Hiltzik: Non-union auto workers seek to undermine UAW deal

A curious thing happened in the wake of the United Auto Workers' recent contractual agreements with major auto companies.

Toyota said it would give its workers a raise of about 9% over their maximum salary starting in January.

Nissan said its 9,000 American workers would get raises of about 10% and it would end a two-tier pay system.

Honda announced an 11% pay increase for workers at its plants in Ohio, Indiana and Georgia, along with an accelerated timeline to bring workers up to the maximum salary in six to three years.

Subaru said it would raise wages at its Lafayette, Indiana, plant, although it has not said by how much.

The curious thing about these announcements is that none of these companies are covered by a contract with the UAW. But they could read the writing on the wall of the UAW's contractual agreements. If they didn't, UAW President Shawn Fain made sure they didn't miss the message.

Like some of the industry's major non-union shops, they responded almost instantly. Before the ink was dry on the union's agreements with GM, Ford and Stellantis (owner of Chrysler and Jeep), Fain announced that his next targets would be foreign automakers that had set up shop in anti-worker states to prevent workers from unions their doors.

“One of our biggest goals following this historic contract victory is to organize ourselves like we have never done before,” Fain said. “When we get back to the negotiating table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Six.” (He also noted that he would push to unionize Tesla.)

There are a few ways to look at this. One is that the UAW has absorbed the lesson that the key to organizing new locations and recruiting new members is to achieve victory in contract negotiations. That is what makes union membership go beyond the abstract and makes its benefits concrete.

Few things spell success as much as the contract terms reached by the UAW after its six-week strikes in September and October, including historic wage increases, the reversal of many concessions the union gave to companies to ensure their survival during the last recession and assurances that the industry's transition to electric vehicle manufacturing will not take place without union participation. In that sense, the new contracts are a great advertisement for the virtues of union membership.

The improved pay scales and other job benefits announced by Japanese automakers are, of course, good for the employees of those companies, who become collateral beneficiaries of the UAW's efforts.

However, it is also true that responses from non-union companies could successfully undermine the UAW's organizing efforts.

“When you have a half-unionized industry where unions have a real ability to make a difference, non-union companies have to follow suit or just invite unions in,” labor historian Erik Loomis told me. “It is very easy to divert union support in a factory when wages are the same and workers do not have to pay dues.”

In fact, the technique of fighting unionization by offering workers better wages and benefits is as old as the relations between workers and companies themselves.

In his 1993 memoir, “Confessions of a Union Buster,” former anti-union consultant Martin Jay Levitt recounted “the five key corporate failures that lead workers to seek union help,” as his first boss described to him: “Lack of recognition, Weak management, poor communication, poor working conditions and non-competitive salaries and benefits.”

If a company addressed these issues, Levitt was told, “it can have a happy workforce and never have to fear a union invasion.”

None of this means that the increases announced by Toyota et al. They are, or should be, the equivalent of everything a union can offer workers in an organized plant or company.

There may be other benefits not offered by non-union employers, including job security guarantees, especially in anti-union right-to-work states where many foreign automakers and some domestic manufacturers have established themselves, such as North and South Carolina. , Indiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Kansas and Georgia.

It also shouldn't go unnoticed by workers that non-union companies had to be prompted by the UAW's success to offer raises to their own employees.

“Why not the increase before the UAW?” asks veteran union lawyer Thomas Geoghegan. “You should tell the auto workers at Toyota, Honda and Subaru, who had nowhere else to go anyway, that they were being paid less than they were worth.”

Companies' motivation may be to keep the UAW from storming their doors, Geoghegan says, “but it can backfire by making workers wonder why a raise now and not sooner. We do not have truly competitive labor markets that pay people what they are worth; “If we had them, that increase would have happened without the UAW.”

In other words, the UAW and other heavy industry unions, like the Teamsters, have a long way to go to reinforce their recent victories by taking their fight to new plants in parts of the country, like the Deep South, where they have long fought. to advance.

They have a lot to show for their efforts so far, and at least for the next year, an administration in Washington that has supported Americans' collective bargaining rights like no other administration in 90 years. For the moment, they appear to have the upper hand over recalcitrant administrations. Let's see what they do with it.