Center for Union Facts: UAW President Seeks to Revive Union With Anti-Democratic Organizing Method

Gettelfinger Acknowledges UAW Role in Automaker Woes, Resorts to Coercive Organizing to Rebuild Dwindling Membership

WASHINGTON, June 13 -- Yesterday, at the 34th convention of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Las Vegas, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger "acknowledged that the union's health care benefits helped create a ballooning health cost crisis that had become 'unsustainable' in the face of the auto companies' declining sales" according to The New York Times.

However, Gettelfinger's candid admission that the UAW leadership has negotiated its members off a cliff was an oasis of reason in a desert of ill- conceived ideas. During today's convention remarks, Gettelfinger pushed UAW leaders to focus on increasing their membership rolls and called on politicians to support the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act -- legislation that supports a back-door organizing method called "card check" designed to circumvent traditional secret ballot elections.

Center for Union Facts' Executive Director Richard Berman had this to say about Gettelfinger's comments: "Why would the auto unions focus on growing their membership numbers while they are putting the companies they work for out of business? They should be figuring out how to keep the auto industry alive rather than working to push an undemocratic organizing method."

Berman continued, "The oddest thing is that the UAW is spending money organizing people who have nothing to do with the auto industry. Like a parasite that has killed its host and is hunting for new feeding ground, the UAW's leaders are trying to trap employees who work in fields like childcare and other unrelated areas. Perhaps union bosses should worry less about swelling their ranks for political reasons and more about working to make the domestic auto industry competitive again."

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The Center for Union Facts is a non-profit organization supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public. We are dedicated to showing Americans the truth about today's union leadership.