Unions head for showdown on cost and clout problems
The Detroit News
Thomas Bray
General Motors and the United Auto Workers appear headed for a showdown over health care costs. But the underlying story is that the labor movement is headed for a showdown with itself.
Despite repeated efforts to breathe new life into the union movement, the ranks of Big Labor continue to decline -- to a mere 12 percent of the work force, compared with about a third of the work force in the 1950s.
Union activists love to blame the problem on globalism and all that cheap labor in Third World countries. But the real reason is that unions are self-destructive, preferring short-term benefits to long-term growth.
GM has steadily pared its work force and recently announced another 25,000 layoffs over three years. Yet when asked about a relatively modest cut in health benefits, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger airily told the New York Times that GM is a "huge corporation" and that nothing could be done until the current contract expires in 2007.
From the viewpoint of an elected union president, this "what, me worry?" strategy makes a certain twisted sense. Most laid-off workers will find other work and lose their vote. Gettelfinger's job is thus safe even at sharply lower levels of auto employment. UAW membership of about 650,000 is less than half what it was in the 1970s, even as wages and benefits of existing members has marched forward.
Not that one should waste much sympathy on the American automakers. After all, they agreed -- reflecting their own short-term interests -- to the union contracts that are killing them. And much of their product line lacks sizzle.
But when you have fallen behind on the cost curve, it's difficult to focus on -- much less find the money for -- style and innovation. And the deepening split within the AFL-CIO reflects a wrong-headed belief among hard-line activists that President John Sweeney isn't trying hard enough to recruit new members.
The UAW has been trying for years -- with no success -- to unionize the foreign automakers in right-to-work states across the South. The problem is not so much a lack of effort as a lack of appeal. The workers in the Nissan, Toyota and other plants make good money and good benefits, thanks to a level of productivity that produces good profits.
Moreover, union political clout is in sharp decline. Unions that once heralded themselves as the vanguard of social progress are now widely seen as another special interest, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.
Union officials have no answer to the competitiveness issue other than morally odious protectionism against the poor in other countries or trying to persuade American taxpayers to pick up the tab for their Cadillac-level benefits. But voters have rightly shown little appetite for engaging in serious trade wars, and they are smart enough to see that a national health system not only doesn't save money -- Europe is sinking beneath the fiscal weight of its national health systems -- but doesn't work.
Even Canada's Supreme Court agreed last week that the country's single-payer health monopoly costs lives. It ordered Quebec to lift its ban on private health providers.
The Michigan work force remains heavily unionized by comparison with the rest of the country. But high union wages have come with a price: Michigan also has the highest unemployment rate, at 7.1 percent, in the United States. And that may only be a precursor to what is coming."
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