John Dingell was a staunch defender of the auto industry, a statement that perhaps undersells the impact of a man credited with helping save the industry…
John Dingell was a staunch defender of the auto industry, a statement that perhaps undersells the impact of a man credited with helping save the industry during its darkest days.
As the longest-serving member of Congress, Dingell, who died Thursday, had a role in shaping American life through legislative efforts involving health care, the environment and civil rights, but as a bulldog for the auto industry and its workers, the Dearborn Democrat’s efforts were both applauded and criticized.
Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University and director of the Labor Studies Center, said Dingell was a champion of the auto industry because he was a champion of working people.
“He believed the auto industry was essential to building a middle class and a high quality of life for working people in Michigan and across the country,” Masters said. “That’s why he wanted to protect it to the greatest extent possible.”
The same values drove the commitment to civil rights and social justice for African-Americans, many of whom worked in the factories, said Masters, 65. “Two things that really stand out to me about John Dingell would be his commitment to people and treating people with dignity and respect regardless of their status in life.”
Kristin Dziczek, vice president of the Industry, Labor & Economics Group at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said Dingell’s role in saving the auto industry simply can’t be overstated.
“John Dingell was instrumental to saving Chrysler and General Motors in 2009,” Dziczek said.
Very simply, Dziczek explained, too few lawmakers had factories in their districts and they didn’t understand the importance of the legislation being crafted during the Great Recession bailout. That effort provided approximately $80 billion — of which about $70 billion was recovered — for GM, Chrysler and other entities.
Allowing them to collapse, economists believed, “would have caused the entire industry to collapse and thrown the Midwest into a deep depression,” according to previous Free Press reporting.
“You needed John Dingell’s leadership in the House to get that deal done,” said Dziczek, who had known Dingell since her time as a congressional staffer in the 1990s and worked directly with him in her role at the Center for Automotive Research.
Dingell’s defense of the auto industry did not make him a beloved figure everywhere, as noted in a Wall Street Journal obituary:
“His closeness to the auto industry — some environmentalists called him ‘Dirty Dingell’ or ‘Tailpipe Johnny’ — was seen as a factor in his unceremonious removal from the (House Energy and Commerce) committee’s chair” in 2008.
Legendary consumer advocate Ralph Nader, in a 2014 Facebook post ahead of Dingell’s pending retirement from Congress, referenced Dingell’s “vigorous oversight and investigations of federal departments and agencies that were lax, riven with conflicts of interest, or mistreated whistle-blowers” but also the “darker side” to his liberal image.
“He was totally and cruelly indentured to the auto industry even though he was from an overwhelmingly safe Democratic district. More than any other lawmaker, Democratic or Republican, he fought to make sure that the auto Goliaths got their way in Congress and at the (Environmental Protection Agency) and the Department of Transportation,” according to the Nader post.
Nader said Dingell’s efforts cost the UAW tens of thousands of jobs.
“In the greatest ironies of his lengthy career, he helped mightily in sheltering the technological stagnation of Detroit’s auto barons from innovation-advancing regulation that eventually cost them massive market share to more fuel efficient and higher quality foreign imports from Germany and Japan,” Nader wrote.
