The time for the United Auto Workers to win the hearts and minds of nonunion workers in southeastern U.S. auto plants is now. The importance of attracting workers at nonunion plants will be underscored when the UAW opens negotiations on new four-year labor agreements with General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC later this month.
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“If not now, when? We are going to fix it or we continue to do what we’re doing. You keep kicking the can down the road or we’re going to fix it,” said Gary Casteel, director of the UAW region that includes Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia, where most of the nonunion auto plants are located.

Casteel echoes the belief of his boss, UAW President Bob King, who has staked his reputation and the union’s future growth on winning votes to represent workers at those plants. A failure would likely result in a marginalized organization.

The importance of attracting workers at nonunion plants will be underscored when the UAW opens negotiations on new four-year labor agreements with General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC later this month.

“The UAW will exist whatever happens with this organizing campaign, but it is pivotal for the kind of bargaining power in the industry and the kind of broader national presence that the UAW would like to have,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

“Simply put, if (the UAW) is bargaining for the three Detroit automakers, that is an increasingly smaller share of the pie in the U.S., even if that stabilizes or grows,” he added.

Shaiken called the UAW’s effort to organize workers in the South “unprecedented” because it also involved talking with company executives to convince them that the UAW can make for healthier companies.

The UAW has its latest target in sight as employee representatives for Volkswagen AG are in talks with the U.S. union over organizing workers at the German automaker’s new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., Casteel told Reuters on Wednesday.

Establishing a foothold in one of the foreign automakers’ U.S. plants would be a huge victory for a union that has seen its membership fall 42 percent since 2004 to about 377,000 at the end of last year. And the drop is even larger from its all-time high in 1979 of nearly 1.5 million members.

King has been clear that the union’s future depends on signing up workers in these plants.

“If we don’t organize the transnationals, I don’t think there is a long-term future for the UAW,” he said earlier this year.

Uphill battle

However, the union faces many challenges, starting with convincing workers in the largely anti-union South, Casteel said.

Many workers UAW representatives speak with feel threatened by their bosses about talking with the union, he said. That’s a big reason why King has pushed — unsuccessfully so far — for companies to allow the UAW to freely speak with workers on the factory floor rather than the more laborious task of going door-to-door.

Casteel also said it is difficult to convince workers who are just happy to have jobs that in many cases are in areas where the local economy is weak.

Rod Parker, a 42-year-old worker at the VW plant in Tennessee fits that description. He said he likes his job at VW because of the “growth opportunity at a time of a lot of shrinkage” and wouldn’t join the UAW if asked.
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