UAW leader helped Chrysler get bailout
Douglas A. Fraser, the former head of the United Auto Workers union who played a key role in efforts to get federal aid to bail out Chrysler Corp. in the late 1970s, has died. He was 91.
Fraser died late Saturday at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Mich., his wife, Winnie, said Sunday. 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, Fraser was popular with the union’s rank and file, who appreciated his candor and accessibility.
He also was a shrewd and pragmatic negotiator who won the respect of Big Three executives. In the 1960s and ‘70s, he helped win such benefits as comprehensive healthcare 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.
Fraser considered his finest achievement the UAW’s campaign to obtain $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for Chrysler Corp. 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 Gov. James Blanchard, who knew Fraser for more than 30 years and as a House member worked with Fraser on the efforts to guarantee Chrysler’s loans. “He was really key in everything that happened to save Chrysler.”
Fraser’s decisions to give contract concessions to Chrysler in 1979 and to Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. 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 Fraser a seat on its board, making him the first major union chief on the board of a large corporation.
A lifelong Democrat, 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 of his fellow UAW members. He pushed an often reluctant UAW and the Big Three to recruit more minorities and women. And he fought for national health insurance.
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 University in Detroit.
After the UAW reached historic agreements with the Detroit automakers last fall that included a lower wage scale for new hires and the union’s taking on retiree healthcare for the companies, Fraser said the deals were necessary to keep the companies afloat and competitive with their Japanese rivals.
Born Dec. 18, 1916, in Glasgow, Scotland, 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.
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, Fraser was president of the 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 President Walter Reuther. But after Reuther died in a plane crash in 1970, Fraser narrowly lost a poll of the executive board to Leonard Woodcock, head of the big GM unit. He succeeded Woodcock in 1977.
In addition to his wife, Fraser is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, two stepdaughters and several grandchildren.
Winnie Fraser said a memorial service for her husband would be held at a later date.
