Fitzsimmons also began taking the union in new directions. In July 1968 he and Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers formed a new national trade union center, the Alliance for Labor Action, to organize unorganized workers and pursue leftist political and social projects. Fitzsimmons and Reuther offered the AFL-CIO a no-raid pact as a first step toward building a working relationship between the competing trade union centers, but the offer was rejected. The Alliance's initial program was ambitious, but Reuther's death in a plane crash on May 9, 1970, near Black Lake, Michigan, dealt a serious blow to the Alliance. The group collapsed in January 1972 after the Auto Workers were unable to continue to fund its operations.