UAW president: Membership fell roughly 6% last year

UAW President Ray Curry said Tuesday the union's membership fell roughly 6 percent to 372,254 last year, according to an annual financial report that will be made public this week.

The LM-2 report, filed with the Department of Labor, compares union membership as of December 2021 to the same period a year earlier. Curry, speaking at an Automotive Press Association event, said the dip is attributable to the timing of the report, since payroll and dues processing was delayed by end-of-year downtime or temporary layoffs because of the semiconductor shortage.

"Our union's on solid footing," Curry said.

The UAW, however, faces a number of challenges as it prepares to bargain new labor contracts with the Detroit 3 late next year. General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis are making significant investments in electric vehicles, and Curry said he's continuing to monitor those investments and looking for opportunities to unionize planned joint-venture battery plants around the country.

Despite recent production and supply chain challenges, Curry said he expects to negotiate next year with an industry that's in a strong position.

"Record profits have taken place," he said. "Expectations are that later this year volumes will be picking up for all three OEMs and they'll have availability in the marketplace. I think we're going to be in a great situation."

Still, it's unclear whether Curry will even be negotiating at all.

Curry, the union's third president in as many years, is finishing out the term of his predecessor, Rory Gamble, who retired early. He will stand for reelection later this year and could face a tougher path to reelection than his predecessors.

Union members voted last year to adopt a new election process known as one-member, one-vote, which will replace a delegate process that effectively allowed nominees of a certain caucus to breeze to election with minimal opposition.

Regardless of whether Curry is reelected, his leadership team will look very different from what it does today.

The vice presidents overseeing the GM and Stellantis departments plan to retire at the end of their terms. Curry said wholesale changes to the union's leadership team before contract negotiations would be "significant," but noted some change happens regardless during each four-year contract cycle.

Beyond the Detroit 3, Curry said Tuesday that he has had no discussions with Tesla Inc. about a potential union vote by workers at the electric carmaker's California factory after CEO Elon Musk tweeted an invitation for the UAW to "hold a union vote at their earliest convenience."

Curry, however, said the union remained open to organizing efforts and had enough available resources to do so. He also suggested Tesla could drop an appeal of a U.S. National Labor Relations Board ruling that it violated U.S. labor law and reinstate some workers who had been fired.

"That would be a good-faith effort if they were interested in having that type of exchange," Curry said.