DETROIT, April 3 (UPI) -- Despite restructuring and cutbacks at the Big Three automakers, membership in the United Auto Workers rose 4.5 percent last year, reversing a 20-year trend of declining membership.
The UAW, the nation's largest labor union with 701,818 active members, said it added about 30,000 new members in 2001 as it moved into the service sector, health care industries and colleges.
The UAW had 1.5 million members in 1979 but membership slipped to a low of 672,000 in 2000 as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler steadily cut hourly jobs to trim costs and improve productivity.
With its current four-year contract with U.S. automakers set to expire in September 2003, the UAW is expected to make increased job security a major issue in collective bargaining. The 4.5 percent increase in UAW membership is seen as a positive sign for American labor unions, which lost 200,000 members in 2000.
U.S. unions gained a net 17,000 members in 2001 -- to 16.3 million -- despite downsizing in the auto industry and difficulty in organizing foreign-owned assembly plants and non-union auto parts supplies.
"It's worth noting that all of the labor movement's net membership gain last year was among women," the UAW said in a statement on Jobs, Pay & the Economy. "Male union membership fell by 76,000, but female membership increased by 93,000."
Union membership in manufacturing continued to slide from 14.8 percent in 2000 to 14.6 percent last year, but membership rose 7.5 percent in the service sector. Firefighters and police officers had the nation's highest rate of union membership -- 38 percent in 2001 down from 39.4 percent a year earlier.
