suppliers. While much of that agreement has been diluted over the years for more traditional approaches to labor-management relations, it was considered revolutionary for its time. Ephlin, who was the UAW vice president for Ford negotiations in the early 1980s, was raised in Framingham, Mass., and rose to the presidency of Local 422 at the GM assembly plant there before joining the union’s international staff in 1960 in the GM department. A decade later, he became an administrative assistant to then-UAW President Leonard Woodcock and was active afterward in job security, employee involvement and quality of work life issues. Ephlin, who underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer last year, died Friday at his home in Dearborn Heights, Mich., apparently of a heart attack.