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The Obama administration’s efforts to revive the auto industry will now have a union member at its helm. Ron Bloom, a senior adviser in the U.S. Treasury Department for auto industry restructuring, has been named to head the administration’s auto task force.
Bloom succeeds Steven Rattner, a former investment banker, who resigned after less than six months on the job.
Before moving to Treasury, Bloom served as an assistant to United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard. As USW’s director of corporate research, he helped revive and restructure 50 companies in bankruptcy.
Bloom began his career negotiating union contracts for low-wage workers under AFL-CIO President John Sweeney when he was president of SEIU.
With an MBA from Harvard and experience as a vice president at the investment banking firm of Lazard Freres & Co., and his own firm Keilin and Bloom, he has extensive experience in corporate finance. While at the USW, Bloom’s restructuring plans were recognized for preserving thousands of manufacturing jobs and health care benefits for workers and retirees alike.
When Bloom was first appointed a senior adviser in February, USW President Leo Gerard said:
Ron is very passionate in his belief that manufacturing is essential to a healthy economy. The auto industry relationship to manufacturing is as important as Goldman Sachs or Citibank is to the financial community. Ron knows this.
The administration was lucky to find a person who so deeply believes in the union movement and so clearly understands corporate finance, Gerard said.
Saving the domestic auto industry is crucial to the economic renewal of the U.S. The steel, glass, auto parts, tires and paper industries produce products for this industry and employ a quarter million of our members alone.
1 Comment
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As the new “Car Czar,”what will Ron Bloom do to help the 50,000 retired GM union members from IUE-CWA,the Steelworkers and other unions who had most of their health insurance benefits taken away through the recent decision of the federal bankruptcy court while other union Gm retirees were permitted to keep their insurance benefits.
If Ron Bloom is sympathetic to union members and their families,he will find a way to correct this terrible injustice to the 50,00 who had their benefits taken away.
Ed Fire