UAW facing uphill battle in 2024

Experts have seen change in nonunion auto plant workers

DETROIT – The Detroit Three automakers are the win the United Auto Workers needed to perhaps finally organize nonunion automakers in other parts of the United States – particularly in the all-important South, where foreign automakers’ factories have resisted unionizing for decades.

Even so, experts agree the UAW faces an uphill battle.

The union’s well-publicized labor contract deals with Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis, ratified in November following the historic strike against all three, not to mention favorable public opinion, will be key ingredients in the UAW’s effort to get all or some of the thousands of workers at about a dozen electric vehicle and foreign carmakers to join the union.

The power of momentum will be a crucial factor.

“The whole world can pretty much see through the media what kinds of gains this union and presumably unions in general help realize in the daily lives of workers that may not have been fully understood by nonunion workers. So that might be their chief advantage at this time. Their calling card is the gains that they have made,” said Dan Cornfield, a professor of sociology and labor expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “I would think they would want to act sooner rather than later to keep riding on the momentum.”

Those contract wins on issues from wage gains to resumption of cost-of-living increases and even the planned return of vehicle assembly to an idled Stellantis plant also came during what has been a large surge in labor mobilization in the United States in numerous economic sectors in the last couple of years, likely the largest such mobilization since the 1930s, Cornfield said.

This story is an analysis of the rising labor movement that looks to add to the UAW’s rank-and-file. But there is a large contingent of those who oppose unions from corporate management to the factory floor. Some workers question whether their dues will result in real gains or fear job loss if they vote for a union. One of the most vocal opponents of organized labor is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who in November said he doesn’t like, “anything which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing. I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company.”

But Nelson Lichtenstein, a research professor in history and labor expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said he’s been following the UAW for 50 years and he described this as the most hopeful moment during that time for organizing potential.

“Even if they’re partially successful it would be a big turning point in terms of ending the era of stagnating wages for blue-collar workers in America,” said Lichtenstein, author of “Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,” which chronicles the life and impact of the legendary UAW leader.

He’s heard some criticism of the union’s strategy, shifting almost immediately from what he believes was a true victory in Detroit Three talks to announcing a new organizing strategy not focused on any one plant or automaker, but encouraging autoworkers at all nonunion U.S. shops to organize.

“Because they’re basically saying, ‘Let’s see where the energy is, let’s see where the interest is, and then, when that makes itself manifest, then we’ll focus on that in a more specific way,’ ” Lichtenstein said.

That strategy came with a roadmap announcing goals that include getting 30% of workers at a plant to sign union cards. Then a committee of autoworkers would go public with its organizing campaign. Once 70% of the workforce has signed cards, a committee would demand recognition and, if the company refuses, seek a plantwide vote.

UAW President Shawn Fain, in a union video tied to the new strategy, said: “To all the autoworkers out there working without the benefits of a union, now it’s your turn.”

In December, the union filed unfair labor practice charges against three automakers – Honda in Indiana, Hyundai in Alabama and Volkswagen in Tennessee – accusing them in an announcement of “illegally union-busting as workers organize to join the UAW.” Fain accompanied a delegation of Volkswagen workers and community and faith leaders as they delivered a letter to management.

Shortly after the United Auto Workers won wage gains of 25% across 41⁄2-year contracts with the Detroit automakers, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and Volkswagen all offered raises of 9% to 14% to their U.S. workforces.

In December, the United Auto Workers filed unfair labor practice charges against three automakers – Honda in Indiana, Hyundai in Alabama and Volkswagen in Tennessee – accusing them of “illegally union-busting as workers organize to join the UAW.” UAW President Shawn Fain accompanied a delegation of Volkswagen workers and community and faith leaders in Chattanooga, Tenn., as they delivered a letter to management.

In reaction to the UAW’s charges against the automaker, spokespeople for the targeted automakers refuted claims of union-busting and said the companies support workers’ rights.

Volkswagen spokesman Michael Lowder told the Detroit Free Press in an email that labor representation is part of Volkswagen’s culture and that half of its global Supervisory Board members are labor representatives.

