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SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

On the Prospect website

* David Dayen on the increasingly bizarre thought processes

that dominate congressional Republicans' actions

* Bob Kuttner on the failure of Dodd-Frank
to rein
in increasingly risky banking practices

* Ryan Cooper on Ken Paxton's acquittal

as a measure of the party's control by Paxton's bigoted billionaire
buddy

Meyerson on TAP

Can the UAW Strike Help It Expand to Non-Union Plants?

Probably not directly, but a good contract is a good selling point to
workers at those factories.

What's the most important thing the UAW could win in its contracts
with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis?

I'd argue it's an agreement that the companies' new
electric-vehicle and battery factories be covered by the new contract,
or at least that the companies pledge not to oppose the union's
organizing efforts at them.

That, unfortunately, may well be the proposal that the car companies are
least likely to accept. It's also not likely that the proposal tops
the list of what rank-and-file UAW members want to see realized, because
it doesn't directly address their very real immediate needs.

And management-not just in the auto industry-generally understands
that by conceding to address some of those immediate needs, it can
undercut a union's long-term concerns about its future position in the
industry. Should the three legacy companies agree, say, to roughly 30
percent raises over the life of the contract, and to end or
significantly reduce the two-tier status of many of its employees, it
would make it difficult, though not impossible, for the UAW
leadership-or any union leadership-to keep members off the job in
pursuit of growing the union at factories where none of the current
workforce is employed.

Union contractual victories that encompass the unionization of an
employer's non-union facilities have certainly happened, but they're
hardly a common occurrence. UNITE HERE Culinary Local 226-the now
nearly 60,000-member hotel worker union in Las Vegas-did strike a
critically important deal once with the owner (Steve Wynn) of one hotel
where they were negotiating a new contract that enabled them to unionize
Wynn's other Vegas hotels. In return, though, they did Wynn a favor by
helping him lobby for taxation rules that enabled the big-time foreign
gamblers who dropped a fortune in Wynn's casinos to avoid certain
federal taxes. (By keeping those mega-spenders flocking to Vegas, of
course, the union was also increasing the hotels' revenues, a share of
which, thanks to its contracts, went to its members.)

Unfortunately, the Vegas story reads like the exception that proves the
rule, as, in most cases, an employer isn't desperately seeking the
union's help.

But the long-term future of the UAW truly hinges on its ability to
unionize the Big Three's non-union competitors and their own non-union
EV factories springing up in the right-to-work South. As today's Wall
Street Journal

points out, the SEC reports that total compensation (wages and benefits)
for the median-paid worker at Tesla's factories is a bare $34,084,
while for the median worker at GM, it's $80,034; at Ford, $74,691; and
at Stellantis, $68,683. Total compensation at the Big Three and
non-Big Three new EV and battery factories, as well as at the non-EV
foreign-owned auto factories that are spread across the South, also
falls well short of the levels that UAW members make at the Big Three.

In short, the union won't long be able to realize the kind of gains
its members need unless it can level up the standards at Tesla et al.,
lest it be compelled to face a long-term leveling-down to Elon Musk's
idea of what a proper division of revenue should be. For the UAW, that
task begins with unionizing the Big Three's own EV ventures.

I expect the UAW will emerge from the current strike with some signal
victories, but I don't expect they will include concessions on the
status of the Big Three's new non-union EV plants. The union has
organized a GM joint-venture battery factory in Ohio, and although those
workers won a significant wage increase, they're not included in the
UAW's GM master contract and still lack that contract's health and
pension benefits. The rule changes on organizing recently promulgated by
the National Labor Relations Board
,
however, may just make unionizing such facilities and other non-union
auto plants in the South and Elonland and other less favorable terrains
a less Herculean task than it's been. And if the UAW does win major
increases in compensation and the elimination or substantial reduction
of the two-tier system, that also would give it a good calling card when
it knocks on Tesla's door.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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The Absurdity of Washington Brain

Where what matters in House Republican strategy doesn't actually
matter BY DAVID DAYEN

The Failure of Dodd-Frank

'Too big to fail' is more pervasive and regulation more captured
than ever. What went wrong? BY ROBERT KUTTNER

The GOP Is the Party of Corrupt Oligarchy

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton escaped conviction after being
impeached. BY RYAN COOPER

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