When Bob King was running for president of the UAW, I blogged that some of the union rhetoric he spouted was probably to get elected and I hoped that he would, once elected, take a realistic stance as to what the unions can and should do and not listen to the rank and file screaming they want their concessions back now that the auto companies are making money.
This morning’s NEWS carried a front page column carrying the headline: “UAW CHIEF CHARTS NEW COURSE FOR AUTO UNION” with the subhead: “King concedes past strategies failed, vows new approaches going forward. Well, reading that nearly knocked me out of my chair!
It took some balls to admit that the UAW was wrong. Wrong in demanding “jobs banks”, wrong in attacking global trade, wrong in demanding job descriptions so narrow that they hindered worker flexibility, wrong in fighting clean air efforts and wrong in taking an adversarial position against management. Wow, that’s a confession!
King said he cannot wait for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act which is everything but free choice. I blogged in the past about this dirty act allowing union goons to threaten workers into signing their cards over and thus allowing the union to automatically unionize a company. Even the Democrats saw the hypocrisy of this legislation.
Now King wants to go after the foreign auto companies in the U.S. and unionize them (this has repeatedly failed in the past) by signing a contract with the companies that would require both union and company to play fair (no dirty tricks) during unionization efforts.
Well, I appreciate King coming clean and admitting union wrongs in the past BUT he has to show to the public a NEW union. A union that wants to help auto companies make products with the best quality, safety and durability.
BUT he also has to show non-union auto workers that there is some benefit to joining a union and this will be very hard in this economic climate. Foreign auto companies already treat their workers well and pay them well. Those workers do not want to jeopardize their jobs by striking a company into bankruptcy and striking is the only weapon unions have.
So even with all of King’s mea culpas about past union wrongs the fundamental problem with unions still remains; what good are they? Is he just fighting for survival – probably since UAW membership has dropped from 1.5 million (1979) to 355,000 at the end of 2009.
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