:: rawblogXport ::

:: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 ::

A Union Label, Inside Out By DANNY HAKIM, NYTimes
WINDSOR, Ontario
FOR more than half a century, Bea LaSorda's family history has been entwined with cars and Chrysler. Her father, Harry Rooney, led the local union in this small Canadian city across a slim river from Detroit. When she was a girl, he charged her, only half-jokingly, with keeping a lookout for Chrysler's company men while factory workers signed union cards in the basement. As a teenager, she watched Chrysler - then and now the city's biggest employer - try to throw him in jail.

Her husband, Frank, another union leader, helped lead Chrysler through what were arguably its most difficult years - those leading up to its 1980 bailout by the United States government, when Lee A. Iacocca was Chrysler's chief executive.

All told, five generations of her family have been union leaders and janitors, electricians and line workers at Chrysler, North America's No. 3 automaker. And in May this year, her son, Tom LaSorda, added a surprising new title to the list: chief operating officer.

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