Detroit Free Press Article

UAW to shrink below 500,000
As members leave with buyouts, the union's power is debated
BY JASON ROBERSON FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
December 7, 2006

UAW membership is expected to fall below 500,000 -- one-third its peak levels of three decades ago -- after Ford Motor Co. completes its buyouts of 38,000 hourly workers represented by the Detroit-based autoworkers union.

The Ford buyouts, part of a sweeping restructuring plan, came months after 46,800 UAW members took early retirement or other buyouts from General Motors Corp. and Delphi Corp., its parts-making spin-off, which is in bankruptcy.

Analysts speculate that the UAW, which must negotiate new deals with automakers next year, may need to merge with another union or at least drastically slash its own staff. But members say it needs to stay the course: protect current members as best it can, work to add members at suppliers and transplants, and try to break into other industries.

From a high of more than 1.5 million members in 1969, the UAW's numbers fell to 638,722 in 2002, the year Ron Gettelfinger became president. Last year, membership dropped to 557,099 as U.S. automakers closed some underused plants.

And with 84,800 UAW members deciding to leave under attrition plans from GM, Delphi and Ford, the UAW's active working membership will fall to an estimated 472,300.

The decline in UAW membership mirrors a nationwide drop in union membership, to 12.5% of the workforce in 2005 from 20.1% in 1983. Michigan's union membership fell to 20.5% in 2005 from 26% in 1989, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Working with automakers

Jeff Potter, 54, retired early from Ford's Wixom Assembly plant in June, one of 38,000 to take a buyout or early retirement package as part of the automaker's Way Forward turnaround plan.

Potter said the UAW, which declined to comment for this report, has a better working relationship with automakers than it did in past decades. Potter also said a union with large numbers and carrying a significant strike threat is not needed as much as a union geared toward helping automakers survive.

"I don't wish to second-guess what the UAW and Ford are doing," said Potter, who also is an Oakland County commissioner. "But it would be belaboring the obvious to say that the UAW's nuclear option of a strike is not as evident as it used to be -- and maybe rightly so."

Potter said a UAW strike would only empower Japanese competitors. "We're all kind of grabbing on to the same life raft, and punching a hole in it isn't going to do either of us any good," Potter said.

But Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research, said the threat of a strike is still very real, especially with the union sitting on a strike fund of more than $900 million.

"The union's negotiating power doesn't decline with the size of its membership," he said. "There's an old joke: We could get down to one worker with one red button and still shut the whole company down."

Broadening horizons

Since it was chartered in 1935, the UAW has negotiated industry-leading wages and benefits for its members. Collective-bargaining breakthroughs included the first employer-paid health insurance plan for industrial workers, the first cost-of-living allowances and landmark job- and income-security provisions.

From sit-down strikes to bloody fistfights to steely-eyed negotiations, the UAW long epitomized how unified workers can gain leverage over industry's titans.

Here's how then-President Walter Reuther put it in a speech at the 1970 UAW national convention:

"We have taken on the most powerful corporations in the world, and, despite their power and their great wealth, we have always prevailed, because we have proven that there is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood."

But that awe has dwindled, said Jim Hendricks, partner in the Chicago office of Fisher & Phillips, a labor and employment law firm.

"I don't think they can survive the way they used to," Hendricks said. "Manufacturers and employers feared this union because of their sheer size and strength."

Hendricks suggests a merger with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Both represent highly skilled manufacturing workers.

Several unions in recent years have merged to wield more power. UNITE, formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, and HERE, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, merged in 2004 forming UNITE HERE, which now represents 440,000 active members.

Since 2004, three smaller unions joined the larger Teamsters -- and brought 150,000 members with them.

But the UAW has shown no inclination toward merging.

But it has recognized the need to broaden its scope. The UAW now represents 2,500 mechanics and other workers at 130 auto dealerships, as well as public employees, nurses and legal-service workers.

Ross Eisenbray, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and former chief counsel to the U.S. House Labor Committee, said the buyouts demonstrate the power Gettelfinger still wields.

"The fact that they were able to negotiate these tremendous buyout packages shows they have clout," Eisenbray said. "And if they didn't, the employer would be shutting things down and not taking the workers' needs into account."