Owen Frederick Bieber (born December 28, 1929; died February 17, 2020) was an American labor union activist. He served as president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) from 1983 to 1995.
Bieber was born in Michigan. After finishing high school, he joined the McInerney Spring and Wire Company, an automotive parts supplier in Grand Rapids. His father also worked at the company and had helped start a local UAW group there. Bieber became involved in the local union, starting as a shop steward and later becoming its president from 1949 to 1956. In 1961, he began working part-time as a union organizer for the UAW’s international union and left his position as local president to focus fully on the international union. In 1980, he was elected leader of the UAW’s General Motors Department.
In 1983, after a very close election, Bieber was chosen to lead the UAW in October of that year. During his presidency, he supported political causes such as the boycott against South African apartheid and opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. He led the union during a time when the U.S. automobile manufacturing industry was shrinking and managed tense negotiations with the Big Three automobile manufacturers, which included strikes and other labor actions. Although he aimed to grow the union by adding new members, efforts to organize workers at Honda and Nissan plants were not successful. His leadership also saw the Canadian division of the UAW split off to form its own independent group, the Canadian Auto Workers, due to disagreements within the union. Bieber retired from the UAW in 1995.
Early life and career
Owen F. Bieber was born in December 1929 to Albert F. and Minnie (Schwartz) Bieber in the small village of North Dorr, Dorr Township, Allegan County, Michigan. His father was of German heritage and worked as an autoworker at McInerney Spring and Wire Company, an automotive parts supplier. His father helped start UAW Local 687, the first UAW local organized within the city limits of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The family practiced Roman Catholicism, and Bieber attended Visitation Elementary School (a two-room school) and Catholic Central High School in nearby Grand Rapids. As a child, he worked in onion and celery fields by pulling weeds. He graduated from high school in 1948 and began working at McInerney Spring and Wire in July of that year as a wire bender, making seats for Cadillac and Hudson cars. "You had to bend 8- and 9-gauge spring wire, sometimes five wires at a time. Those Hudsons, they had a seat four miles long… It was a hard job. After the first hour in there, I felt like just leaving. If my father hadn't worked there, too, I probably would've," he later said.
Bieber married his high school sweetheart, Shirley M. Van Woerkom, on November 25, 1950. The couple had three sons (all of whom became autoworkers) and two daughters. They lived in North Dorr and also in Southfield.
Although his wire bending job was meant to be temporary, Bieber stayed and did not attend college. In 1949, he was chosen as a shop steward of Local 687 (which covered Grand Rapids and most of the surrounding area). In 1951, he was elected to the local's executive board. In 1955, he joined the local's collective bargaining committee, and in 1956, he became the local's president. In 1961, he became a part-time union organizer for the international union. Bieber retired as Local 687's president in 1962 and took a full-time position as an international representative and organizer with the UAW. He worked closely with Kenneth W. Robinson, the director of UAW Region 1D (then the largest region in the international union). In 1964, Robinson promoted Bieber to servicing representative and made him his personal aide.
On December 18, 1972, Robinson appointed Bieber assistant director of Region 1D after the current director, Charles Rogers, stepped down due to cancer. In 1974, Robinson left his position as director of Region 1D due to health issues. Bieber was elected as his replacement and held the position until 1980.
In 1980, Bieber was elected vice president of the General Motors Department of the UAW. Irving Bluestone, who had led the GM Department since 1970, had retired. The UAW Steering Committee (a group of about 400 local union presidents) unanimously supported Bieber for the position. Other candidates for vice president included Donald Ephlin, Ray Majerus, and Stephen Yokich. Bieber won the election at the UAW's national convention in June 1980, receiving the most votes of any candidate.
Bieber served as GM Department director for two and a half years but negotiated a historic contract with General Motors (GM) in 1982. The early 1980s recession and competition from Japanese automakers had reduced GM's market share, leading to the layoff of more than 140,000 of its 330,000 production workers (about half its workforce). UAW membership had dropped to 1.2 million from a peak of 1.5 million in 1979. In March 1981, nine months after Bieber became GM Department head, GM asked the union to reopen its contract and negotiate concessions, but the union refused. In November 1981, GM used its worker participation program to encourage unionized employees to reopen their contract. Bieber strongly criticized the company for creating "distrust of the UAW leadership," "spoonfeeding" a "captive audience," and misusing the worker participation program to "propagandize or parrot the current views of the chairman of the board of GM as to how to save GM through worker sacrifice." However, behind the scenes, UAW president Douglas Fraser, Bieber, and others were already discussing reopening the contract with GM. The union agreed to enter talks in January 1982, hoping to secure job security for members in exchange for wage and benefit concessions. This decision was historic, as it was only the second time in UAW history that the union had agreed to reopen a contract. It was also the first concessionary contract the union had negotiated.
