THE SMITH CENTER

for Private Enterprise Studies

Guest Column

Top Down Organizing by the UAW

by

David Denholm*

As we celebrated Labor Day 2003 organized labor was demonstrating just how far they have declined in the confidence of the working people of America. For the record, in 2002 only 8.5 percent of employees on private payrolls were union members. That number has been declining steadily since the mid 1950's when it reached almost 40 percent. Top down organizing is an attempt by desperate unions to maintain market share in the face of declining worker interest in union. It is well illustrated by the UAW in its current fight with the Big Three automakers.

The UAW has set a strike deadline for September 14 and UAW members around the country are casting strike authorization votes. This comes at a crucial time in the history of the UAW, which is losing members rapidly. Since 1979 their rolls have fallen from 1.5 million to just less than 640,000 members. Due in part to excessive labor costs, the Big Three are losing market share primarily to union-free, foreign owned domestic producers such as Nissan. The Big Three say they need to close some old plants in order to remain profitable but they have an agreement with the UAW that prevents this.

The UAW is chagrined that the Big Three are obtaining parts from suppliers whose employees are not unionized. There's a good reason the suppliers workers are union free. When the UAW tries to organize them they vote against union representation.

The UAW wants the Big Three to pressure its suppliers to turn over their employees to the union. This would take the form of neutrality agreements and card check elections. In a neutrality agreement the employer agrees to say and do nothing to discourage employees from seeking union representation. That includes providing employees information about the impact that unionizing could have on their jobs.

In a card check election the union is certified on the basis of union authorization cards, rather than a secret ballot election. Union authorization cards are a notoriously unreliable means of determining employees' true feeling about union representation. Unions use deception and pressure tactics to get employees to sign cards. One study found that in order to have a 50-50 chance to win a secret ballot election the union needed to get 70 percent of employees to sign cards.

This is "top down" organizing at its worst. The union knows that well informed employees will reject it in a secret ballot election so they make it impossible for the employees to get the information they need and then compound the insult by denying them a secret ballot vote.

Despite management's cave-in, many employees are fighting to protect their freedom from organized labor's bullying tactics. These courageous employees are aided by legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation (http://www.nrtw.org/) and by encouragement and tactical advice from Union Free America http://www.unionfreeamerica.com/), but it is an uphill battle. The cards are stacked against them by labor policies that only see the conflict as between employees and management rather than as between employees and unions.

The UAW, like the rest of the union movement, has a problem with aging membership. The average age of an auto production worker is 50. Of the people the union represents in the core automobile manufacturing industry more are retirees than are active workers. It is as if the union's leadership through its new organizing drive is just trying to hang on for a little while longer until its core membership can retire. Then it can give up the charade of caring what happens to the people it is now trying to recruit and become a chapter of the AARP.

That will leave the automakers with excessive labor costs, a declining market share and pension obligations that will drive them down the same road to financial ruin traveled by the U.S. steel industry.

Labor leaders who a century ago were fighting for the right of workers freely to choose union representation in secret ballot elections would hang their heads in shame at the contemporary union movements' low regard for the rights and interests of working Americans.

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*David Denholm is the President of the Public Service Research Foundation, a non-profit organization concerned with union influence on public policy.