UAW Membership Falls to New Low; American Axle Strike Goes On
March 31, 2008

The United Auto Workers union reported its membership dropped below a half-million people for the first time since World War II.

In U.S. Labor Department filings, the UAW said it closed 2007 with 464,910 members, a decline of 14.7 percent or 73,500 members from the previous year and more than two-thirds below its peak of 1.5 million members in 1979. It marks the union's low-water mark of membership since 1941.

General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and their suppliers, notably bankrupt Delphi Corp., have eliminated more than 100,000 jobs in the past year. At the same time, the union has made no headway in organizing the increasing number of plants operated by the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans in the U.S.

More evidence of the union’s diminished power came during last year’s national contract talks with the Big Three, when the union accepted the two-tier pay structure it had long fought against.

At the same time, the UAW is waging a bitter battle against supplier American Axle & Manufacturing. More than 3,600 workers have been out on strike since Feb. 26 because the company wants to slice wages virtually in half.

That strike now has led to the closure of 30 General Motors plants and the layoff of at least 40,000 GM hourly and salaried workers because plants have no parts from American Axle to assemble vehicles. The strike has forced the shutdown of other supplier plants as GM has idled assembly plants.

Posted by Michelle Krebs at 8:58 AM under Chrysler , Ford , GM , News | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine