The New York Times, December 13, 1997, Saturday, Late Edition - Final William W. Winpisinger, a fiery, left-leaning labor leader who battled management, politicians and sometimes his fellow unionists as president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, died on Thursday at a hospital in Howard County, Md. He turned 73 on Wednesday and lived in Ellicott City, Md. Mr. Winpisinger sometimes called himself "a seat-of-the-pants socialist," and he spoke and acted accordingly. Although his union of skilled workers was sometimes considered relatively conservative within the labor movement, Mr. Winpisinger advocated mass labor organizing. In an era when some top-level labor leaders were hard to distinguish from the management negotiators they faced across the table, Mr. Winpisinger was almost a throwback to the days of labor titans like John L. Lewis and Walter P. Reuther. === Thomas Petzinger, "Hard Landing" (Random House, 1995): Frank Borman had known the international president of the machinists’ union for years. He was William ‘‘Winpy’’ Winpisinger, rotund and irascible, full of bombast, with ideological leanings as far to the left as one could reach in mainstream politics. Winpisinger and Borman loved fast cars. The machinists sponsored an Indy-class race team, and the two men frequently sat together at the Indianapolis Speedway, the same racetrack once owned by the erstwhile Eastern chairman, Eddie Rickenbacker. So Borman could confer with the union chief freely and confidentially when Winpisinger was in Miami for an AFL-CIO function on Friday, February 2 1, 1986. Although the pilots and flight attendants were also resisting Borrnan’s plea for 20 percent pay cuts, it was Charlie Bryan who most worried the Colonel. Was there anything Winpy could do? Winpisinger was in a desperate fix. To the extent that he admired his friend Borman he mistrusted his own local president. Winpisinger thought Bryan had made himself into a king, so much so that people sometimes mistook Bryan for the international president of the machinists’ union. "Charlie hears voices," Winpisinger told Borrnan. But at the same time, Winpisinger was painfully aware that the rank-and-file resentment against Borman was powerful and still building. Borman had gone to the well once too often. And in any event, Winpisinger was mostly powerless under the union’s constitution to control Bryan. Winpisinger gave Borman a pep talk. Just keep bargaining, he said. Everything will work out. But in encouraging him to continue pressing, the international president left Borman with the indelible impression that he, the mighty William Winpisinger, would step in at the last minute and sit on Charlie Bryan if it was necessary for saving Eastern Air Lines. Frank Borman left his meeting with Winpisinger heaving a sigh of relief. Maybe he could, after all, fix Eastern. Maybe, just maybe, he could checkmate Charlie Bryan. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
