经济学人下载:美国工会组织 查特奴加

Business
商业报道

Trade unions in America
美国工会组织

Chattanooga shoo-shoo
嘘~查特奴加

The union movement misses a big opportunity to halt its decline
汽车工会运动丢失阻止汽车行业衰落的大机会

VOLKSWAGEN'S factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was supposed to be the spot where decades of decline ended for the United Auto Workers and for America's industrial unions in general.
田纳西州查特奴加市的大众工厂曾一度被认为，结束了全美汽车工人联合会和全体美国工业工会数十年的衰落遭遇。

Instead, workers dealt the movement a crushing blow on February 14th, voting against unionising by 712 to 626.
然而，2月14日对工会入驻大众的选票中，反对712票，赞成626票，工人的选票结果对工会的入驻行动来说是一次巨大的打击。

The UAW has been campaigning for years to organise workers at foreign-owned carmakers in the South, and had good reason to be optimistic that the VW vote would be a breakthrough.
近年来，UAW一直在南方汽车制造外企组织工人发起各种活动，因此它有充分理由对大众的选举活动将大获成功持乐观态度。

Perhaps out of deference to its powerful unions back home in Germany, the company let the UAW campaign inside its plant—a courtesy that it denied to anti-union activists.
也许出于无视德国本土强大的工会，大众使UAW入驻其工厂的行动成为对非反工会积极分子的一种谦逊表达。

Both VW and the UAW had supported the creation of a German-style works council, a committee of managers and workers that makes some decisions on how a plant is run.
大众和UAW都支持德国工作委员会的模式，即委员会的管理者和工人对工厂的运行做决定。

It will be small consolation to the UAW that the company says it will still pursue this—although it is unclear whether, under American law, a factory can have a works council without an outside trade union to represent the employees.
但是工厂不清楚，在美国法律下，没有外部工会为工人做代表的工厂是否可以拥有工作委员会。所以对UAW来说工厂宣称将继续追寻德国工作委员会模式的做法不能让人感到安慰。

The defeat means that the UAW's membership, having fallen from over1.5min 1979 to less than 400,000 today, is set to continue its declining trend. American-owned car firms have recently been rehiring at their unionised plants, as sales of vehicles have picked up, but as at other manufacturers, automation will continue reducing the need for human workers.
选举失败意味着UAW的成员数正从1979年的150万人锐减到现今的不足40万人，而这注定了UAW成员减少的趋势。

Although union membership has held steady in America's public sector, in private businesses it has fallen sharply since official figures were first kept in the early 1980s.
尽管美国公共部门的工会成员数一直很稳定，自80年代早期首次记录的官方数据以来私人部门的工会成员数却一直大幅下降。

Last year the number of union members grew and the overall rate of unionisation held steady at 11.3% of America's workforce thanks to job growth at unionised manufacturers and construction firms.
由于加入工会的制造商和建设公司的就业岗位增加，去年工会成员有所增加同时总体的非工会成员占美国工人比例稳定在11.3%。

But it was noticeable that in one fast-growing industry—mining, oil and gas—the rate of unionisation fell from 7.2% to 5.4%: most new jobs were non-union.
但只在一个快速发展的行业—煤矿、石油和天然气—显而易见，该行业非工会成员占比由7.2%%下降到5.4%，这意味着大多数新就职者是非工会成员。

Despite last year's upturn in membership, modern manufacturing is not fertile ground for union recruiters.
虽然去年工会成员有上升趋势，但现代制造业不是吸纳工会成员的地方。

The remaining jobs in factories are typically skilled and well-paid.
工厂其他的员工都是高薪有专长熟练工，

Employees struggle to see what more they will get in return for paying union dues.
雇员很难看到他们付出工会费得来的回报。

Production and maintenance workers at VW's Chattanooga plant earn $20-30 an hour, plus bonuses and other benefits, making it one of the most rewarding places to work in a state where the cost of living is low.
大众查特奴加工厂的汽车生产工和保养工每小时工资20-30美元，外加奖金和其他福利，这使大众成为在低生活成本州中工作的理想去处之一。

To make things tougher still for the unions, employment is growing fastest in parts of the country that have not traditionally been bastions of trade unionism.
仍让工会感到更艰难的是，没有工会基础传统的一些国家中雇员数量一直快速增加，甚至在UAW的核心基地密歇根州，

Even in the UAW's heartland, Michigan, the rate of union membership in all types of workplace fell from 16.6% to 16.3% last year, despite overall job growth.
尽管全行业就业率上涨，但去年各行业工会成员率从16.6%下降到16.3%。

Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard, has found that union membership tends to grow in short, sharp spurts; otherwise it tends to wither.
哈佛的一位劳动经济学家理查德弗里曼研究得出，工会成员增长率以短暂、冲刺的趋势发展，也就是说工会衰退以趋势发展。

Mr Freeman says this means that unions must therefore “latch on to a crisis period when people are upset”.
弗里曼说，这意味着工会必须从此“在人们失望时抓住危机期”。

But of course,Americahas just gone through such a period, and union membership barely budged.
当然，美国刚熬过这一时期，但工会成员几乎没有增加。

The parts of the American private sector where trade unionism is showing signs of life are those where the working conditions are toughest.
在工会正显示出生命力的一些私人部门中，其工作条件是最差的。

The Service Employees International Union, for instance, has agitated on behalf of non-unionised workers at fast-food restaurants and Walmart shops, without pressing them to join the union.
比如，服务业员工国际联合会没强迫员工加入工会，却以快餐业和沃尔玛零售店非工会员工的名义发起煽动活动。

Workers in car factories may not want to sign up, but the UAW has recruited casino dealers, health-care workers, postdoctoral researchers and graduate-student teaching assistants.
汽车工厂的工人可能不想在工会入驻一事上签字，但是UAW已经招募了赌场交易员、卫生保健工作者、博士后研究者和研究所助教加入工会。

“The role of the labour movement has to be about more than representing their current membership. They have to be responsive to all excluded workers,” says Jeffrey Grabelsky, an industrial-relations expert at Cornell University.
康奈尔大学的劳资关系专家Jeffrey Grabelsky 说：“工人运动的角色已经不只是代表他们当前的成员身份”。

Newer labour organisations seem to understand this better than older ones.
新兴的劳动组织似乎比以往的劳动组织更明白这点。

The National Domestic Workers Alliance has won much support among people who work in other people's homes, such as those providing care to the elderly.
全国国内工人联盟就赢得了在他人家工作者的支持，例如：那些为老年人提供护理服务的工作人员。

The Freelancers Union has also boomed, by providing temporary workers with benefits such as health insurance and financial services while avoiding traditional trade-union politicking.
自由职业者联盟随之繁荣，在避免与传统工会发生竞选活动的情况下，为临时工提供福利，比如健康保险和财务服务，

Indeed, Sara Horowitz, the union's founder, even moonlights as deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which could not be farther from the picket line.
其发起者Sara Horowitz甚至兼任纽约美联储银行主席，这几乎等同于一条警戒线。