Everything about Douglas Fraser totally explained
Douglas Andrew Fraser (
December 18,
1916 –
February 23,
2008) was an
American union leader. He was president of the
United Auto Workers from 1977 to 1983, and an adjunct professor of labor relations at
Wayne State University for many years. He is best remembered for helping to save
Chrysler from
bankruptcy in 1979 by heavily lobbying
Congress for a financial
bailout.
Early life
Fraser was born in
Glasgow, Scotland in 1916. Fraser's father, Samuel, was an electrician and an active and vocal trade unionist. The family was so poor that his father, who worked at a brewery, would sometimes fuel the family stove with stolen whiskey. Samuel Fraser moved to
Detroit, Michigan, when he was a young boy. In 1922, his mother—with Douglas and his sister and brother—sailed to
New York City aboard the SS
Cameronia and were inspected at Ellis Island on
April 23,
1923. They travelled to their new home in Detroit via train.
He was deeply influenced by the
Great Depression. His father was out of work for extensive periods, and Fraser admitted the poverty and social disorder he witnessed changed his life. He joined the personal staff of UAW President
Walter Reuther in 1951, where he was a personal administrative assistant to the president. In 1959, he was elected co-director of UAW Region 1A, and a member-at-large of the international UAW board of directors in 1962. Reuther soon thereafter appointed him director of the UAW's Chrysler, Skilled Trades, and Technical, Office and Professional Departments. He was elected a vice-president of the international union in 1970.
UAW presidency
Fraser was president of the United Auto Workers from 1977 to 1983. He was elected president after Woodcock reached the mandatory retirement age of 65.
He is best known for his role in negotiating a greater voice for the union in corporate governance with Chrysler during the company's 1979 bankruptcy crisis and subsequent government-sponsored bailout. Fraser mobilized UAW members and heavily lobbied Congress in a move that proved critical He was the first labor leader to sit on the board of directors of an important American company.
Fraser negotiated another round of concessionary contracts in 1982. The
early 1980s recession hit the
Ford Motor Company particularly hard. To help save the company, Fraser negotiated significant wage and benefit cuts. The same wage concessions were given to
General Motors, as Fraser sought to keep wages uniform across the industry in order to avoid giving one company a cost advantage over another.
Fraser received The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence for his significant contributions to life in America.
Douglas Fraser died on Saturday, February 23, 2008, from complications due to
emphysema at Providence Hospital in
Southfield, Michigan.
"I would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are cold."Further Information
Get more info on 'Douglas Fraser'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://douglas_fraser.totallyexplained.com">Douglas Fraser Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
