Randi Weingarten is under fire from some members of her AFT union for the endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President in 2016. She also takes heat for for trying to find common ground with people who seem to be hell bent on destroying Public Education. Weingarten became president of UFT in 1998 and president of AFT in 2008. Her role as leader of both unions organizations has been at a time of extreme attacks on unions and Public Education.
Like Weingarten, Doug Fraser rose to the presidency of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) at a time that the survival of the American Automobile Industry and the UAW was an unanswered question.
Mr. Fraser, known as Doug to factory workers and corporate chairmen alike, led the union from 1977 to 1983, a period of intense turmoil in the American automobile industry.
Rapidly rising fuel prices and surging sales of fuel-efficient Japanese cars had produced huge financial losses at the Detroit auto companies, particularly at Chrysler, which was heavily dependent on large automobiles.
As Chrysler ran short of cash and faced possible bankruptcy, Mr. Fraser was instrumental in helping to arrange legislation that provided the $1.2 billion in federally guaranteed loans that put Chrysler back on its feet.
The deal called for hourly workers at Chrysler to accept wage cuts of $3 an hour and gave the company permission to cut nearly half of its 100,000 jobs in the United States.
Lee A. Iacocca, then the chief executive at Chrysler, nominated Mr. Fraser as a company director in 1980, making him the first labor leader to join the board of an American automobile company.
Mr. Fraser, however, stressed that he represented Chrysler’s workers, not himself. He was the lone dissenting vote when the board gave generous stock options to Chrysler executives, including Mr. Iacocca. NEW YORK TIMES
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.Wikipedia
Are There Lessons to be Learned?
