Ailing auto union spent over $8.1 million on organizing last year, according to government records.
After decades of decline, the United Auto Workers may be making a small, but costly comeback, according to data filed with the U.S. Department of Labor.
According to the latest financial report on file with the DOL for 2016 (see below), the United Auto Workers gained 7,324 new members since 2015.
However, according to the report, the union spent nearly $8,136,000.00 to obtain those members.
That breaks down to a whopping $1100 per new member.
The expenditures made by the UAW include the salaries and expenses of full and temporary organizers, as well as rents, hotels and other expenses paid for organizing new members into the union.
Although the increase of membership to 415,000 is a far cry from the union’s heyday of over 1.5 million members in the late 1970s, for the last several years, the UAW has been feverishly trying to unionize the American plants of foreign automakers, such as BMW, Nissan, Telsa, Toyota and Volkswagen.
At Nissan, in Canton, Mississippi, the UAW recently filed for an election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That election will occur in early August.
Regardless of the outcome in Mississippi, however, the UAW has had ongoing organizing activity at several of the auto plants for years, with little to show for the moneys spent so far.
In 2014, many UAW members were upset to learn that the 25% dues increase that was foisted on them without a membership vote did not completely go to the UAW’s strike fund as was promised but, rather, to the UAW’s general fund to be used for organizing instead.
As the UAW increases its organizing activities at foreign companies like Nissan, with current members footing the $1100 per new member bill, the UAW will need to prove that the benefit is worth the cost.
UAW International LMs 2016 on Scribd
