UAW Retiree Director Garry Mason shared the outlook for America's retirees with the Summer School in Norman, Oklahoma, on June 7. He began with high praise: "If our active workers showed the kind of energy that our retired workers do, we wouldn't even be worried about who is up there in that White House."
Simple statistics cited by Mason showed a continuous decline in the signs of union strength. Big auto makers have as many or even more retirees than active workers as they continue to downsize and send industry jobs to other nations. Mason particularly hit on the problems caused by foreign auto imports.
The Bush Administration had recently decreed restrictions on Chinese textile imports, but Mason said that it only helped textile makers in Mongolia. Both Ford and General Motors have received bad financial news in 2005. He said, "Without a GM and Ford, there is no UAW."
Mason summarized:
"This union is in a desperate situation, I'm telling you." Even though
the UAW organized 22,000 new members in the previous year, job losses kept our
overall numbers going down. Also, the new jobs do not pay as well as the ones
that are lost. Mason said, "We need to bring manufacturing jobs back to
this country."
Wal-Mart stores were a special target of Garry Mason's speech. He criticized union members who shop there for low-priced imported products then complain about job losses in America.
During the discussion period, Mason was asked about the overall trade union movement. The upcoming AFL-CIO convention and UAW relations with the Alliance for Retired Americans were concerns. Mason assured his audience that the American union movement will stick together through these difficult times and is unlikely to suffer any kind of split. He pointed out that the UAW had endorsed President John Sweeney for re-election as head of the labor federation, and said he expects Sweeney to win.