The United Auto
Workers (UAW)
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United Auto Workers
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United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union Founded May, 1935 Members 540,000 Country United States, Canada Affiliation AFL-CIO, CLC Key people Ron Gettelfinger, president Office location Detroit, MI, United States Website www.uaw.org |
History
The UAW was founded in May 1935 in Detroit, Michigan under the
auspices of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) after years of
agitation within the AFL for organizing unions within major
industries. The AFL had focused on organizing small craft unions
since its founding in 1881 by Samuel Gompers, but at its 1935
convention, a caucus of industrial unions led by John L. Lewis
formed the Committee for Industrial Organization, the original CIO,
within the AFL. Within one year, the AFL suspended the unions in the
CIO, and these, including the UAW, formed the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO).
The UAW was one of the first major unions that was willing to
organize African-American workers, which increased its ability to
garner enough support to win recognition through election. The UAW
rapidly found success in organizing with the sit-down strike — first
in a General Motors plant in Atlanta, Georgia in 1936, and more
famously in the Flint sit-down strike that began on December 29,
1936. That strike ended in February 1937 after Michigan's governor
Frank Murphy played the role of mediator, negotiating recognition of
the UAW by General Motors. The next month, auto workers at Chrysler
won recognition of the UAW as their representative in a sit-down
strike.
The UAW's next target was the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford had
promised that "The UAW would organize Ford over my dead body." Ford
selected Harry Bennett to keep the union out of the company, and the
Ford Service Department was set up as an internal security,
intimidation, and espionage unit within the company, and quickly
gained a reputation of using violence against union organizers and
sympathizers (see The Battle of the Overpass). It took until 1941
for Ford to agree to a collective bargaining agreement with the UAW.
By the end of the year, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
dramatically changed the nature of the UAW's organizing.
The UAW's Executive Board voted to make a "no strike" pledge to
ensure that the war effort would not be hindered by strikes, and
that pledge was later reaffirmed by the membership.
At the UAW's constitutional convention in 1946 Walter Reuther won
the election for president and served until his death in a small
airplane accident in May 1970 — leading the union during one of the
most prosperous periods for workers in U.S. history. In the 1960s,
the UAW used its strategy of negotiating a contract with one major
auto maker and applying it to others to secure a number of new
benefits for auto workers, including fully paid hospitalization and
sick leave benefits at General Motors and profit sharing in American
Motors. The UAW also grew to include workers in other major
industries such as the aerospace and agricultural-implement
industries.
During this time, UAW members became one of the best paid groups of
industrial workers in the country — placing them solidly in the
middle class of American society. However, by the end of this
period, changes in the global economy, competition from European and
Japanese automobile makers, and management decisions at the U.S.
automakers had already started to significantly reduce the profits
of the major auto makers and set the stage for the drastic changes
in the 1970s.
The situation for the automotive industry and UAW members worsened
dramatically with the 1973 oil embargo. Rising fuel priced caused
the U.S. auto makers to lose market share to foreign manufacturers
who placed more emphasis on fuel efficiency. This started years of
layoffs and wage reductions, and the UAW found itself in the
position of giving up many of the benefits it had won for workers
over the decades. By the early 1980s, the state of Michigan had been
devastated economically by the losses in jobs and income within the
state's largest industry. This peaked with the near-bankruptcy of
Chrysler in 1979. As a result of plant closings, cities such as
Flint, Lansing, and to a lesser extent Detroit began to lose
population and businesses (as was dramatically shown in Michael
Moore's movie Roger & Me.)
In 1985 the UAW's Canadian division broke off from the union over a
dispute regarding negotiation tactics and formed the Canadian Auto
Workers as an independent union. Specifically the Canadian division
claimed they were being used to pressure the companies for extra
benefits which went mostly to the US members.
The UAW has seen a dramatic decline in membership since the 1970s,
when membership topped 1.5 million. Today's UAW, due to the
continued restructuring of the US domestic auto industry, has sunk
to a membership of approximately 540,000, as of the end of 2006.
