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In this issue:
Union Bailout Update Bill Would Permit Merit Pay in Union Shops Machinists Striking Once a Member Always a Member Labor Relations Insight, Sticky Fingers and more…
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Labor Relations Insight by Phillip Wilson
What have we learned in the first week of the “ambush election” rules?
There are two questions I’ve been asked a lot over the last couple of months, and especially in the last week:
Will petitions increase after the new “ambush election” rules go into effect? How far will election times decrease under the new “ambush election” rules?
Here’s what we’ve seen
Continue reading INK May 10, 2012
 Workers at GM’s assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio had the opportunity to join the UAW in 1981, when the factory was first converted from making Frigidaire refrigerators to assembling vehicles. At the time they were members of the International Union of Electrical Workers, and they voted to stick with the IUE. For decades the Moraine workers simply agreed to the language of the UAW master agreement and there was never any labor tension in the Moraine plant. In fact, in 2007, the plant won recognition as the nation’s most efficient midsize-SUV plant from The Harbour Report™, a measure of manufacturing productivity. Not long afterward that award however IUE leaders made the mistake that would later cost all Moraine employees their jobs – they made concessions at the start of
Continue reading UAW Freezes Workers Out of Recovery
 Union pickets could spoil the grand opening of Revel, Atlantic City’s newest casino, on Memorial Day weekend. The Teamsters, the UAW and UNITE HERE are ready to carve up the spoils claiming Revel workers need a union before any of them has spent even one real day on their job.
UNITE HERE has been chest-bumping the new casino since it was in the planning stages over tax breaks the casino has received and a plan to “term limit” all customer service employees to five years. And all three unions are pressuring Revel for recognition without the messiness of an election or workplace democracy.
“Revel has received a proposal from the three unions to hand Revel professionals over to these unions without an election,”
Continue reading Unions Gang Up on Revel In Atlantic City
 A Chattanooga news outlet has reported that since early March UAW organizers have been at the gates and holding meetings to gather signed authorization cards from Volkswagen workers. One VW employee told a reporter he was gathering signatures in the plant during breaks. It is also rumored that UAW organizers have been meeting with small groups of shop floor activists for several months.
Last summer UAW President Bob King traveled to Germany to coordinate support from IG Metall, the union for German Volkswagen workers setting off the first serious speculations about Volkswagen as the UAW’s first (and perhaps only plausible) target to come out of over a year of UAW staff on the ground throughout the south poking around for a ripe
Continue reading UAW Starts Card Drive on VW in Chattanooga
 In what is being viewed as a big victory for Big Labor, a federal judge last week upheld the NLRB poster rule set to go into effect on April 30. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson waved off plaintiff arguments that the poster requirement was an infringement on the First Amendment rights of employers, calling the rule “a reasonable means of promoting awareness” of the right of employees to engage in union activity. “Nothing in the notice posting suggests that employers favor collective bargaining activities, and nothing in the regulation restricts what the employers may say about the board’s policies,” she wrote. The National Federation of Independent Business and other business-interest groups are expected to appeal.
However the judge went on to rule against the NLRB,
Continue reading Union Bailout Update
 UAW president and eternal flower child Bob King used the 75th anniversary of the Flint sit-down strike to veer his union back towards its socialist roots last week, calling on all UAW members in an impassioned speech to take “direct action” (union parlance for breaking the law) against the evil 1%, starting with, oddly enough, General Electric stockholders.
“It will take direct action. It will take us being willing to face arrest. It will take us being willing to be part of marches and demonstrations,” King told a crowd of 500 cheering UAW retirees many of whom may need assistance getting back up if they do indeed dare to attempt a sit-down protest. King announced the UAW is joining with SEIU, Occupy Wall Street and other class warfare crusaders to
Continue reading Hippie Spring
 In another Detroit mystery twist, Reuters is now reporting that the UAW has targeted Volkswagen and Daimler AG for its multi-million dollar “do-or-die” organizing effort. There was ongoing speculation through 2011 as the union dragged its feet on naming its target, presumably because they couldn’t find a campaign out there they could win. There were persistent rumors that the union would target Nissan, then it began picketing of Hyundai dealerships, and last month UAW president Bob King’s made a cagey non-pronouncement that the union doesn’t use the word “target” anymore.
German companies can be easily bullied at home by German unions into remaining silent and “neutral” during an organizing drive making them a much softer target for American unions than their
Continue reading Are the Germans the Real UAW Target?
 In what seemed a staged moment of “candor,” UAW President Bob King let it slip in an interview last week that the union would in fact not be declaring an organizing target this year. This comes after a year of threats and speculation on what was being touted as the most aggressive organizing effort by the country’s wealthiest union since the initial organizing of Detroit over half a century ago. “We are shifting our strategy a little bit. We are not going to pick or announce a target at all,” King said before then going on to target Nissan.
According to the Detroit Free Press, King said the decision was not prompted by the union’s own self-imposed goal of organizing an automaker before the end of
Continue reading UAW Not Targeting Nissan, Much
 As INK reported in October, the UAW, the world’s wealthiest union, has been digging into its massive strike fund for years to balance the budget and pay for failed organizing attempts. Just this last January the union withdrew $60M for another last ditch effort to unionize foreign autoworkers in the South who continue to display an almost militant disinterest in joining the UAW. Yet without the dues stream of a new automaker or two, the experts have predicted the UAW will soon enter a financial death spiral.
Over this past summer the union spent millions on home visits, committee building and organizer training directed at Southern autoworkers who already earn well above Big Three Tier Two wages. Not to be deterred, the union just announced it
Continue reading UAW to Attack Dealerships
 Meanwhile, as the UAW was spending millions annoying autoworkers down South, union members back in Detroit were boiling at the announcement that their employer would be cutting almost one third of their jobs over the next year. And to make matters that much worse, in 2010 these same union members took $4.5M in concessions to avoid just such a layoff. These weren’t UAW members however, but UAW employees, members of the union own clerical and cleaning staff, unionized by OPEIU.
“Bob King always talks about creative problem-solving, but the only creative problem solution he’s offering is more layoffs,” said Audrey McKenna, vice president of OPEIU Local 494, which represents UAW office employees in Detroit. “We know times are tough, but they’re spending like the ‘Housewives of
Continue reading UAW to Cut 100 Jobs
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