Ron Bloom is back in Detroit two years after helping run President Barack Obama’s auto-industry team. This time, he took one role defending the city’s workers and another that puts him at odds with carmaker employees.

Bloom, now a Lazard Ltd. vice chairman, was hired by Fiat SpA Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne to wrest concessions from a union health care fund that will help finance Chrysler’s takeover, according to people familiar with the matter. At the same time, Bloom is advising Detroit retirees fighting benefit cuts in the city’s $18 billion bankruptcy.

The unrelated jobs mean Bloom, 58, who helped save Chrysler in 2009 by taking it to bankruptcy and turning it over to Fiat, will reunite with an old corporate friend and renew his populist stand for the underdog. He’s had experience in both arenas. The banker with a Harvard Business School degree worked with companies on hundreds of bankruptcies and also spent 13 years advising the United Steelworkers union president.

“Bloom plays a unique role,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “You may not like what he says, but you can count on it and he understands the dynamics of both sides.”

As a boy, Bloom spent summers at Habonim camps, Jewish youth programs modeled on Israel’s kibbutzes that stressed the value of manual labor and social justice.

As a teen he boycotted green grapes in support of Cesar Chavez, the farmworkers’ union leader.

After Harvard Business School he landed on Wall Street. He helped industrialist Wilbur Ross create International Steel Group Inc. “Even in his earlier stint at Lazard, Bloom embraced Worker capitalism,” investment banker Steven Rattner said in a 2010 interview. Rattner recruited Bloom to be his deputy as Obama’s auto-bailout czar and Bloom succeeded him when he left.

Bloom will assist the Fiat CEO in trying to strike a deal with the United Auto Workers’ retiree health-care trust, the only other shareholder in Chrysler, according to people familiar with the talks. Marchionne needs an agreement to complete his takeover of the U.S. auto manufacturer.

“If he’s being paid by Sergio, he’s going to try to defend his interests but I suspect he will do it in a way that recognizes the need for the other side and in a way that is candid and both sides can count on,” Shaiken said. “Those are valuable assets in any negotiation.“

Bloom’s new mandates reflect his longstanding ties to the auto industry and place him on opposite sides of the table from officials he worked with in an earlier era.

The Detroit bankruptcy role pits Bloom against Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, one of the lawyers for Chrysler and Marchionne when Bloom helped lead the $80 billion bailout that saved General Motors Co. and Chrysler in 2009. Andrew Yearley, who negotiated opposite Bloom for the UAW during the Chrysler bankruptcy, now will be his partner in Detroit.

Bloom and Yearley will provide financial advice to the committee representing Detroit retirees in the bankruptcy case.

Judi Mackey, a Lazard spokesman, confirmed the Detroit role. She declined to comment on the Fiat position.

At Fiat, Marchionne, 61, has spent the past four years seeking to unify the companies so they can better compete with Toyota Motor Corp., GM and Volkswagen AG. A fully integrated automaker would feature the mass-market Fiat, Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge brands, along with high-end Maserati and Ferrari cars.

Marchionne first must reach a deal that resolves a valuation dispute with the trust, known as a voluntary employee beneficiary association. The U.S. carmaker may file initial public offering documents this month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to list a 16.6 percent stake. The trust, which owns 41.5 percent of Chrysler, has the legal right to initiate the sale under the terms of its holding.

Bloom worked closely with Marchionne in 2009 when the Fiat CEO negotiated with the U.S. Treasury to acquire a controlling stake in Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler. A representative at Turin, Italy-based Fiat declined to comment.

Bloom has been working with Marchionne for months and is helping him understand the priorities of the UAW and the health care trust, one of the people said. Because of his longstanding ties to labor, Bloom has also served as a backdoor channel to the UAW, the person said. (Bloomberg)