“We respect our workers’ right to decide the question of union representation,” Lowder said. “And we remain committed to providing accurate information that helps inform them of their rights and choices.”

Michael Stewart, a spokesman for Hyundai Motor North America, provided a statement as well:

“Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama team members may choose to join a union or not as is their legal right, and this has been true since our plant opened in 2005 . ... The union’s characterization of events in its press statement do not present an accurate picture, and we look forward to having a fair opportunity to present the facts through our participation in the legal process.”

American Honda Motor Co. spokesman Chris Abbruzzese provided a statement, saying: “Honda encourages our associates to engage and get information on this issue. We have not and would not interfere with our associates’ right to engage in activity supporting or opposing the UAW.”

VW plant’s role in recent organizing attempts

For proof of the impact the Detroit Three contracts are having on the UAW’s momentum just talk to Daniel Kaczmarek, 35, a Volkswagen employee in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who works in the paint shop. The UAW put the Detroit Free Press in contact with Kaczmarek. He hired in at the VW factory about 18 months ago at $23.30 an hour, he said.

Despite the UAW’s recent filing of unfair labor practice charges against Volkswagen, Kaczmarek was willing to speak publicly about his desire for union representation. The UAW has said 30% of the Volkswagen Chattanooga workforce has signed cards on the union’s website indicating they want to join the union. Kaczmarek said the UAW’s contract gains with the Detroit automakers has been a motivator.

“What went on at the Big 3 made a huge difference in the momentum at VW. We signed 1,000 cards in a week,” Kaczmarek said. “A year ago, mentioning the word ‘union’ at work would not have gone over very well. Now it’s like working at a different place. There’s a lot of motivation even from people who once said, ‘That kind of stuff is never going to happen.’ Now they have signed the cards and are ready to vote.”

The UAW has a history of trying to organize Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, and looking at the 2014 union election there provides critical insight into the challenges.

“The union felt confident they had a clear majority of the workers in the plant who were favorable to the union then,” said Harley Shaiken, professor emeritus at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley.

But on day one of a three-day vote, the Republican leadership of the state of Tennessee mounted a major campaign to vote no, Shaiken said.

“What ultimately, in my view, tipped the balance was when the vote started, then-U.S. Sen. Bob Corker came out publicly on virtually every media outlet in Tennessee saying he’d spoken to top leaders of Volkswagen in Germany and they had told him, ‘If the union is voted in, there won’t be new investment in that plant,’ ” Shaiken said.

The comments were widely reported at the time across Reuters, the Washington Post and others.

Corker had clout. He was the former mayor of Chattanooga who was instrumental in bringing Volkswagen to the state. His statement rattled the workforce, helping to defeat unionization at the plant, Shaiken said.

In 2019, the UAW again narrowly lost the vote to unionize at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Shaiken said.

The South seen as key

For Erik Loomis, a professor of labor history at the University of Rhode Island, the issue is clear:

The South is the future for the UAW. Automakers have been strategically locating plants in states, largely in the South, that for decades have been less favorable or even hostile to unions and union organizing.

UAW membership is far below its 1979 peak of 1.5 million. The union currently counts almost 400,000 active members and 580,000 retired members.

“Some of that has to do with the inability to organize these plants,” Loomis said, noting that as long as the union is unable to organize in those areas, it works to incentivize continued movement of plants there.

It’s a critical issue, not just for workers in the auto industry, but also for many others, he said.

“Until the labor movement can organize the South, the labor movement is not going to return to power in this country,” Loomis said.

Location is one of the many factors challenging union organizers. Many of the plants have been strategically placed in areas where economic opportunities are very limited, especially for workers with less education, Loomis said.

“When you follow these campaigns, people will just flat out say this is the only decent job in the entire town,” he said of past union campaigns.

Another obstacle has been the automakers themselves, which are large, “very resourceful” corporations that actively resist unionization efforts, according to Cornfield, the Vanderbilt professor.

