Posts tagged United Auto Workers
This Labor Day, let’s ensure that individual workers are empowered, too
September 3, 2022 // Unions should be accountable to their members and remain so. Congress should make right to work laws the standard nationally. It should require unions to make their finances public and periodically hold re-certification votes to ensure they retain their members’ support and transparent elections for leadership. If a union and the workers it represents are in harmony, then none of these reforms will hamper the union—and may even help it. They only become a factor if those same workers want to hold their union accountable. Who has a problem with that?
Labor board rules Tesla must let workers wear union clothing
August 30, 2022 // The National Labor Relations Board has reversed a Trump-era decision by finding that Tesla can’t stop factory employees from wearing clothing with union insignia while on the job. The board, in a 3-2 decision released Monday, overruled a 2019 NLRB decision involving Walmart and union clothing. The board wrote that a 1945 Supreme Court decision established the precedent for allowing the clothing.
Op-ed: Worker freedom and choice are still under attack
August 23, 2022 // In one dispute that reached the NLRB , an employee was told if she did not sign an authorization card, “the union would come and get her children and it would also slash her car tires.” In a 2012 United Auto Workers union drive in Chattanooga, Tennessee, workers claimed organizers said that signing cards would only indicate their interest in the union. But this was not true: Signing the card meant they authorized the union to represent them. Unions prefer the card check approach because it allows them to bypass the protections of a secret ballot election and helps them organize more dues-paying members. If an organizer threatens a worker to sign a card, the worker may comply just to get the organizer to go away.
The Motor City is moving south as EVs change the automotive industry
August 15, 2022 // Detroit is the city that “put the world on wheels,” but it’s towns like Spring Hill and others in neighboring states that are attracting the most investments from automakers in recent years, as production priorities shift to a battery-powered future with electric vehicles. Companies more than ever want to build EVs where they sell them, because the vehicles are far heavier and more cumbersome to ship than traditional models with internal combustion engines. They also want facilities for battery production to be close by to avoid supply chain and logistics problems. SPRING HILL, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Hyundai Motor, Rivian Automotive, workforce, supply chain and logistics, lowest electricity prices,
Opinion: How to Unionize the Artworld
August 15, 2022 // The AWC envisioned a more egalitarian artworld. Leading artistic and cultural institutions like MoMA relied on the labour of hundreds of people, from artists to archivists to cloakroom attendants, and the group felt that they should all have a voice in institutional decision-making, including the ability to bargain over pay and working conditions. As well as empowering art workers, the AWC also sought to make art more available to the public. In one creative act of protest, artist Joseph Kosuth designed a lookalike MoMA membership card, emblazoned with the AWC logo, which purported to grant the cardholder free entry. Unfortunately the AWC, like many radical groups of the era, was not long for this world. Members voted to solidify their project by forming an art workers’ union in 1970, but its scope was ill-defined and the effort fizzled.
How the United Auto Workers union is changing following its latest convention
August 12, 2022 // “I would say the idea of reform was really the central theme of this event, whether you were there as a reformer, or whether you were someone who was pushing back against the idea that the union has a big corruption problem.” — Sascha Raiyn, WDET “I would say the idea of reform was really the central theme of this event, whether you were there as a reformer, or whether you were someone who was pushing back against the idea that the union has a big corruption problem,” says Raiyn. “But the people that I talked to, including veterans of many conventions, said that this convention was the most democratic that they had ever seen.” reverse delegate pay,
We’ve Beaten Down the Union ‘Dues Skim’ in Michigan Again and Again
August 11, 2022 // A few months later, Robert Haynes — a retired Detroit police officer — reached out to tell us that he and his wife Patricia were ensnarled in a similar scheme. Bob and Pat receive monthly Medicaid checks to take care of their two adult children. This dues skim resulted in an estimated 80,000 day care and home caregivers being forcibly unionized, with $35 million taken from their paychecks and given to unions. Harris v. Quinn, Bob and Pat Haynes,
UAW Accused of “Threatening and Intimidating” Members at Constitutional Convention
August 5, 2022 // But reports show that attendees who questioned the union’s status quo were heckled, intimidated or drowned out. The main issue that arose between leadership and attendees was that the UAW did not want to increase pay for striking workers. The vote to raise strike pay passed initially, but UAW leaders then put it up for a reversal vote after many members had already left the convention, allowing the policy to be reversed before it ever took effect. Union leaders also pulled the same trick to give themselves raises after the vote was first denied. “Our leaders … do not represent the rank-and-file members of our union. They represent the interests of staff and leadership. They represent the interests of their friends,” said Daniel Vicente of Local 644. “They absolutely robbed us again. We’ve been robbed by the people in prison; we’re getting robbed by these leaders here.” Daniel Vicente of Local 644, Scott Houldieson,
UAW pushing to get EV battery plants in Michigan to unionize
August 4, 2022 // The United Auto Workers said its future could be in doubt if it doesn’t get these plants unionized. That’s because the Big Three are making a big push for electric vehicles. Detroit’s three automakers already announced plans for seven different battery plants across the country to power the electric vehicles they plan to build. One of those plants is in Lansing. Cindy Estrada, UAW Vice President, The UAW said it has more than 400,000 active members, and that number is expected to drop as companies need fewer traditional engines. Estrada is the one in charge of trying to get plants part of the electric vehicle transition, like the one being built in Delta Township, to join the UAW.
Ex-UAW execs convicted of corruption get out of prison early
July 25, 2022 // Jones and Williams acknowledged they had used union funds for golf trips, expensive meals and stays at California villas. First Step Act, U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit, UAW members from across the U.S. are meeting in Detroit next week to nominate candidates for union leadership. A national election will be held in the fall, a direct result of the government’s corruption investigation.