Reuters headline: “More than 1,000 VW workers in Tennessee sign union representation cards — UAW.”
That sounds like a lot. It would be newsworthy if VW workers in Tennessee were deciding to join the UAW. They have notably refused in the past, exerting the power they have because Tennessee is a right-to-work state.
Read further down in the story, though, and you find this (emphasis added):
The UAW, which said 30% of workers at the VW plant had signed cards, has outlined its organizing strategy that says if 30% of workers at a nonunion plant sign cards seeking to join, it would make that public.
So, according to the UAW, 70 percent of the workers are still not on board.
The UAW can make the information public. The question is why the mainstream media pretends that it’s news that a supermajority of non-UAW autoworkers in Tennessee still haven’t signed up for the UAW.
Especially since pro-union Joe Biden was elected, the media have been touting a “union renaissance” that, so far, has not happened. Despite nearly two years of relentlessly positive media coverage, in 2022 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the U.S. union membership rate was the lowest on record, and only 6 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.
The media get very excited about a Gallup poll that shows Americans’ opinion of labor unions in general is more positive than it was in the past. But that exact same survey asks nonunion Americans, “How interested are you in joining a labor union?” In 2022, 58 percent said they are “not interested at all.” Only 11 percent said they were “extremely interested.”
Despite the media-hyped strikes by the UAW and Hollywood writers and actors, not to mention the media-hyped non-strike by the Teamsters against UPS, Gallup’s union-approval poll from this year found that Americans’ opinions of labor unions had declined by four percentage points.
The vast majority of American workers don’t want what organized labor and the mainstream media are selling.