Basil “Buzz” Hargrove, the uncompromising Canadian labour leader who spent more than 16 years at the helm of the Canadian Auto Workers and helped define an era of working-class advocacy in the country, has died at age 81.
Hargrove’s career spanned more than four decades, rising from the shop floor of Chrysler’s Windsor Assembly Plant to become national president of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), a position he held from 1992 until his retirement in 2008. Under his leadership, CAW membership expanded well beyond auto manufacturing, into railways, mining, fisheries and airlines.
“Buzz Hargrove was a giant in the Canadian labour movement,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said in a news release Sunday evening, calling him “tenacious” and a leader who inspired generations of union activists.
Born in Bath, N.B. and one of 10 children, Hargrove dropped out of high school and bounced through jobs in Western Canada before landing in Windsor, Ont. He credited his working-class upbringing for sparking his lifelong commitment to social justice.
That conviction fuelled not only his work at the bargaining table, where he negotiated countless multimillion-dollar deals with powerhouses like General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Air Canada and CN Rail for thousands of workers across the country, but also his advocacy for public health care, retirement security and equity.
“Buzz showed us what it means to fight with heart and with strategy,” Payne said. “He was never afraid to challenge the powerful, and he understood that real change requires both courage and collective strength. We owe him a debt of gratitude for everything he did to build a fairer Canada.”
Hargrove played a pivotal role in the CAW’s 1985 break from the U.S.-based United Auto Workers, forging an independent Canadian union voice. In 2013, the CAW merged with Communications, Energy and Paperworks Union to for Unifor, now the country’s largest-private sector union.
Appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2008, Hargrove remained a prominent voice after his retirement, serving as the director of the Centre for Labour Management Relations at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“I’m not going to sit in a rocking chair and I’m not going to play golf, that’s not my style,” Hargrove said at a news conference in Toronto in 2008.
Payne said that while the movement has lost one of its fiercest champions, Hargrove’s “memory will live on in the work we do every day to fight for justice, fairness, and dignity for all workers.”
With files from The Canadian Press.