In April 1982, UAW members approved the concessionary contract Bieber negotiated. Initially, GM agreed to link wage concessions to reductions in the price of its vehicles, but this was not part of the final agreement. The contract concessions were the largest ever made to GM at the time. Workers agreed to forgo an annual 3 percent wage increase, eliminate nine paid holidays over the next two years, defer cost-of-living adjustments in the first three months of the contract to the final three quarters of the contract, establish a wage tier that paid new employees 20 percent less, and implement fines for chronic absenteeism. The union also agreed to negotiate work rules at the local level. In return, GM agreed to keep four plants open that it had planned to close, agreed to a two-year moratorium on plant closings, established profit sharing, created a prepaid legal service program for employees, and promised to pay 50 percent of an annual salary to workers laid off with 15 or more years of job experience. The agreement was narrowly approved (114,468 for and 105,090 against), even though UAW members at Ford Motor Company had approved a similar pact by a 3-to-1 margin.
Implementing the contract proved difficult. Just days after the pact was approved, GM attempted to give its executives large pay bonuses. Bieber strongly criticized the plan, and GM canceled the proposal two days later. However, the damage was already done. Bieber began local bargaining over work rules, but angry workers refused to negotiate any changes, and bargaining ended in July 1982 with no changes.
In his final year as GM Department director, Bieber discussed with GM the impact of outsourcing on UAW members. When GM signed a compact with Toyota to co-own and co-manufacture automobiles in California, Bieber worked to prevent UAW members in affected GM plants from engaging in a wildcat strike.
The UAW constitution barred anyone over the age of 65 from running for president of the union. In July 1981, 64-year-old Douglas Fraser won re
UAW presidency
Walter Bieber was not seen as as charismatic as earlier leaders. He was often quiet and shy when speaking to reporters, and he took lessons from broadcasters to improve his speaking skills. His leadership style was seen as very careful, as he was afraid of making mistakes, and he showed little emotion.
At first, Bieber was not allowed to join the board of directors of Chrysler. Chrysler had added UAW president Douglas Fraser to its board in 1979 after Fraser helped secure $1.5 billion in loan guarantees from the federal government, which saved Chrysler from bankruptcy. Chrysler’s CEO, Lee Iacocca, worried that Fraser’s position on the board would become the "UAW seat." Iacocca threatened not to appoint Fraser’s successor to the board. Fraser convinced Iacocca that it would look better if Fraser stayed on the board for one more year, after which the new UAW president could be elected. Iacocca agreed. Fraser was elected to a one-year term on Chrysler’s board in 1983. Bieber joined Chrysler’s board in October 1984 and stayed until 1991. The UAW did not have a representative on Chrysler’s board for seven years, until Stephen Yokich joined the board of the now-German owned company in 1998.
Walter Reuther and other UAW presidents had been involved in social issues, and Bieber continued this tradition. In 1983, he was part of an effort to mark the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Bieber joined the National Labor Committee, a group that opposed U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua. The group won approval for a resolution that supported a peaceful solution to the conflict and criticized the Reagan administration for favoring a military solution. In January 1986, Bieber helped gain AFL-CIO approval for a boycott of U.S. companies in South Africa under apartheid. Later that year, he visited South Africa, met with cabinet ministers, and demanded the release of jailed anti-apartheid labor leaders. He also pressured GM to pay these workers until they were convicted. In 1990, shortly after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela visited the United States and thanked Bieber for his support. Bieber gave Mandela a tour of the Ford River Rouge Complex.
Bieber pushed for a national industrial policy. He began advocating for this in June 1983, after becoming UAW president. His efforts reached a peak in 1993, when he met with Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors’ CEOs and President-elect Bill Clinton, who supported the domestic auto industry. However, less than a year later, Clinton approved the North American Free Trade Agreement despite Bieber’s strong opposition.
Bieber managed contract negotiations with Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors during his 12 years as UAW president.
The first contract he oversaw was with Chrysler, just two months after his election. Negotiations began earlier than usual and broke down over wages in July 1983. Although a strike seemed possible, the union reached a minor contract extension on September 5 and a new agreement the next day. The contract included an average $2.42 hourly wage increase over two years and restored annual 3% wage increases and quarterly cost-of-living raises. During a press conference about the agreement, Bieber fell from the dais and suffered a slight concussion, requiring brief hospitalization.
