UAW leans heavily on neutrality agreements for organizing

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In Tulsa, Okla., the UAW tried twice and failed to organize more than 650 hourly workers who make
school buses at an IC Bus factory.
But in February 2013, after a new management team declared it would not resist a third organizing
campaign, the union won. Over the next eight months, the UAW and Navistar, which owns IC Bus,
negotiated a new contract covering the Tulsa workers.
Neutrality agreements are not new. Theyve been around for decades in the labor movement.
But they are rarely used in organizing campaigns today.
That is because employer neutrality is the labor relations equivalent of unilateral
disarmament, said Gary Klotz, a partner with Butzel Long who normally represents
companies on labor issues.
After three decades in which the political and judicial climate has blessed most management tactics
aimed at defeating organized labor, why would any company choose neutrality?
The UAWs relationship with Lisle, Ill.-based Navistars top executives played a key
role.
CEO Troy Clarke, who joined Navistar in January 2010 as senior vice president, was intimately
familiar with the UAW. He negotiated General Motors contracts with the UAW when he was
head of GM manufacturing and labor relations and as president of GM North America.
Also, Dennis Williams, who was elected president of the UAW earlier this month, has been a Navistar
board member since 2006.
Related: UAW elects Dennis Williams president in a landslide: 'I feel the energy'
Under Navistars new leadership, the companys relationship with the UAW
has been evolving in a more positive direction, Steve Schrier, spokesman for Navistar, said
in an e-mail.
Peter Barker, a retired regional director at the National Labor Relations Board, said he began
noticing in 2005 that the UAW is able to use neutrality agreements more frequently than most other
unions.
I think in the auto industry, some of it was because of tradition. The Detroit Three were
organized, and the UAW had relationships already in place with them, Barker said.
And the Detroit Three wanted to make sure their auto suppliers were not going to have labor
problems if there was an organizing drive going on.
But neutrality remains the exception in an environment that is hostile to most unions. Now that the
right-to-work movement has penetrated Indiana and Michigan, even companies in that portion of the
industrial Midwest will be emboldened to resist.
The climate is not growing any more hospitable in the South, either.
Just last week, the UAW filed charges with the NLRB against Renosol Seating, a subsidiary of
Southfield-based Lear, for harassing workers. The union postponed a vote at the plant in Selma, Ala.
Most manufacturers are looking for the lowest-cost labor possible and the most generous tax
incentives and training subsidies when they build a new plant.
Labors staunchest enemies, such as the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation,
know the courts are relatively receptive to their arguments.
In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit found that a neutrality agreement between
Unite Here and a Florida casino violated a section of the Labor Management Relations Act. The law
forbids an employer to pay, lend, or deliver ... any money or other thing of value to a
labor union seeking to organize the companys workers.
The casino, according to the 11th Circuit, violated that act because the union spent about $100,000
to support a 2006 referendum to allow slot machines. Last December, the U.S. Supreme Court
declined to consider organized labors appeal.
Despite that legal setback, the UAW has found some universities and casinos willing to grant
neutrality, including the University of Connecticut and New York University, where the UAW won
elections in the last year to represent graduate teaching assistants.
The UAW now represents more than 45,000 academic workers across the U.S. including graduate
employees at the University of Massachusetts, University of Washington, University of California and
California State University. Since 2009, nine of every 10 new UAW members came from elections in
which the companys management did not actively oppose the organizing effort, according to
a UAW report provided to members earlier this month.
As the UAW discovered last February, neutrality doesnt guarantee success. Workers at
Volkswagens only U.S. assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., rejected UAW representation
despite managements neutrality and the active support of IG Metall, the powerful German
metalworkers union. UAW has been using a similar strategy in a campaign to organize Mercedes-
Benzs plant in Vance, Ala.
Related: Volkswagen labor official vows to back UAW organizing effort in Tennessee
But in Tennessee, Gov. Bill Haslam, Sen. Bob Corker and a host of Republican interest groups
mounted a fierce campaign against the UAW, including threats to withdraw tax incentives for
expansions at the Chattanooga factory.
We walked in there really taking the high road. To see that politicians would undermine that
process was very disappointing, said Williams, who added that the UAW will learn from its
mistakes in Chattanooga. You look at it, evaluate what you have done well, and then re-
examine what did not go so well.
Contact Brent Snavely: 313-222-6512 or bsnavely@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter
@BrentSnavely
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