Non union workers at US Honda & Toyota plants now make more than UAW workers with similar seniority (of course they have less seniority since the plants are new)...it's only a matter of time until the tier B people are in the majority and the union has done nothing for them...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/25/uaw-contract-negotiations_n_936873.htmlThe contract talks are not expected to be particularly divisive -- at least, not in the traditional sense: Industry management and union leadership are increasingly speaking from the same script, intent on preserving the peace that has fostered the turnaround. But beneath that dynamic, many union members are seething, as reflected in conversations with dozens of workers in recent weeks. And that anger threatens to weaken further the power of the UAW, whose influence has been waning within the industry for decades.
"You could get rank-and-file rebellions inside the UAW to take control," said Jonathan Cutler, a sociologist at Wesleyan University and author of "Labor's Time: Shorter Hours, the UAW, and the Struggle for American Unionism." "But the other option is that the union collapses, because there's no point in paying union dues if the union's main job is to sell you the car-makers' line, only with the union label."
TWO CLASSES OF WORKER
The sense of grievance among autoworkers in large part stems from concessions accepted by the UAW in recent years, as the industry has grappled with declining sales and the government has stepped in to rescue major automakers. The concessions in essence created two separate classes of autoworkers via a two-tier wage system -- a term now underlined by many workers as the source of enduring unhappiness.
Under the two-tier system, workers with seniority have generally been able to preserve their pay scale, with basic wages of about $28 an hour. But new hires can now be paid half as much, at a wage officially referred to as "entry rate" because workers are theoretically able to move up through the wage levels as senior workers retire. And at one plant in Michigan, 40 percent of the workforce became vulnerable to demotion to the lower tier of pay, prompting many to accept transfers to other plants -- often far from their families -- to avoid pay cuts.