New U.A.W. Leader Hopes to Revitalize Membership (original) (raw)

New Autoworkers Leader Hopes to Revitalize Union

June 16, 2010

DETROIT As a young law student and electrician apprentice at the Ford Motor Company’s mammoth Rouge factory complex, Bob King won support from co-workers who agreed with his radical viewpoints.

Nearly 30 years later, Mr. King, who rose through the ranks of the United Automobile Workers union to become a vice president, was booed at that same plant last fall by some workers who saw him as too eager to swallow the company line. Undaunted, he stayed several more hours to explain his position, but 70 percent of Ford workers across the United States voted to reject the contract changes he endorsed.

Now Mr. King, who was elected Wednesday as the U.A.W.’s 10th president, has to show that the union has caught up with today’s economic realities while demonstrating to workers that he still embraces the old union principles.

Mr. King’s efforts to connect with workers gave him an easy victory in a roll-call vote of convention delegates here. But dissidents had nominated their own candidate to challenge Mr. King. It was the first time since 1992 that the candidate endorsed by union leaders faced opposition.

The opposition candidate, Gary Walkowicz, and other dissidents circulated a flier at the convention saying: “Our lives, our standard of living, our prospects for the future have been seriously damaged by years of concessions given to incredibly wealthy corporations. We cannot give in to company demands every time they cry poor.”

The disagreement pointed to the fissures Mr. King confronts, particularly among factions fighting concessions granted by the union in recent years. He must walk a fine line: press too hard and risk driving more workers out of jobs, but get too little and the union, whose membership has hit a 70-year low, weakens further.

Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that Mr. King, an often fiery free thinker, could be exactly the leader to burnish the union’s image and reinvigorate its membership.

“He’s very seasoned, but he retains the idealism he had when he first walked through the gates of the Rouge,” said Professor Shaiken, who has known Mr. King for many years. “There’s no guarantee of success, but if anyone can succeed, it’s him.”

At the top of Mr. King’s agenda is a principle he calls “equality of gain”: demanding that, as the Detroit automakers recover, U.A.W. members are rewarded for the sacrifices forced upon them to the same degree as executives, white-collar workers and investors. The companies must negotiate a new union contract next year, when all three are expected to be profitable.

“The last eight years, we’ve had to focus so much on a defensive, save-the-industry strategy,” Mr. King said in an interview. “We now will have the opportunity to refocus the agenda.”

Mr. King, who at age 63 is only two years younger than his retiring predecessor, Ron Gettelfinger, and a career union man, hardly represents new blood atop the U.A.W., which bailout opponents frequently blamed for dragging General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy last year.

Image

Bob King, left, was elected president of the U.A.W. on Wednesday, and General Holiefield, a vice president. Credit...Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Rolling back some concessions is just one of many goals Mr. King, the father of five, hopes to achieve in his single, four-year term. (Under a longstanding union policy, officers cannot seek re-election after age 65.)

He intends to increase the union’s membership, through new jobs in and out of the auto industry. As the head of Local 600 in the 1980s, Mr. King organized a group of 1,000 health care workers into what had been a Ford-only chapter.

More than a quarter of the U.A.W.’s 355,000 members today have no connection to autos or manufacturing, and he sees nontraditional fields like higher education and casino gambling as having the highest potential for growth.

He is upset by the number of vehicles that carmakers, including the domestic ones, import from Mexico and other lower-wage countries.

And he grows more visibly angry when discussing executive pay. He noted that Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, has earned nearly 100millionincompensationsincearrivingin2006,whiletheaverageU.A.W.workerhasgivenup100 million in compensation since arriving in 2006, while the average U.A.W. worker has given up 100millionincompensationsincearrivingin2006,whiletheaverageU.A.W.workerhasgivenup7,000 to $30,000 a year in pay and benefits.

To some, Mr. King’s passion, work ethic and ability to inspire evoke one of the U.A.W.’s most revered names, Walter P. Reuther, the longtime president who built the union into a powerful force.

Compared with Mr. Gettelfinger, whose eight-year tenure was among the most difficult and grim periods in the union’s 75-year history, Mr. King is expected to bring a more hands-on and unconventional approach to negotiations.

“Ron is very plain-spoken and gets to the point quickly,” William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman of Ford, told reporters in December, when union leaders endorsed Mr. King. “Bob is more cerebral.”

The U.A.W. will enter next year’s negotiations in the unprecedented position of owning a majority of Chrysler and a portion of G.M., through a retiree health care trust fund that gained stakes as a result of their bankruptcies.

“Nobody else has as long-term an interest as workers,” Mr. King said. “We don’t care about the profits tomorrow as much as we do about making sure this company is viable in five years. We’re the stakeholders with the most long-term interests.”

Mr. King is known to join picket lines himself he did so in February when Toyota was planning to close a unionized California plant and actively fight for numerous causes outside the auto industry.

“Bob sees the labor movement as a social movement,” said Bernie Ricke, the president of U.A.W. Local 600, the chapter in Dearborn, Mich., where Mr. King began his career.

Mr. King said he was pleased that Toyota had decided to reopen the California plant to build electric cars with a small automaker, Tesla, but that his fight there was not over. He plans to make sure Toyota rehires the workers it laid off, saying that is “the only fair thing to do.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section

, Page

of the New York edition

with the headline:

New Autoworkers Leader Hopes to Revitalize Union. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT