UAW losses in 2000

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

Sorry, guys, but the premise smuggled into the argument doesn't work. It has 
been a while since the UAW was just, or even primarily, an union of 
autoworkers. The joke in the labor movement, after the UAW took in the 
writers' union, was that it stood for the "Union of All Workers." Graduate 
assistants and clericals are the growth sector for the UAW. 

There is really not much of an unorganized auto industry in the US, leaving 
out small time parts manufacturers. All of the major auto manufacturers are 
union. Decline in the numbers of autoworkers relates to outsourcing of 
production outside of the US, and to capital intensive, 
technology/productivity measures inside US auto manufacturing. The problem 
the UAW faces are a lot more complicated than "organizing the unorganized" in 
the auto industry, and require a lot more to solve them than organizing zeal. 
Ask the much diminished West Coast longshore union, about as militant, 
leftwing and class-identified union as the US has had for the last 50 years, 
what one does in the face of such 'technological change.'

Hey, I know class collaborationist union leaders livinbg high on the hog 
makes for a good story line, but it doesn't provide an analysis for how to 
revive American unionism.


> Hmm. Total U.S. auto employment rose by 2.3% from 1998 to 1999, > and
> fell by just 0.6% from 1999 to 2000. But the UAW ranks were down by
> 9.9% and 11.9% respectively. Blaming the latest decline on
> "slackened
> sales" is hardly a good explanation.
>
> They should tie Yokich's base pay to membership growth; that'd be a
> spur to organizing.
>
> Doug
***************


> I know of one big company that could still use a union :-) They should > 
tie all pay scales of all officers to membership growth and if
> membership shrinks during their
> time in office, they can't run for reelection.

Ian

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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