Newly Elected UAW President Bob King on the Role of Social and Environmental Justice in Union Organizing

From Bob King speaking on Democracy Now:

"Well, I’m very excited that Ford and GM and Chrysler, I think, are on their way back. A lot of our members’ and a lot of our retirees’ future is tied into these companies being viable, and the fact that they’re gaining strength and gaining market share and gaining sales is really important. A problem, though, is that so much of the industry is not organized. And it’s not even so much that it’s not organized; it’s that so many workers in the industry in the US today are not paid fair wages and benefits. These corporations are making billions of dollars. They have for a number of years. And they want to keep pushing workers’ wages down lower and lower. Where at one point everybody in the industry made a good middle-class wage and we built the middle class off the wages in the auto industry, today there’s a great growing disparity of pay amongst workers in the industry. And why it’s so important that we refocus on organizing is to make sure that all workers in the industry get a decent pay and have a decent standard of living."

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