Answering UAW’s call

Doing the right thing is a simple concept in theory. But just because something is straightforward doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to do in practice. Doing the right thing – virtue – is easily blocked by our lesser angels, the frailties lurking within our character as human beings.

That’s why progressive social movements have often included what Abraham Lincoln called for when he appealed for national unity in his presidential inaugural address: our “better angels.” He understood that he was addressing human beings, flawed as they were. But he also comprehended the depth of their humanity and concluded they had yet to achieve the altruistic heights they were capable of attaining simply by being the best a human being can be.

With his appeal to do the right thing, Lincoln raised his audience’s bar for human expression by petitioning to the better angels he knew they carried within them.

Such an appeal is timeless and universal. That’s why it has been invoked throughout history to achieve noble ends. Decades after Lincoln’s inaugural address, leaders of the most sweeping, progressive social movements of the 20th century, Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., would incorporate appeals to their oppressors’ better angels into their activist strategies.

The UAW is again turning to its own social movement roots by calling on nonunion automakers in the United States to look for better angels in their company management structures.

In August 2010, UAW President Bob King addressed delegates at the Center for Automotive Research Conference in Traverse City, Mich., and described this new landscape for the UAW and nonunion automakers in the United States:

How does an employer that’s determined to keep union representation out of their workplace do the right thing and embrace change? For many, doing the right thing may not be easy. But the path to achieving it is simple for all. They reach the goal by agreeing to do the right thing when their workers express a genuine desire to have a voice on the job, a desire for unionization. They reach the goal by agreeing to adhere to a framework established by the UAW. They agree to answer the UAW’s call to their better angels.

There’s plenty at stake if they don’t, particularly for employers that operate manufacturing facilities in the United States but have home bases in other countries. Non-U.S.-based manufacturers in the United States, or transnationals, employ U.S. citizens. They often compete against U.S. companies with help from their home countries through industry subsidies, financial support and health care support advantages their U.S. counterparts often don’t have. They benefit from U.S. taxpayer-funded infrastructure. They often accept generous tax subsidies to build and maintain U.S. factories. And, perhaps most ironically, they often allow workers at factories in their home countries to unionize, while denying that right to Americans they employ here in the United States. They gain substantial benefits by setting up shop here in America. But they also come to the United States with a great sense of corporate pride in how they operate here. They see themselves as good corporate citizens.

But denying U.S. workers their First Amendment right to organize in their plants while keeping it for their home country employees doesn’t help their corporate image.

“I truly believe that employers would be wise to re-examine their instinctive resistance to the notion of unionization, and consider some of the advantages of a positive, productive relationship with a union,” President King told delegates at the Center for Automotive Research conference in August. “Unions can and should play a positive role – and the results show the UAW is doing exactly that. Union workers feel secure enough to speak up when they have an idea of how to improve a process. Unions improve morale and reduce absenteeism. They support, rather than obstruct, accountability from both management and the workforce,” added King.

A company’s corporate image suffers if the employer is unwilling to agree to be fair, to agree to a basic set of operating rules in the workplace while their workers decide whether they want union representation. If they decide they don’t want a union, the UAW will also be fair and respect the choice of workers.

The operating rules are called “Principles for Fair Union Elections.”

Because the UAW is committed to the success of their employers, the principles establish a relationship with employers based on a foundation of mutual respect, shared goals and a common mission. The relationship is no longer based on an adversarial work environment that is one-sided and characterized by strict work rules, narrow job classifications and complex contracts.

Currently, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) has no protection for workers who want to freely decide whether to join a union. Access to workers during a vote on whether to join the union strongly favors employers at the expense of union supporters. Often, employers threaten workers with firing or loss of benefits if they support a union. Employers also regularly screen job applicants to weed out potential union supporters, require them to attend anti-union meetings, fire union supporters and threaten to close the facility, all with the goal of creating a climate of fear.

Technically, there is a process that workers can wade through if they feel they were intimidated on the job during a union vote. But in practice, the process doesn’t work, thanks to lengthy delays and no penalties for employers. Where there is fear in the workplace, there’s no room for democracy. That means under current NLRA law it is impossible to have a free, democratic election on whether to form a union.

