I haven’t been following it closely enough to judge-is the UAW big enough that this might backfire? or is it a good idea, politically speaking?
Membership is down to 370,000. I’m seeing 14.3 million members for all unions in the US.
Probably not a huge impact, most Unions were probably already lining up to support a Democratic Slate outside of the Police Unions which are more split.
Republicans have been telling workers that unions kill jobs since the 1950s. This is not news.
And for these Southern plants, it has the benefit of probably being the truth. Being non-union is the reason they are there in the first place. Unionize, and there are plenty of other places in the world they can move to.
The article sounds more like the logic is something along the lines of “The Big 3 in Detroit are having to cut jobs, etc… because their union workers require too much money, and if you unionize, you’ll be in the same boat here eventually.”
I suppose that’s the same thing as what you’re saying, which is basically that their lower non-union wages and benefits are the reason they’re employed at all, and unionizing would jeopardize that one way or another.
I dunno if membership paints the whole picture though. My family is a strong union family, UAW specifically. You can probably double that 370,000 number to include spouses that are benefitting from UAW contracts.
Does membership include retirees? If it doesn’t, then quadruple the number to include retirees and their spouses.
I don’t know if the other children of union families are as strong Democrat as my brother and I. I know for sure that my dad was very Pro-Trump but he got caught up in the whole cult of the thing. He was willing, as a veteran, to turn a blind eye to Trump’s treatment of POWs and the Gold Star family. Not sure if he’d be willing to turn a blind eye to villainizing the UAW.
To be honest, I don’t think he ever actually voted for Trump. MAYBE in 2016. He didn’t bother to vote in 2020. Probably because in his heart he knew that the guy is gross.
Moot point now, as dad is gone. But his UAW family (me) lives on.
And maybe children and grandchildren, too. My father-in-law is a retired union member, and as far as I know all his kids, kids-in-law and grandkids – not to mention his ex-wife and current girlfriend – are staunch Democrats, despite most of them never being union members.
I’d also be curious to see what the historical trends for the entire workplace are- maybe the percentage hasn’t changed that much, but the overall workforce is smaller due to automation, etc…
This happens with every example of union-busting.
In my industry, airlines, the so called “regional carriers” that sprang up pretty quickly post-deregulation were all simply alter-ego non-union shops set up by managements to eventually coerce all the growth and jobs away from the established union carriers. And they succeeded exactly as much as the established mainline carriers’ unions let them. Which is some for every established carrier, but to different degrees and in different manners for each.
Fast forward 10-15 years and all those non-union alter-ego workers are noticing they’re doing the same job for half the wages, benefits, and working conditions. And if they unionize, they’ll have the same coercive power the established carriers’ unions’ do.
Fast forward another 10-15 years and they’re almost all union now. And are slowly closing the wage & benefit gap with their mainline “partners”.
Management would love to do another cycle of outsourcing to overseas providers. But they can’t quite make it work.
Going back to UAW …
The Big 3 would face significant ongoing costs to move production for the US market to China or Viet Nam or … And since they already built their non-union plants in the cheapest most backwards part of the USA there’s nowhere else left to go farther down-market in this country. Plus of course if they did move they have to build new factories and supply lines which are themselves not quick or cheap. That’s a big upfront capital expenditure hurdle for a much later hoped-for payoff.
If the southern auto workers do unionize, their future will definitely improve for the next 20 or 30 years. Which is most of their working lifetime. Farther than that who can say?
The current Republican effort is just sowing more FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. They have a logical point as far as it goes, but they’re lying out their ass about the timeline of the consequences.
Yeah my mom is getting a big chunk of dad’s pension, plus “Cadillac” insurance, for the rest of her life. This trickles down to a deep appreciation from me, my brother and his family. We’re all already solid blue for other reasons but I would hope that other UAW beneficiaries realize how much we’ve all gained from being UAW families. The benefits definitely didn’t stop at dad’s/grandpa’s paycheck.
Very little of the blue orientation of my wife’s family has anything to do with the patriarch’s earnings, pension and benefits. It’s more of a general mindset – plus just being people who are generally decent and intelligent. Most of them live in Iowa and are aghast at the rightward tilt that once sensible state has taken.
Who do you consider the “big three” today? Because the non-union auto plant about 25 miles from me in SC is BMW.
Here’s Nikki talking about unions 10 years ago:
Good point. I was thinking GM, Ford, and Chrysler because of their existing UAW constituencies, but that was mostly unconscious convention talking, not a considered decision while writing my post.
But I think my BMW was made in that plant near you. And I recall touring a ginormous Toyota plant somewhere in the Georgia / Carolina area in the late 2010s although I don’t remember where or why I was in that part of the country on a driving trip.
I do know the Toyota plant was absolutely festooned with signs intending to sell the workers on how this is a patriotic American plant belonging to a patriotic American company through and through and they should never think of themselves as working for anything connected to Japan. Nosirree Bob! No Japanese here.
It seemed pretty transparent BS to me, but I’ve no doubt the subliminal effect was considerable over time.
In all now I’m curious which manufacturers are most at risk of their US southern workforce unionizing and whether UAW is the only game in town or other established or even homegrown unions are in the mix.
Boeing built a plant in South Carolina to avoid having to deal with unions. Over the years some customers have noticed a difference in build quality, the planes from Washington are superior to those from South Carolina. The biggest reason for this was a much more experienced workforce in Washington. A couple customers have it in their contracts to have their planes built in Washington only. I worked with a couple of people that started at Boeing in South Carolina but moved to Washington for much higher pay and better benefits for doing the same work. They said mentioning anything union down there will get you written up.
Which of course is against the law. Shame the enforcement mechanism has been gutted by years of unrelenting effort by a certain political party.
(gift link)
I can’t wait for a Tesla plant to unionize. Elon Musk’s head exploding would be something to see.
A vote and a loss in Alabama.