Tennessee’s infamous anti-union union is fading away for lack of members. Will Volkswagen’s rationale for keeping out a real union crumble with it?
While new labor contracts cover only 140,000 unionized employees at the Big Three carmakers, they could lift pay standards for the nearly 1 million people who work in the U.S. auto industry and may also spur wage gains through the broader labor market. The deals come after a decade without raises for senior workers and lower wages and benefits for new hires--which almost completely eliminated the wage premium autoworkers once enjoyed over the average American worker.
Eight years after accepting a drastic two-tier system of wages and benefits—and nearly a decade since the first tier got a raise—the United Auto Workers are bargaining with the Big 3 automakers.
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Roughly 20 to 25 percent of all union contracts have recently contained some kind of two-tier payment. Such arrangements, often made in response to threats of plant closures or job losses, can turn into strategies for long-term suppression of wages. They can also generate conflict and resentment among workers making vastly different amount of money and undermine solidarity.
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The United Auto Workers announced their fourth straight year of increasing membership. The union added that the two-percent membership increase for 2013 does not include several thousand workers who have voted in favor of union representation, but do not yet have contracts with their employers.
Historic election brings outside interference in the vote of Chattanooga Volkswagen workers
If workers vote to join a union at Volkswagen's Tennessee plant this week, they'll be changing America's labor relations for the better - Harold Meyerson. (Voting started yesterday, Feb. 12, and continues through tomorrow, Feb. 15) Lane Windham looks at past labor and UAW organizing efforts in the south.
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