A Likely Auto Adviser Is Strong in Union Ways

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/business/17bloom.html

In the 1990s Ron Bloom did what many Wall Street investment bankers wish they had done decades ago: he walked away.

His intention was not to write the great American novel or retire early. Rather, he went to work in Pittsburgh for the United Steelworkers, the nation’s largest manufacturing union.

With that move, Mr. Bloom, now expected to be President Obama’s pick for senior adviser to the Treasury Department on the auto industry crisis, did not exactly surprise his friends. In college, Mr. Bloom was outspokenly pro-union, and he had an aunt who was a leader of the teachers’ union and a great uncle who had been active in the bakers’ union.

The steelworkers’ union welcomed him and his Harvard M.B.A. because he knew how to talk restructuring and debt rescheduling. As a result, he could be just as knowledgeable — and cocksure — as the financial advisers management hired.

As a special assistant and strategic adviser to the steelworkers’ president, he grappled with many of the problems plaguing Detroit’s automakers. He helped the union revive bankrupt companies and consolidate the nation’s steel makers to make them profitable — and to save jobs.