Posted on 12/29/2011 6:47:56 AM PST by markomalley
The United Auto Workers union is staking its future on the kind of struggle it hasn't waged since the 1930s: a massive drive to organize hostile factories.
This time, the target is foreign car makers, whose workers have rebuffed the union repeatedly. Specifically, Reuters has learned, the union is going after U.S. plants owned by German manufacturers Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG, seen as easier nuts to crack than the Japanese and South Koreans.
It's a battle the UAW cannot afford to lose. By failing to organize factories run by foreign automakers, the union has been a spectator to the only growth in the U.S. auto industry in the last 30 years. That failure to win new members has compounded a crunch on the UAW's finances, forcing it to sell assets and dip into its strike fund to pay for its activities.
In dozens of interviews with union officials, organizers and car company executives, a picture has emerged of UAW President Bob King's strategy. By appealing to German unions for help and by calling on the companies to do the right thing, King hopes to get VW and Daimler to surrender without a fight and let the union make its case directly to workers.
Central to this effort is the belief that if car companies refrain from actively opposing a UAW organizing push, workers at German-American factories will gladly join the union.
But that belief may be off-base. Workers know that almost every job lost at U.S. car factories in the last 30 years has occurred at a unionized company, while almost every job gained has come at a non-union company. And most of the factories the UAW is targeting are in the South, which is historically hostile to unions.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Thank God they don't have their way.
The UAW’s prime value is an inverse indicator of car quality. If: no UAW, Then: good car.
Out here in "flyover country" this is what we call a "clue".
Hint to VW and Daimler workers and management: if you sign with UAW, I will be MUCH less likely to buy your products.
In closed-shop states, they pretty much already have that.
And it's wrong. In a free country, no one should be forced to join a union in order to get or keep a job.
This is great news!
It means the UAW is in a hurry while they have a VERY friendly NLRB on their side and do not expect that to continue in 2013!!!!
I belonged to two unions in my life and felt that they did nothing but expropriate a chunk of my paycheck in return for making the work environment less pleasant and providing employment for worthless layabouts. I would *never*, *ever* voluntarily join a union.
I always look for the union label. If it has one, I don’t buy it.
I wonder if there's some connection there.....Hmmmmm.
Or, to phrase it more accurately, "the Union has been the CAUSE of the U.S. Auto Industry's lack of growth in the past 30 years".
Which is why PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE THRIVING, because the raping of Taxpayers to funnel to those UNION MEMBERS (and resultant funneling of the Dues to the DNC) is a perpetual $$$$ goldmine, and it will ONLY end in 2 ways: 1) Revolution, or 2) (most likely outcome), the collapse of the Government.
The NLRB will only have two members in two days; not enough for a quorum, so basically unable to act. Any obama appointees will not be approved by congress.
Also, the NLRB has kept the results of all union elections hidden since March of this year. The website originally said they would be posted by October, but they’re still not there. I think they’re hiding how badly the unions have fared in elections this year. I know of one where the union lost with less than 20% of the vote.
...yet!
What unbiased reporting. I have reference to the "right thing." That should be in quotes if King is saying it. Otherwise, Reuters is showing their usual bias.
Nahhhhh.
1) and 2) are not incompatible.
Unions are a racket in which the worker is the pawn.
UAW has been on the US factories producing foreign cars for 30 years trying to organize, intimidating, etc. - “siempre una lucha”
Has anyone asked any GOP candidate what in hell they are going to do with General Motors?
Automobile manufacturers, especially foreign ones, are no dummies.
Same here.
It too often means an overpriced inferior product made by lazy workers supporting crooked, anti-American bosses who make their livings paying off their friends and Democrat politicians (but, I repeat myself).
I would rather buy stuff made by almost anybody else.
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