Leonard Woodcock

Leonard Freel Woodcock (* February 15, 1911 in Providence, Rhode Iceland, † January 16, 2001 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) was an American union official, president of the auto workers union United Automobile Workers (UAW ) and diplomat.

Life

Woodcock occurred in 1933 in Detroit a union in 1940 and recruited by the UAW as a union official for West Michigan. In 1955 he was elected Vice President of the UAW and as such was responsible for the union departments of Agriculture and aircraft industries. Later he was chief negotiator for the UAW in wage negotiations with the General Motors Corporation and the aerospace industry.

After the death of Walter P. Reuther in a plane crash in 1970, he was elected as his successor as president of the UAW. In the same year he led the union in a 67 days continuous strike against General Motors until it came to the conclusion of a collective agreement. Despite the size of the union, which was the second largest single union in the USA after the Transport Workers Union International Brotherhood of Teamsters, he moved into a more modest salary. As a union leader, he also occupied 9 of the created in September 1971 enemies list of U.S. President Richard Nixon. In 1977 he resigned as union president and handed over this office to his former vice president Douglas Fraser.

In the same year he was sent by President Jimmy Carter as negotiators to Hanoi, from where he returned with the remains of twelve during the Vietnam War as missing gegoltenen U.S. soldiers. At times, he was also seen as the Minister or close advisor to the president.

President Carter was also the first ambassador of the United States appointed him in 1979 in the People's Republic of China. This office he retained until the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan 1981. 1979 he was involved in a meeting of senior government officials from Michigan with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing. At a ceremony at the White House 2000 Ex - President Carter Woodcock acknowledged merit to the normalization of diplomatic relations with China as well as in the realization of the first U.S. trade agreement with the People's Republic in 1979. 1992 he was also the conclusion of a contract for the purchase of U.S. American cars and trucks involved by the People's Republic of China. This was the first U.S. automobiles that were imported after the ban on imports by China in the late 1980s in the country.