Bob King (labor leader)

Robert Thompson King (born August 18, 1946) is an American lawyer and labor union activist and leader.

Bob King was born in Michigan in 1946.

His father, William J. King, Sr. was director of industrial relations at Ford Motor Company.

He graduated from University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1964.

He attended College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied religion and philosophy before transferring to the University of Michigan.

He graduated from Michigan with a bachelor's degree in political science in 1968.

While in college, he worked during the summer at automobile assembly plants owned by General Motors and Chrysler.

From 1968 to 1970, King served in the United States Army in South Korea.

King was employed full-time by Ford in 1970, taking a position in the Detroit Parts Depot where he became a member of UAW Local 600.

He became an electrician's apprentice in 1972.

Bob King rose steadily and quickly in the leadership of Local 600.

Local 600 (which represented workers at the gigantic Ford River Rouge Complex) was once the largest local union in the UAW and one of the largest local unions in the world, and had a long history of being one of the most liberal unions in the UAW.

King earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Detroit Law School in 1973.

In the 1980s, he led Local 600 in organizing 1,000 health care workers.

King was elected vice president of Local 600 in 1981, and president of the 17,000-member local in 1984.

He served as the chair of the UAW constitutional amendments committee at the 1983 and 1986 UAW conventions.

After winning re-election in 1987, King was named chair of the UAW-Ford Negotiating Committee, which bargained the company-wide master contract at Ford Motor Company.

He bargained with Ford alongside future UAW president Stephen Yokich.

While president of Local 600, King expanded the union's membership into areas outside the automotive industry.

In June 1989, King was elected to the first of what would become three three-year terms as Director of Region 1A, a UAW administrative unit that covered most of Monroe, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties in Michigan.

In 1990, he helped co-found and later co-chaired the Labor/Management Council for Economic Renewal, a non-profit organization made up of small businesses and local unions which exchanged information on best business practices.

King ran for UAW vice president in 1994, but did not win.

During the 1995-1997 Detroit newspaper strike, King engaged in acts of civil disobedience and was arrested three times between 1996 and 1997.

In November 1997, King was assigned to oversee the union's National Organizing Department, a position created especially for him.

UAW members approved making the position an elected vice president in June 1998, and King was elected that year.

It was the first new vice presidency created in many years.

During his four-year tenure in this latter position, King pushed the UAW to organize retail workers at Kmart, casino workers; state, county, and local government employees; and graduate student teaching and research assistants.

Yokich defended King's outreach to these nontraditional constituencies of the UAW.

King also established six regional organizing centers to help devolve responsibility for organizing closer to the worksite.

By November 2000, he had led organizational drives which added about 50,000 new members to the union.

By 2001, more than 22,000 state government workers in Michigan belonged to the UAW, as did some 15,000 graduate student workers.

More than 20,000 of the 60,000 new members the UAW organized between 2002 and 2006 worked outside the automotive industry.

Under his leadership, the UAW organized another 6,000 new members between 2006 and 2009.

But his organizing drives also saw some major setbacks, such as when Nissan workers in Tennessee rejected UAW representation 2-to-1 in what was seen as a major setback for the union in its Southern organizing effort.

Another loss came at Freightliner in North Carolina, and a major organizing effort at Mercedes-Benz never resulted in an election.

The union did make organizing headway among auto parts suppliers, however.

During his tenure at the head of the UAW National Organizing Department, King extensively utilized card check, employer neutrality agreements, and collective bargaining clauses that provided for card check, employer neutrality, and/or expedited representation elections overseen by a neutral third party in plants newly opened by the employer.

The UAW's aggressive use of these types of agreements led to two challenges before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

He was elected President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on June 15, 2010.

His term of office ended in June 2014, and King announced his retirement, being succeeded by Dennis Williams as head of the UAW.