It certainly is, and it surprised me. What is especially surprising is how recent it is. It was as if the UAW was basically stable and ok in the auto industry up until two years ago, and then it suddenly goes on the skids. That seems counter-intuitive to my reading of what has gone on, which would be a pretty steady and far slower decline from the mid-70s on.
A rapid loss in density of this magnitude requires some explanation. This has not been a period of downturn for the auto industry, so one could not imagine a significant loss of existing membership. Indeed, insofar as production in union represented corporations like GM, Ford and Chrysler picked up, there would be a net gain in membership in them. And that still is the majority of the industry. So you would have to have a pretty phenomenal increase in non-unionized production to make these numbers work. Where did it come from?
>
parts workers were just too much trouble to organize, and not really
> worth it, since they make much less money, and aren't worth it from a
> dues collection perspective. How's that for business unionism?
>
Any sensible organizer is going to start organizing the folks that are easier to organize, to build up your base and momentum. Organizing a lot of small, decentralized shops, one by one, is notoriously difficult, in any industry. In the auto industry, the parts industry is of strategic importance, but it is also going to be the hardest nut to crack. This is a strategic truth that will hold true regardless of the way you see it, either in terms of the industry wide strength of unionized workers or in terms of union dues.
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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