Richard Bensinger of the UAW’s National Organizing Department has spent a lot of time talking with workers about imbalances in the workplace during union elections. The workers told him the same thing, over and over. “It’s not fair to the union side,” said Bensinger. “There’s not enough equal access or equal time. Workers say all we hear are messages from management. Why couldn’t we hear from the union side at the same time?” he said. He also heard stories of threats from employers that the facility would close and move overseas or that workers would lose benefits if they voted to join a union.

Despite an appeal to do the right thing from the UAW, what if an employer still shows no interest in respecting workers’ rights to organize without threats and intimidation? The NLRA may not be determined enough to react effectively, but the UAW is.

“We will ask them to sign on to these principles. If a company agrees to adopt the UAW principles and follows them, we will respect the decision of their workers whether they vote to join the union or not,” said King. “However, if companies do not agree to these principles, and instead engage in threatening behavior toward workers who want to organize a union, or fire workers who try to organize, or close down facilities to thwart union activity, then the UAW will not tolerate the violation of workers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and association … If companies violate workers’ rights or, if companies take vicious anti-union actions, we will expose those companies in any and every way we can until they agree to respect workers’ rights and to rectify their anti-union actions,” King said.

The UAW will not be working alone. The 21st century economy is global and likewise, the organizing strategy of the UAW is global. It will reach across international borders wherever there are workers who toil in substandard conditions for substandard wages and benefits.

“The UAW is creating a global capacity to respond to undemocratic employer behavior or union busting,” said Bensinger. “Globalizing our effort will create an enforcement wing for these fair election principles, a direct action component. We’ll deploy people around the U.S. in scores of locations – auto dealerships, college campuses, auto trade shows, various events sponsored by transnational companies, anywhere we can create a rapid, sustained response of direct action,” said Bensinger.

The UAW will call on members, retirees, students, community activists, civil rights advocates and political allies to fight alongside us. As in earlier years of the UAW, the organizing strategy will include the recruitment and training of young people from college campuses and civil rights backgrounds.

But the 21st century version will include reaching out to those groups internationally, bringing some of the young people here to the United States to help the UAW’s effort and bring the message of fair elections back to their home countries. The UAW will go beyond where it has traditionally gone to organize workers such as Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia.

“We’ll have workers from around the globe, including Korea, Japan, Germany and England, who operate in their home country unions, come to the U.S. to help in this effort,” said Bensinger. “They’ll also work in partnership with the International Metalworkers Foundation based in Geneva, a global labor center that coordinates the work of all the automotive-based unions around the globe,” he added.

The activists from around the world are going to be very hands-on, according to Bensinger. “We are going to bring people from other countries to workplaces here in the U.S. as ‘moral witnesses’ to meet workers, interview them and see for themselves what these nonunion employers are doing to stop workers from joining a union. The activists will then bring those stories back to our target companies in their home countries,” he said. “Globalizing this major organizing effort here in the U.S. is our way of leveling the playing field at nonunion work sites.”

The stage has been set for the organizing campaign. In July 2010, the UAW sent letters to each transnational in the U.S. offering to meet with them to “restart” their relationships with the UAW. Next, workers at those nonunion plants become the focus, including ensuring that these workers lead their own organizing campaign and form a public organizing committee that focuses on the right to freedom of association and exposing union vote atrocities such as blacklisting, pressure tactics, inequality of access to workers and mandatory anti-union meetings.

Just as free trade must be fair trade in the global arena for the benefit of all and not just a few, so too must worker empowerment be a crucial element of a fully-realized global economy, one that benefits workers in addition to employers and stockholders.

As UAW President Bob King said, “Globalization has improved the living standards of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. As evidenced by the recent labor actions in China, Mexico and Bangladesh, workers around the world want the same thing: a decent wage, good working conditions and the right to organize free unions. The interests of American workers are intricately interwoven with the aspirations of the world’s poor. Just as the 20th-century UAW helped build the American middle class, the 21st-century UAW must contribute to the goal of creating a global middle class. This is the essence of our heritage of fighting for social justice.”

The time to call for the better angels of employers is here. The time for employers to hear that call is now.

Joan Silvi