Owen Bieber, who led the United Auto Workers union from the auto industry's dark days of the early 1980s to the prosperity of the mid-1990s, has died.
He was 90. Bieber shepherded the UAW through a recession, the Reagan era, industry downsizing and rapidly expanding global competition. Under Bieber, the UAW also actively supported the Solidarity labor movement, which challenged Poland's Communist government, and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
Bieber traveled to South Africa twice, raising the alarm about the imprisonment of labor activists and smuggling images of torture out of the country.
