LaborUnionReport
RedState
12/23/2010
[See footnote below with regard to the GM/Toyota NUMMI plant in Fremont, California.]
Because they’ve done so well with General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, the union known as United Auto Workers (or Union of Ailing Workplaces) wants to help spread some union love to its competitors working in foreign-owned U.S. factories.
According to reports, the UAW’s President Bob King has determined that the UAW will begin its assault on the workers of BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota and VW in January, but is keeping his first target a secret.
Click on the image for a larger view.
Source: American International Automobile Dealers via Christian Science Monitor
As the UAW’s membership has fallen from 1.5 million members in 1979 to around 350,000 members today, the UAW’s King has little alternative but to attempt something…anything to rebuild the union’s membership and its finances.
Via Autonews:
UAW President Bob King said the union intends to launch a campaign in January to organize the U.S. manufacturing plants of Asian and German automakers.
In an exclusive interview, King said the UAW has sent letters to the global CEOs of the automakers with U.S. transplant operations, saying the union wants to organize their plants and cooperate to improve operations.
[snip]
The union is asking target automakers to sign principles pledging that they will not interfere with free and fair union elections at their factories.
The principles, which King first announced this summer, were approved by the UAW’s board of directors within the past week, King said.
If the UAW is allowed to hold a fair election and workers at transplant operations vote against unionization, the UAW will respect the decision and quietly leave, King said.
Once the campaign is announced, the UAW expects to begin actively organizing workers at the plant level, King said. Given a chance, workers want to participate in a cooperative way with management to decide how to improve their jobs, he said. [Emphasis added.]
In essence, the UAW is asking the foreign-owned car companies to agree to remain neutral and skip secret-ballot elections (using card check) and, in return, they’ll play “work with” management (commonly referred to as a “sweetheart” arrangement)…
[* Footnote – The (somewhat dated) map above indicates that the GM/Toyota plant in Fremont, CA is an existing plant. In fact, the NUMMI plant has been closed as a result of the auto bailouts and GM’s abandonment of the Toyota/GM joint venture.]
Read the rest at RedState.com
Also at RedState, The Visalia Monologues: Why Would the Teamsters Attempt to Sabotage 200 Jobs?
…A quick search of the company’s name, VWR International, shows that it is owned by a private-equity firm called Madison Dearborn Partners—a company that, according to the Teamsters, has reversed “more than 50 years of productive and cooperative relations with workers and their union.”
In other words, there is a potential that the Teamsters doesn’t like VWR’s parent company and, therefore, the union will do all that it can to prevent the company from building a new facility—especially, since it looks like the new facility may be replacing an existing union DCwith non-union workers. Of course, that’s just a potential.
So, with unemployment at near 16%, the Teamsters appear ready to kill a 500,000 sq. ft DC in Visalia that would employ—and it bears repeating here—concrete workers, cement-truck drivers, laborers, carpenters, electricians, drywallers, painters, and more (many of them likely union construction tradesmen)—not to mention the hundred or so lift operators, warehouse and office workers and managers that would be employed at the DC after it is built, because of a fight with the parent company…
