The UAW Can't Count on Buyers' Support Anymore

NEW YORK

From this East Coast perch, where it seems that the only domestic cars are those painted yellow and topped with taxi signs, it's hard to tell whether the United Auto Workers' brief strike against General Motors last week was an attempted suicide or a sophomoric bargaining ploy.

What's certain is that it didn't make sense.

Consider this car-crammed metropolis. Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but it's safe to assume that local dealers and other regional automotive industry officials are at least close to correct in their estimates that 60 to 65 percent of new vehicles sold in New York and adjacent communities are foreign-derived models.

Empirically, especially in the city's affluent East Side neighborhoods, the percentage of foreign vehicles appears much higher than that. I often joke that the garage I use on East 53rd Street is little more than a warehouse for Acura, BMW, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche automobiles and sport-utility vehicles.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 2008 Cadillac CTS4 sedan I parked there over the weekend is the only high-end domestic car on the property.

My friend Monique Tapie, communications manager for Global Advertising Strategies, a firm specializing in multicultural marketing, says my perception that foreign cars rule New York's streets is right. And she says that the regional growth of foreign-car sales largely is influenced by the area's huge immigrant population.

"They come to New York from Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America already familiar with brands such as Toyota, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz," Monique said. "They are not as familiar with Dodge or Cadillac. So, they stick with what they already know."

That means, like the vast majority of U.S. consumers, car shoppers here don't stick with the UAW. They aren't in solidarity with the union. When it comes to cars and trucks, they look for reliability, quality, affordability, safety, utility and emotional appeal. They don't look for the union label.

That is something UAW leaders fail to grasp -- or, at least to admit -- in their collective-bargaining talks with GM, Ford and Chrysler.

It has nothing to do with being anti-union or pro-union. And it really has little to do with outsourcing American jobs overseas, or with the delusional attempt to secure jobs in a frightfully insecure world, or with maintaining pension benefits in a global economy where such benefits are fast disappearing, or with trying to guarantee premium health care in a world that offers precious little of that, too.

Instead, it has everything to do with selfishness.

If consumers don't care if the union exists -- and U.S. vehicle sales numbers say they don't -- the union and the company that gives it jobs are in dire straits.

Consider what, according to the latest tabulations from Automotive News, a Detroit-based trade journal, has happened to U.S. new-vehicle sales since 1998 -- the last year in which sales of domestic and foreign models in this country were below 16 million vehicles.

In 1998, domestic car companies controlled 70.2 percent of the U.S. auto market. Today, Detroit-based companies are struggling to hold on to a 51.3 percent share.

Think about that: As Automotive News pointed out, 1998 through August 2007 represents the best retail run -- with annual new-vehicle sales consistently above 16 million -- in the history of the U.S. automotive market. But that highly lucrative period did more to help foreign rivals than it did to aid domestic car companies, whose sales declined dramatically.

That unhappy turnabout for domestic automobile manufacturers was the result of pocketbook voting by U.S. consumers who, for reasons entirely personal and self-serving, elected to buy foreign cars and trucks. How can the UAW possibly expect to get genuine job guarantees in that kind of retail environment?

And now the nation is flirting with another recession. At least, that's the feeling in the U.S. automotive market, where production cutbacks and other cost-cutting measures reflect sales declines, even for once seemingly invulnerable Asian manufacturers. Thus, all car companies jockey for production-cost advantages in much the manner that their consumers aggressively seek price advantages.

GM, Ford and Chrysler have been damaged in that struggle. GM and Ford have initiated painful recovery programs, primarily focusing on turning out better cars and trucks. GM has made much progress in that expensive endeavor, as indicated by the Cadillac CTS4 sedan reviewed in today's "On Wheels" column. Ford finally seems to be moving forward. Chrysler was disowned by its onetime German parent, the former DaimlerChrysler, and has been taken over by a decidedly non-touchy-feely private-equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management.

Those changes weaken the UAW. But the one that weakens the union most is its consistent failure to organize any Detroit rival in which the union was not grandfathered into the relationship -- such as Ford's control of Japan's Mazda and GM's New United Motor Manufacturing joint venture with Toyota in Fremont, Calif.

That means the UAW's traditional quest for a pattern contract -- one that contains identical or similar agreements with GM, Ford and Chrysler -- makes little sense. The real pattern, largely woven by the purchase preferences of consumers seeking more for less, has been woven by non-UAW companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, all of which are selling cars built in the United States mostly in the South, where unions take fourth chair -- if one is even available -- behind the church, the company and the football team.

That is why the UAW's walkout last week lasted two days. In retrospect, it wasn't attempted suicide. And it wasn't a bargaining ploy, sophomoric or otherwise. It was a tantrum, the kind thrown by a spoiled child who does not like being ignored.

Here's hoping that the UAW is done with that distemper. Ford and Chrysler still must work out new labor agreements. UAW-represented workers at all three U.S. companies must ratify those contracts. That means they also could reject them.

The bottom line, again, is that the vast majority of American consumers don't care. If they can't buy a car from GM, Ford or Chrysler, they are quite willing to buy it from someone else -- union or nonunion. If enough of them did that, the UAW and the companies that employ its members will die. It's a brutal truth of our global economy, one in which consumer choice outranks corporate strategy and union demands.