The second round of talks involved GM. Traditionally, the UAW selected one of the "Big Three" automakers as a strike target, with the negotiated contract setting a standard for the others. Ford or GM were usually the targets because they were larger than Chrysler. Negotiations with GM began first, with the company proposing a profit-sharing plan, layoffs of about 19% of its 370,000 workers, and lower wages for new workers. Bieber kept Ford and GM guessing about which company would be the strike target but chose GM on September 6. Talks broke down shortly after, and Bieber called a nationwide strike on September 14. Over six days, more than 91,000 GM workers picketed at 33 plants in 12 states. A contract was signed on September 20, offering workers 2.5% annual pay increases and a $1 billion fund to support laid-off workers until they were retrained or rehired. The union and company called the agreement "historic." Twenty-five days later, Ford reached a similar contract, including a $300 million layoff fund and a four-year ban on plant closings.
A strike followed at Chrysler the next year. The Ford and GM contracts created a pay gap with Chrysler, which the UAW tried to close in late 1984 by asking Chrysler to reopen its contract. Chrysler refused, citing a no-strike clause. UAW workers had rejected a 1982 contract with profit-sharing, and their 1983 agreement lacked income security provisions like Ford’s and GM’s. When the Chrysler contract expired in October 1985, Bieber ordered a strike. Over 70,000 workers in the U.S. and 10,000 in Canada walked off the job for 12 days—the first Chrysler strike since 1973. An agreement was reached on October 23, offering workers a $2,120 non-wage bonus, pay increases, equal pay with GM and Ford, profit sharing, and payments for workers displaced by new technology.
Bieber announced in December 1985 that he would seek re-election as UAW president. He won re-election without opposition in June 1986.
Bieber managed a fourth round of contract talks in 1987. Ford was chosen as the strike target, and after a short contract extension, the union reached a tentative agreement on September 17. Bieber agreed to create joint committees to explore work teams, changes to inefficient work rules, and reducing job classifications. In exchange, Ford agreed to a 3% annual wage increase in the first year, lump-sum payments equal to 3% of wages in the second and third years, no layoffs (except through attrition), a $500 increase in the layoff income security fund (capped at that amount), pension increases, better health benefits, and profit sharing. Twenty-one days later, GM agreed to a similar contract, including no plant closings, no layoffs (as long as sales volumes did not drop), the same wage and lump-sum package, profit sharing, work team and job classification study committees, and quality improvement committees in all plants. Both contracts were easily approved by union members.
The success of the GM and Ford contracts led Chrysler to begin
Other activities
Bieber described himself as a strong supporter of the Democratic Party. However, he could not get the UAW members to agree on which Democratic candidate to support during the presidential primaries. In 1992, Bieber was unable to gain support from the AFL-CIO for a Democratic presidential candidate after his preferred choice, Senator Tom Harkin, left the race in March 1992.
Bieber was elected to the AFL-CIO Executive Council shortly after becoming UAW president. He also led the Committee on Reindustrialization within the AFL-CIO's Industrial Union Department. In 1995, Bieber was one of several AFL-CIO presidents who secretly worked to remove Lane Kirkland from the position of AFL-CIO president. The night before the AFL-CIO mid-winter meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida, on February 19–20, 1995, Bieber joined 11 other union leaders to form a "Committee for Change" to remove Kirkland. These leaders had enough votes to replace Kirkland. During the meeting, they asked Kirkland to resign or retire, but he refused. Bieber supported John Sweeney’s successful campaign to become Kirkland’s successor. Bieber left his role as UAW president before the AFL-CIO convention in August 1995 and handed the task of choosing Kirkland’s replacement to Yokich.
Bieber also served on the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations, a government advisory group, and was a longtime member of the National Urban League. He was also a longtime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) board of directors. In this role, Bieber played a key part in efforts to replace William Gibson as NAACP chairman. Many board members wanted to replace Gibson with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the wife of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Although Gibson had strong support on the board, Evers-Williams’ supporters convinced Bieber that his presence at a meeting was important. Bieber attended the meeting, and Gibson was removed as chairman by a vote of 30 to 29 on February 18, 1995.
Bieber was also active in his local community. He served on the board of directors for Project Rehab (a Michigan-based alcohol and drug rehabilitation agency), the Michigan League for Human Services, West Michigan Comprehensive Health Planning Unit, the Michigan State Health Advisory Board, and the Michigan State Mental Health Board. He was also a member of the Personnel and Labor Advisory Council of Grand Valley State College.