“And that is not peculiar to the South. That’s just how corporate America in any sector tends to play ball when it comes to unionization,” he said, noting that the UAW has seen success in the South when dealing with southern operations of northern employers.

For Rosemary Feurer, associate professor and labor expert at Northern Illinois University, one of the most significant wins for the union in bargaining with the Detroit Three automakers was the agreement to revive an idled Stellantis Jeep plant in Belvidere, Illinois. The deal with the UAW is supposed to bring a midsized truck to Belvidere, a new Mopar parts hub and an electric vehicle battery plant.

The reopening of a plant, reversing concessions of the past, things like resuming cost-of-living adjustments, and even fighting for broader social aims could present workers in the South with a different way to think about unions, Feurer said. Many of those workers, however, have little experience with what a union is.

Feurer, whose university is about a 30-minute drive south of the Stellantis plant, said workers know that the union’s focus on Belvidere made a difference in the decision to reopen the plant, despite reports of government negotiations behind the scenes.

“All my life that’s all that has been conceded is plant closing after plant closing, and that has been the main argument against unions. ‘Well, you can get a union in, but there’s no way that a union can keep a plant from closing.’ Well, that’s a failure of imagination, the failure of knowing what other countries’ unions do,” Feurer said, noting that she sees glimmers of the resurrection of old strategies that were “torn apart” in an earlier period of labor history.

Feurer said she would not be surprised if the UAW does manage to organize some of the nonunion plants, but she’s not as certain about whether that truly translates into building a movement.

“There’s a long haul here, and it’s pretty sobering when you look at the stats,” she said.

Interest in unions is higher, but that’s not reflected in the rate of union membership. Experts have put the current private sector union membership at 5% to 6%.

“That has to do with the obstacles,” Feurer said, noting that workers still risk their jobs to pursue unionization.

Overcoming odds

If the timing is right, the odds can be conquered. In 1936, when the UAW started an organizing drive at GM, only a third of the workforce openly favored union representation, Shaiken said.

“The rest were frightened. This was the Great Depression,” Shaiken said. “But the third of the workers ‘sat down’ in a number of plants in GM and very quickly GM became paralyzed.”

At the time, pro-labor Democrats President Franklin Roosevelt and Michigan Gov. Frank Murphy influenced the political climate. That influence, combined with the 44-day sit-down strike, forced GM to recognize the union, Shaiken said. Chrysler followed quickly with a union, but Ford resisted until 1941 when it was unionized.

“Henry Ford was vigilantly antiunion. He makes Elon Musk look almost pro-union,” Shaiken said.

In November, Tesla CEO Musk said, “If Tesla gets unionized, it’ll be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.”

But the timing is right, Shaiken said, noting that a President Joe Biden reelection next year − not a certainty based on recent polling − could open the possibility of broader organizing in a Biden second term.

Also helping the union will be a new procedure that kicked in at the U.S. National Labor Relations Board on Dec. 26; it requires union elections at factories be held before any related litigation is resolved, thus greatly expediting a union vote.

According to Reuters, under Donald Trump-era regulation that’s being changed, the NLRB had to rule on issues such as workers’ eligibility to vote and alleged unlawful conduct by employers before holding an election.

Still, one-third of all unions formed by election end up never getting a contract because the company will delay negotiations and the workers will get impatient and “it all collapses,” said Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations and director of the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University.

Unusual tactics

What could be different this time is the new leadership of the UAW and unconventional tactics in organizing. The leadership has used media to define the narrative, experts said.

“What is interesting is there are a solid number of workers in these plants that are willing to speak up and be quoted in the media,” said Rebecca Givan, associate professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. “Usually, you see drives, and no workers are willing to speak up publicly and that indicates fear.”

Givan said the union could successfully organize a nonunion plant fairly quickly once it gets 70% of a plant’s workforce to sign the online cards.

“I don’t think anyone predicted they’d get to 30% at VW within a week and they did,” Givan said. “The ability to get thousands of workers to sign cards in a short period of time suggests they may be able to get to 70% within weeks or months. But this kind of campaign is new, so it’s hard to predict.”

