Edition: U.S. / Global

John W. Livingston, 88, Official Of Auto Union and A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Published: May 31, 1997

John W. Livingston, the first organizing director of the A.F.L-C.I.O. and a longtime senior official in the United Automobile Workers, died on May 25 in Westphalia, Mo. He was 88.

Mr. Livingston, who was commonly called Jack, began organizing auto workers in 1933 when the U.A.W. was in its infancy and long served as a top lieutenant of Walter Reuther, who headed the union from 1946 until 1970.

In 1933, he helped establish what was to become a powerful U.A.W. local at a Fisher Body plant in St. Louis. He served as president of Local 25 until 1939, when he became a member of the union's General Motors department, which handled negotiations and relations between the union and the nation's largest auto maker.

In 1942, he was elected an executive board member, but he also served as a regional director based in Kansas City. In 1947, he was elected a vice president of the international union and moved to Detroit to oversee its important G.M. department. He also oversaw the union's activities in the aircraft and farm machinery industries. In 1951 and 1952, he served on the National Wage Stabilization Board, having been appointed by President Harry S. Truman.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a biographer of Mr. Reuther, said the U.A.W. president admired Mr. Livingston for his toughness, and thus chose him to head the G.M. department. But tensions developed between the two men when Mr. Livingston made clear that he did not endorse all of Mr. Reuther's ambitious agenda, include establishing a guaranteed annual wage for G.M. workers in the 1955 contract negotiations. In December 1955, Mr. Reuther eased Mr. Livingston out of the G.M. post.

Mr. Livingston then became the first organizing director of the organization created by the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955. It was a relatively tranquil time when the labor federation did not show the same fire in organizing that many unions did in the 1930's and immediately after World War II.

Mr. Livingston, was born on Aug. 17, 1908, near Iberia, Mo., the son of Richard M. and Mary Alice Burks Livingston. On May 9, 1931, he was married in St. Louis to Rubye Britt.

He remained A.F.L.-C.I.O. organizing director until 1965, when he retired to raise cattle near Tuscumbia, Mo.

He is survived by his wife.