Lately, there has been much ire drawn amongst liberals and progressives as a result of conservatives criticizing the United Auto Workers union.  I think a lot of liberals and progressives-and I am one, at least with respect to most of the key issues of the day-are missing some important facts with regard to the UAW.  I’ve followed the auto industry very closely for the last 20+ years, and had once planned a career there, and I have many friends who work in the industry.  While Republicans have articulated the wrong points, focusing on misleading statistics regarding wages, there are some very real issues with the UAW that liberals and progressive must recognize.

The issue with the UAW is not how much workers are being paid.  There are two main problems. First, the union contracts do not allow the automakers the workforce flexibility that they need to be competitive.  It’s not that the workers are making too much; it’s that the Big Three are forced to keep far more people on the payroll than they need.  When business is booming, the Big Three naturally need to add union jobs.  But when business begins to contract, the UAW makes it much more difficult that it should be to make workforce changes.

The auto industry is one that is highly seasonal, and goes through large up-and-down cycles as the economy moves.  It can also change very fast (look at the difference in what vehicles people want now as opposed to five years ago—or even three years ago).  Auto companies need to have the flexibility to expand and contract their workforces as necessary.  They need to be able to open and close plants, to replace workers who have skill sets that are no longer needed.  The auto industry needs a flexible workforce.  And the UAW has stood as an impediment to the Big Three creating the flexible 21st century workforce that they need, and this has done serious harm to their business.

A good friend of mine is an engineer at GM.  I was shocked when he told me that, because of union rules, he was assigned an “observer” who sat in his cubicle and watched him work.  This is someone with no background in engineering, and no ability to understand the work that my friend does.  But yet, he just sat there, 8 hours a day, to the tune of probably $30 an hour, because the union negotiated and demanded it.  The UAW has negotiated thousands of these unneeded, wasteful jobs.  They’ve focused much of their energy on, rather than taking the best care of the workers possible, trying to make sure there are as many workers as possible.  Why?  It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out: More workers equal more union dues and a larger political power base.

Furthermore, the UAW has continued to resist the Big Three’s efforts to establish strong performance standards.  There is absolutely NO meritocracy in union jobs in Detroit, and that is a HUGE problem.  Of course, we know that executives, given full run over workers, will try to squeeze them dry, but the UAW, rather than trying to work with management to impose REASONABLE standards, has gone fully the opposite direction, and has fought almost ALL reasonable performance standards.  It is difficult, sometimes impossible, for management to get rid of mediocre to poor workers, and excellent workers are not rewarded.  Indeed, sometimes the best workers are even punished.  There is a pervasive atmosphere of apathy in Big Three union jobs because the UAW has cultivated a culture where excellent job performance is simply not important.

So there are some serious problems with the UAW.  Liberals and conservatives are each looking at only one side of the issue.  Now, let’s be clear about one thing, the reason that the Republicans in opposition to the auto bailout are not articulating this is because, (1) they don’t understand it, and (2) they absolutely want to break the union, not for the good of the auto industry , but because of their general anti-labor stance. But let’s be clear about another thing:  Democrats aren’t fighting FOR the UAW out of the goodness of their hearts: they are trying to maintain their political power base as well.  And hence, they won’t criticize or challenge the union at all.

The Big Three have been horribly mismanaged for the better part of the last 30 years, and without a doubt, the executives absolutely need to be held accountable for that.  But only about half of their bad decisions have been their own.  They have been forced into many bad decisions-or handcuffed to the point that they can make no decision-by the UAW and by their national dealer networks, which is another major problem that is a story unto itself.  Even if we get some good executives in place, the U.S. auto industry does need union reform in order to survive.  Recognizing that does not mean being anti-labor, or trying to blame ALL of the struggles of the auto industry on the UAW, but just as the executives must be held accountable, so must the union.  The autoworkers need to understand that much of what the UAW has been doing in recent decades actually is NOT ultimately in the interest of workers, but in the interest of union leaders.

In many ways, unions have failed to embrace the realities of the 21st century.  The labor movement must recognize and adapt to the fact that the workforce of the future will not be “get a job, keep a job forever, retire, collect a pension”.  Unions have focused so much on trying to maintain this paradigm, and it is outdated.  The economy is very fluid.  The American workforce has to become more adaptable, as the modern economy is.  Workers have to understand that a particular job, doing a particular thing, may not be permanent.  Unions need to focus much more on job retraining, and on putting workers were they are needed, instead of simply keeping workers where they are.  One thing I really admired about Bill Clinton was that he tried to make this point (he is one of the ONLY Democratic politicians in recent years to do so rather than just bowing to the agenda of big labor).  Lack of adaptability is a big part of why the Rust Belt went under and a big part of why the Big Three is struggling today.

To survive, and thrive in the 21st century, the American auto industry needs BOTH major management reform AND major union reform.  If it doesn’t get both, it won’t survive.  It is possible to strike a balance what management needs to be able to lead a company to success, and what workers need in order to be able to earn a good living, build strong communities, and care for and provide opportunities to their families.  But in order to strike that balance, we have to challenge and demand strong improvement from both management and the UAW.