Gary Cowger, a former president of Normal Motors North America who repaired the automaker’s relationship with the UAW after a crippling strike and mentored future CEO Mary Barra, died Friday at his residence in Dallas. He was 75.
Cowger had battled most cancers for 2 years earlier than his demise, Judy DeMars, his former secretary at GM, instructed Automotive Information.
He retired from GM in 2009, virtually 45 years after being employed as a co-op scholar in his residence state of Kansas.
In 1998, Cowger was solely months right into a stint as chairman of the automaker’s Adam Opel unit in Germany when GM Chairman Jack Smith tapped him as the corporate’s high labor negotiator within the aftermath of a pricey and bitter UAW strike in Flint, Mich.
To assist settle the disaster, Cowger selected Barra, who was an govt assistant to Smith on the time, to go up inner communications. Cowger was Barra’s boss for practically a decade.
He was president of GM North America from 2001 to 2005, then head of world manufacturing and labor relations till his retirement 4 years later. In that function, he oversaw an effort to construct small automobiles profitably within the U.S. and negotiated main concessions with the UAW forward of the corporate’s 2009 chapter submitting. These offers helped pave the best way for the emergence of New GM shortly earlier than Cowger retired.
“I used to be deeply saddened to listen to the information of the passing of Gary Cowger,” Barra mentioned in an announcement. “Gary made numerous contributions to GM. He was an influential chief and mentor to me and so many others. My ideas are together with his household and family members throughout this troublesome time.”
In highschool, Cowger had aspired to play baseball at Kansas State College, however a counselor steered he look into GM’s close by Fairfax meeting plant as an alternative. “You already know, you will have plenty of technical functionality, and you actually should go down and discuss to Normal Motors,” Cowger recalled the counselor telling him.
So he enrolled within the Normal Motors Institute — now known as Kettering College — and did co-op work on the Fairfax plant, the place he molded seats and hung doorways.
After incomes his bachelor’s diploma from GMI in 1970 and a grasp’s in administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how in 1978, Cowger’s jobs at GM included supervisor of the Lordstown, Ohio, meeting complicated and Cadillac’s manufacturing chief. On the Lordstown plant, lengthy a hotbed of labor strife, Cowger eased tensions.
“It was unprecedented for a plant supervisor to come back over there,” Jim Graham, who was president of UAW Native 1112 in Lordstown, instructed Automotive Information in 1998. “Cowger demanded that administration sit down with the union on a weekly foundation. We had an open line of communication.”
In 1994, Cowger grew to become president and managing director of GM de Mexico. In 4 years, he grew GM into the market chief by practically doubling its share.
As GM’s North American president, Cowger labored with Vice Chairman Bob Lutz to simplify the product growth course of and invigorate the corporate’s lineup. He gave his management group lapel pins with the quantity “29” to suggest the corporate’s 29 p.c U.S. market share goal and renewed GM’s give attention to constructing high quality autos.
“We have now to have each product be ‘gotta have,’ that you just stroll as much as it and also you need to personal it,” Cowger mentioned in 2002. “Our aim is to make each product that we put out vital product.”
Cowger is survived by his spouse, Kay, and son, Chris. A daughter, Mindy, died in 2020.