If the union wins the Nissan vote next month, taking in hundreds of dollars from each worker’s paycheck, the UAW will rake in millions in union dues.
There is a lot at stake for Nissan, its workers and, especially, the UAW.
The Detroit-based union, having lost over two-thirds of its membership in the last few decades and, more recently, having failed to unionize most of VW’s plant in Tennessee, is banking on Nissan workers to give it a desperately-needed boost.
A union victory at Nissan would help both the UAW’s membership numbers and, as well, its finances.
With an average wage rate of around $25 per hour, at 2.5 times their hourly pay, union dues will cost Nissan’s workers around $750 per year (with some paying more and others paying less).
Assuming there are no dues increases, over 15 years, an average individual Nissan worker could end up paying more than $11,000 in union dues.
Adding it up, if all 4,000 of Nissan’s workers end up paying dues, the UAW could take in up to $3 million each year—and possibly more.
Over the course of 15 years and, again, assuming dues are not increased, that would mean the UAW could make up to $45 million from Nissan’s Mississippi workers alone.
Now, one could argue that, because Mississippi is currently a Right-to-Work state, not all of Nissan’s workers would choose to pay dues.
However, were even 50% of the workers to pay dues, the UAW would still rake in $1.5 million per year.
Moreover, the UAW, like other unions, has long fought against Right-to-Work laws.
“The UAW often uses so-called ‘scab lists’—lists of employees who have quit the union—in right-to-work states as a way of targeting nonunion employees and discouraging union workers from opting out in the future,” according to LaborPains.org
While most unions would actually prefer to abolish Right-to-Work laws nationwide in order to require worker payments to unions as a condition of their employment, regardless how many Nissan workers do end up paying dues, the payoff to the UAW will be huge.
