UAW Vice President's Office - Walter P. Reuther Library - Wayne ...

History
Donald F. Ephlin became active in the UAW at the General Motors Assembly Plant in
Framingham, MA in the late 1940s, before joining the International Union staff in 1960 as a
member of the GM and Aerospace Departments. He served as administrative assistant to UAW
President Leonard Woodcock from 1970 to 1977, participating in the 1973 and 1976 national
negotiations with GM and Ford and international negotiations with Chrysler. He was first elected
to the post of UAW International Vice President in June 1980 when he began directing the Ford
Department. He led the union’s bargaining teams in negotiating with Ford in 1982, and that
successful negotiation process was later used as a framework to help smooth out negotiations at
General Motors. Ephlin became the vice president of the GM Department in 1983, where he
remained until his retirement in 1989.
In the early 1980s, during a difficult economic period, the state of the U.S. auto industry was
bleak. Stronger foreign competitors made it difficult to compete. Predicting the economy would
fall even further, the UAW opened 1982 negotiations at General Motors and Ford several months
ahead of schedule. The union was determined to maintain its ground and secure workers’ jobs or at
least a substantial portion of their income. Workers at the two automakers accepted a wage freeze
and COLA restriction in exchange for a strong job security provision‚ the Guaranteed Income
Stream (GIS). The GIS paid high-seniority workers 50 to 90 percent of their wages until they
found new jobs. The union also won the first restrictions on outsourcing, including a moratorium
on plant closings due to outsourcing; company-funded training programs; a profit-sharing plan,
and commitments from the companies to invest in plants that had been slated to close.
Job security was still the union’s number one priority as the Big Three began to bargain in 1984.
At General Motors, UAW negotiators achieved a landmark no-layoff guarantee for workers with
one or more year’s seniority. Eligible workers who otherwise would have been laid off due to
outsourcing, technological advances or certain other types of productivity changes, were placed
into a jobs bank and continued to draw wages as they trained for new jobs. The unions also won
commitments from the automakers to develop new small car lines to better compete with foreign
rivals. Donald Ephlin was a major player in all of these negotiations and became widely
recognized as an expert in labor-management problem solving.
As head of the GM Department, Ephlin helped launch the Saturn Corporation and served as cochair
of the GM Quality Network. His knowledge and experience helped to fashion the 1985
UAW-Saturn agreement, which changed the face of labor relations in the automobile industry.
Donald Ephlin was instrumental in the development of employee involvement and in improving
job security and the quality of work life for autoworkers. He was a charter member of the
productivity forum of the Work in America Institute and served on the Presidential Commission
on Industrial Competitiveness. He was one of four labor representatives on the executive
committee of the Council on Competitiveness and was appointed by the Secretary of Labor to
serve on its Task Force on Economic Adjustment and Worker Dislocation. He served on the
board of directors of Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan, the policy board of the Joint U.S.
Japan Automotive Study, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Economic Alliance of Michigan.
After his retirement, Ephlin served as a consultant to unions and management in a variety of
industries and was a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Ephlin died in 2000.
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