But just how quickly a vote can happen or a contract could be negotiated remains to be seen.

“It will be huge if workers in any of these plants successfully organize,” Givan said. “It will demonstrate that these car companies can compete on product and innovation, but they cannot compete on exploitation of workers. They will be held to a high standard, and it will be a real show of strength.”

Get a plan

MSU’s Berg said that if the UAW’s Fain were to use the narrative that the union is fighting for the working class, it could offset the inevitable company line of: “‘Here’s a third party coming into our company to disrupt our community.’ Often in the South, the union is seen as a third party coming in from the North, versus ‘This is a third party fighting for me.’ ”

The union is wise to use the momentum it now has coming off of the Detroit Three negotiations to do a plant-byplant rollout, looking for “the low-hanging fruit” that offers the best chance to organize, Berg said.

But, Berg added, “I don’t know where they’d find the most favorable ground.”

United Auto Workers membership is far below its 1979 peak of 1.5 million. The union currently counts almost 400,000 active members and 580,000 retired members.

Harry Katz says he does: Tesla. Katz, a professor of labor relations at the Industrial and Labor Relations School at Cornell University, said California – where Tesla’s factory in Fremont builds the Model 3, Model S, Model X and Model Y EV – is a union-friendly state. Moreover, that factory was previously unionized under a joint ownership by GM and Toyota until Tesla bought it in 2010. Tesla also has a factory that builds the Tesla Solar Roof and Superchargers in Buffalo, New York, another union-friendly state.

“Tesla is the place to start,” Katz said. “But even then, it’s going to be a very difficult campaign. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It’s better to start there than in Mississippi (Toyota Motor Manufacturing) or Tennessee (Volkswagen Chattanooga).”

Berg agreed, saying: “Tesla is a good target because you can demonize Elon Musk. You can make the campaign all about him. He’s not well liked. But Honda, a lot of people own a Honda, and you can’t put a face to that. But Musk, you can.”

Not everyone sees Tesla as the best target.

Lichtenstein, of UC Santa Barbara, pointed to Musk as a figure likely to take an active role in fighting unionization similar to Howard Schultz at Starbucks, which has faced widespread complaints about union-busting.

“They see any effort to unionize as a personal insult,” Lichtenstein said. “Musk is willing to lose billions of dollars on (his purchase of) Twitter. He’s willing to lose billions of dollars on fighting the UAW. So there is … maybe a reason to hold off on him for a while.”

The challenge

Shortly after the UAW won wage gains of 25% across 41⁄2-year contracts with the Detroit automakers, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and Volkswagen all offered raises of 9% to 14% to their U.S. workforces.

CNBC recently reported that an internal document indicated Tesla is planning a 10% hourly wage increase for some employees at its Nevada battery plant. Such wage hikes are dubbed the “UAW bump.” The intention is to mitigate any desire to unionize.

What can also diffuse worker enthusiasm to unionize is a lack of layoffs, Katz said.

“The transplants and Tesla have worked very hard to avoid layoffs,” he said.

Katz said if demand for new vehicles falters, the automakers will send workers into training programs or assign them other jobs such as cleaning. They also use a lot of temporary employees, which they can lay off during slower periods. But they don’t lay off the permanent employees, to keep them from wanting a union.

“They’re smart. They have sophisticated lawyers,” he said. “If the economy continues doing decently, as it’s on track to do, they’re not going to do layoffs.”

Katz said the campaign to unionize could take six to eight months before there is an election and a lot can change the worker sentiment in that time frame, which is why now is the time to act.

“Public attitudes are so favorable to unions, find a way to build on that,” Katz said. “The disdain for the billionaires, go to Tesla and show what a billionaire and autocrat Musk is. Work on that. Think of what was done before with trying to unionize and then do something different.”

That means get younger organizers, organizers of color and women. These are people who can connect with the current workforce, Katz said.

“Find out what’s really pissing them off and it’s not easy to do,” Katz said. “But if I were teaching them that’s what I would be telling them. When management is fighting you with sophisticated lawyers, grassroots organizing campaigns are hard to run.”