During his tenure in office, Bonior was the public face of Democratic opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),[1] and was known for his tenacity in opposing Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, against whom Bonior filed more than seventy-five ethics charges.

[4][5] He graduated from Notre Dame High School in Harper Woods, Michigan, in 1963, where he excelled in sports.

His district was renumbered as the 10th in 1993, after Michigan lost a House seat as a result of the 1990 United States Census.

[5] For most of his tenure in Congress, Bonior represented a fairly compact district in Macomb and St. Clair counties northeast of Detroit.

By all accounts, the 10th had been redrawn for the popular Republican Michigan Secretary of State and Macomb County resident Candice Miller.

As expected, Miller easily won Bonior's House seat and held it until eventually retiring in 2016.

[7] Following his retirement from the House, Bonior became a professor of labor studies at Wayne State University,[8] and founded American Rights at Work, a union advocacy organization, of which he currently serves as chairman.

Upon the election of Barack Obama in November 2008, Bonior was a member of the President-Elect's economic advisory board.