DETROIT — Douglas A. Fraser, who led the United Auto Workers through dark hours in the U.S. auto industry in the 1970s and ’80s, has died. He was 91.
Fraser died late Saturday, his wife, Winnie, said Sunday. She said he had emphysema and went into the hospital with breathing problems.
With his mischievous smile and gregarious, easygoing manner, Fraser was popular with the union’s rank and file, who appreciated his candor and accessibility. Everyone called him Doug.
“Everybody thought he was wonderful,” Winnie Fraser said. “He was a good guy, and he really was (wonderful).”
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 health care.
But he faced challenges from 1977 to 1983, when the industry’s severe financial hardship 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.
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 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. He donated his board salary to Wayne State University in Detroit.
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 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. He also served on the boards of several organizations and as an AFL-CIO arbitrator in organizing disputes between different unions.
