The UAW is seeking "creative" solutions, said Pres. Bob King during a meeting with reporters.

The United Auto Workers Union will put the emphasis on “creative problem solving,” rather than confrontation as it reopens contract talks, this summer, with Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

Intent on putting aside the traditional hardball tactics that have defined automotive labor/management relations over the last 75 years, UAW President Bob King said union negotiators may not even set a strike target as they approach their mid-September deadline.  But that would be a limited option anyway, he acknowledged, as terms of the government’s 2009 bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler mean that only Ford could even be threatened with a walkout this year.

During a meeting of the Detroit Automotive Press Association, the UAW president meanwhile offered both a carrot and a stick to companies like Toyota, who have managed to so far avoid union organizing efforts.  Give workers a fair chance to vote, King promised, and the union will accept the results, win or lose.  But resisting calls for an election, he asserted, could lead to a global boycott.

“Creative problem solving,” said King, “is the ideal we’re both striving for.”  Confrontation, he insisted, was a thing of the past.

During a lengthy, relatively informal speech and subsequent question-and-answer session, the 64-year-old King sounded a decidedly different tone from his predecessors, putting an emphasis on traditionally corporate topics like quality, productivity and profitable investments.  In the long run, he repeatedly stressed, those are the factors that will keep the Detroit makers healthy and ensure workers their jobs.

“In a global economy,” said King, “if you really want job security for your members, you really have to be a partner with the corporation.”

Since negotiating significant concessions in 2007 – and further givebacks during the automotive industry meltdown in 2009 – there have been dramatic changes in the way the UAW has operated and how it relates to GM, Ford and Chrysler.  For one thing, said King, “We’re meeting with these corporations every day,” so there’s less of an emphasis on the traditional bargaining cycle set to begin mid-year.

Detroit’s makers, he said, have become much more open about their individual situations, and the union, in turn, has been more willing to accept change.   Most plants have eliminated the seemingly endless job classifications that long limited productivity.  The UAW has even accepted the long-taboo concept of a two-tier wage structure – which helped GM lower costs enough at its Lake Orion, MI assembly plant to start building small cars in the U.S. rather than importing them from Korea.

“Some” members of the rank-and-file aren’t happy with the new approach to labor relations, King acknowledged, though he insisted that the “overwhelming” majority recognized the “long-term” benefits – which translates into job security.

But making that case got a little tougher, said the normally mild-mannered King, when it was announced that Ford’s Chief Executive Officer, Alan Mulally, had received more than $100 million in pay, stock and bonuses for 2010.

“Unfortunate,” said King, his voice rising.  “Alan Mulally is a good CEO but has a blind spot.  He does not understand the damage he’s done to his own cache with workers, both hourly and salaried…and what he’s done for the upcoming negotiations.”

Right now, Ford is the only one of the Detroit makers that could be hit by a strike, the terms of the 2009 federal bailouts requiring arbitration should labor and management at GM and Chrysler not come to terms.

But even with Mulally’s big payday weighing on union negotiators, King continued to say his goal was to find a creative completion to contract talks.  That might even mean skipping the normal process of naming a strike “target.”

The UAW negotiates separate contracts with each of the Detroit makers, and it traditionally chooses one of those, as the deadline approaches, to focus on.  That contract is then used as a pattern for agreements with the other two makers.  Despite efforts to leave the word, strike, out of the discussion, most observers expect the UAW will continue to push for pattern settlements, and King did note that the union does not want to give one maker an advantage over the others.

During the lengthy meeting with reporters, King generally maintained his cool, though he was clearly riled as he discussed what he termed the “un-democratic” efforts of some Republican governors, such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, to take away collective bargaining rights.  The UAW president also fired a broadside at Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder that included references to Hitler, Mussolini and dictators in general.  The object of King’s concern was a proposal that would allow the governor to dismiss mayors and other elected officials and appoint an emergency financial manager in a community facing financial problems.

The UAW has traditional been one of the most powerful unions in America, and King stressed that it remains “healthy,” with a more than $60 million war chest it can draw on.  But there is no question it has lost ground in recent decades.  A recent filing with the federal government revealed membership dropped by nearly half over the last decade, to 376.612 at the end of 2010.  The UAW’s rolls peaked in 1979, when it counted 1.53 million dues-paying members.

Part of the problem is productivity, which has slashed the number of workers needed in the typical assembly plant.  But the UAW has also suffered as Detroit’s market share has plunged, the Big Three now generating less than half of the nation’s new vehicle sales.  As a result, the union has amped up efforts to organize transplants, such as the new Toyota facility in Tupelo, Miss.

Toyota recently closed its only UAW-organized plant, near San Francisco. And the Japanese maker has long resisted union organizing drives.  In an effort to break through, the UAW has begun a campaign demanding foreign makers accept the “democratic” idea of letting workers choose without interference.  If the union lost a vote, King promised that would be the end of the discussion.

But those companies that decline to accept the UAW demand will face a very public campaign accusing them of human rights violations, King warned. And it won’t be limited to the U.S., “We’ll do it globally.”

King noted UAW organizers are in discussions with a number of unnamed companies, so it is “not setting a timeline” to take one of the foreign makers on publicly.  But eventually, he hinted, talk will have to lead to action.