Ephlin Says He Won’t Seek Reelection to UAW Post
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Donald Ephlin, the leading proponent of reform within the United Auto Workers, said Friday that he plans to retire from the union by next June.
He will not seek reelection to his post as a vice president and member of the Detroit-based union’s executive board at the UAW’s June, 1989, convention.
Ephlin, 63, director of the UAW’s huge General Motors Department since 1983, has been widely seen as the driving force behind the union’s efforts to improve labor-management relations in the auto industry.
Often Criticized
He often was the most visible and outspoken union supporter of enhanced employee involvement programs on the shop floor, speaking frequently at industry and academic seminars on the subject. He also worked hard to improve relations on a personal level between union leaders and Big Three executives, and he developed a close rapport with many top management figures.
Yet such efforts led to serious political problems for Ephlin within the union itself.
Ephlin, who came to prominence in the union in the 1970s as administrative assistant to UAW President Leonard Woodcock, lost in his only bid for the union’s presidency in 1983. Many of the members of the union’s executive board, which effectively selected the new president, felt Ephlin had become a publicity hound who was out of touch with the union’s grass roots.
Later, as head of the GM Department, he was often criticized by local union leaders for pandering to GM.
While the evidence of improved relations is not as visible at GM, the bitterness that divided GM from its workers does seem to have ebbed under Ephlin.
Ephlin, who began his career 41 years ago at GM’s Framingham, Mass., assembly plant, said he isn’t really retiring so much as making a career change. He has an intense interest in politics and has close ties to the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party, so if Mass. Gov. Michael S. Dukakis wins the presidential election next month, UAW officials expect Ephlin to find a post in the new Administration, perhaps in the trade or labor areas.
