During the Toledo AP Parts strike in the 1980s, Ron Kossow, a United Auto Workers Local 14 retiree, said he remembers taking a lot of bus trips.

One of those trips took about 50 members to Detroit, where a local UAW chapter held a rally for those on strike. Four of the Local 14 members traveling with the crew escaped from the rally and asked the bus driver to go for a beer run.

“So he took them down to Detroit to find a place to buy beer,” Mr. Kossow said. “And what happened? The rally was over and all the members went outside and there was no bus.”

The bus company fired the driver, Mr. Kossow said, and the driver returned to the Local 14 union hall to talk to then President Oscar Bunch.

“Oscar got up from his desk, got in the car, and went right over there,” Mr. Kossow said. “He had t

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