What Do I Owe the UAW?
Americans, on the whole, are increasingly ambivalent toward labor unions. I feel this ambivalence in my own family. My brother until recently served on a local school board for several years and had to confront a demanding and combative teacher’s union knowing he had a sister-in-law that was a member of the same union in a different state. My brother actually helped combat a union organizing effort at an Endo Chemical plant on Long Island several decades ago.
I have always personally been sympathetic to labor unions – though I’ve never been a member of one. Some union rhetoric can sound anachronistic – like a speech by UAW President Bob King I heard at an Automotive News World Congress event a few years ago. The issues don’t change much, which is probably why King’s passionate speech may have seemed so out of date to me.
The unionization struggle continues in the U.S. and around the world. The latest development is the UAW’s fight to unionize all workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. – which may lead to a first-time victory for the UAW in the U.S. South.
After peaking at 1.5M members in 1979, the UAW now counts approximately 400,000 members. There were 14.8M union workers in the U.S. overall in 2015 or 11.1% of the workforce, down from 17.7M in 1983 or 20.1%, according the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has ties to the auto industry (his father managed a car dealership) and the UAW (he received the organization’s endorsement in his first run for the U.S. Senate). Biden got a jump on the Labor Day weekend with a speech in Parma, Ohio, to UAW members last week. At a time when unions are under fire and on the decline in the U.S., Biden said he had come to express his gratitude.
Biden had a debt to settle. “The UAW, as they say in my old neighborhood, you-all brung me to the dance,” he said. “I was a 29-year-old kid running for the United States Senate. … I was getting trounced.
“A guy named Leonard Woodcock (UAW president 1970-77) who used to run this organization a hundred years ago took a chance on me. Endorsed me right after Labor Day. (Democratic presidential candidate) George McGovern got only 29% of the vote in my state. (Republican presidential candidate) Richard Nixon overwhelmingly won. And I won by a landslide of 3100 votes because of the UAW.
“I came to say thank you. I wouldn’t be standing here as vice president of the United States if it weren’t for the UAW. I asked you to trust me and you did and I hope I returned that trust.”
Biden went on to tout the UAW’s contribution to creating the U.S. middle class and the sacrifices made by the union during the recession in 2008 to help the auto industry get back on its feet. Finally, Biden cited a recent Economic Policy Institute study that assesses the impact of union support on the wages of non-union workers. The EPI study concludes that if current union participation was at the higher levels seen in 1979, annual wages for non-union workers would be $2,700 higher.
Whether we love unions or hate them, like Joe Biden, we all have a debt to the movement.
https://tinyurl.com/zq4qc7e - Union Decline Lowers Wages of Non-union Workers – Economic Policy Institute
https://tinyurl.com/gs2dpym - Vice President Joe Biden Holds Rally in Parma – fox8.com
Roger C. Lanctot is Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics. More details about Strategy Analytics can be found here: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/automotive#.VuGdXfkrKUk
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8 年The US is progressing towards a unionized public sector and a non-union private sector. I suspect this helps to make government less responsive to citizens.
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8 年I was involved in a child custody dispute in Michigan some years back. The UAW had used their clout to unionize the Judicial Service Officers and other professional level employees in a least one county. The other employees were members of the AFSCME. The UAW may have seen the handwriting on the wall. The US private sector may end up non-union except for contracts that involve the public sector.
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8 年dc metrorail unions specify the dismantle and reassemble the escalators imported in.
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8 年Monsieur Lanctot Thank you for your post!
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8 年I installed some equipment in an assembly plant in Detroit several years ago. The factory had two lines to build the same assembly. One line (that I was working on) had state-of-the-art equipment and lighting and was manned by highly motivated workers that typically made rate in about six hours, then went home. The second line was antiquated and slow, and the workers (told me they) often broke their equipment to stop the line and get a break. Nobody was worried about getting fired. Most teachers are highly motivated and do whatever they can, but every principal spends part of their day on a small number of unmotivated and unskilled teachers that they can't fire who are wrecking the chances of every student they "teach." Larger districts warehouse the dead weight in poor neighborhoods or create actual warehouses for the poor teachers to sit in. So no, I don't feel any debt to the unions. It also seems clear to me that the unions are at least half responsible for the unfunded pension plans that are ubiquitous to union shops. They buy their votes with other people's cash today and hollow promises of riches tomorrow. Just like Uncle Joe.