The mainstream media don’t have to present union talking points framed as news.
Opening line of a Washington Post story today: “The United Auto Workers pressed forward in its effort to unionize auto factories in the South by announcing that 30 percent of Mercedes workers at an Alabama factory have signed cards endorsing unionization.”
You see, it’s a trend now: “The 30-year-old Tuscaloosa plant is the second to reach that milestone in recent weeks, joining a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., that the union is also attempting to organize.”
The UAW got the same glowing press coverage for the VW plant in Tennessee, as I noted at the time. The UAW has begun an organizing strategy after its strike against GM, Ford, and Stellantis last year. As part of the strategy, it has said it will publicly announce whenever it gets 30 percent of workers in a particular workplace to sign union cards.
Signing union cards does not necessarily mean a worker supports unionization. Unions sometimes mislead workers by framing union cards as only signifying interest in learning more about unionizing or the desire for a representation election to be held. Also, workers have the right to rescind a previous signature on a union card at any time.
The UAW can announce it has however many signatures it wants. The mainstream media don’t have to pretend that it is news that a minority of workers may or may not support unionization at two workplaces.
The Post story includes union talking points framed as news, such as: “The union says worker attitudes toward unionization are growing more favorable as younger and more diverse employees join the plants.”
It also says: “Public interest in unions is growing in the United States, but translating that into new members won’t be easy. Union membership has generally declined in recent decades, as the UAW itself shows.”
Could that be because the same poll that finds public interest is growing also finds that 58 percent of Americans are “not interested at all” in joining a union themselves? Could the UAW’s decline have anything to do with the fact that it currently operates under a court-appointed monitor resulting from a 2020 settlement that included convicting over a dozen former union officials, including two past presidents, of fraud? How about the fact that the UAW is more interested in progressive politics than in representing workers, as is evidenced by its sending 98 percent of its donations to Democrats every election cycle since 1990 and endorsing a cease-fire in Gaza?
These progressive stances are probably why the UAW has been doing better organizing graduate students and health-care workers than it has been organizing auto workers. As the Post story notes, only 150,000 of the United Auto Workers’ 400,000 members work for automakers.
Private-sector unionization has declined from about 33 percent in the 1950s to 6 percent today. That decline has persisted, year after year, no matter which party is in power, and despite unions having a cheering section in the press.