The great national labor leader John L. Lewis once was asked what organized labor wanted. His response was telling: “More.”
Lewis is long dead but his spirit lives on in the American labor movement.
I was thinking about Lewis on Monday when I read that General Motors workers have gone on strike.
What struck me the most about the strike was how little attention it has received. When I was growing up, GM was the nation’s largest employer. Today, it’s not even in the top 30.
Companies like Walmart, Amazon and FedEx now have much bigger workforces.
The story is much the same for the United Auto Workers. The UAW was arguably once the nation’s most powerful union.
Today, not so much.
Government worker unions like those representing teachers, garbage collectors and home-care workers have pushed the UAW from its once lofty perch.
Neither the UAW nor GM are as powerful or influential as they once were.
Like most private-sector unions, the United Auto Workers is shrinking. And while GM is profitable, it is losing market share.
To put this in perspective, as recently as 2011, GM was the largest automaker in the world. Now it is No. 4.

The number of union workers in GM’s plants has fallen as the automaker has lost market share, automated and shifted manufacturing overseas.
Twenty-five years ago, the union workforce in GM’s plants was 177,000 strong. Today it has dwindled to 49,000.
So, both management and the union are looking at their future with trepidation.
The union wants four factories that have been shuttered in Michigan and Ohio to be reopened. They also want pay raises.
GM, on the other hand, wants to reduce benefits so it can more easily compete with foreign owned auto makers, particularly those with factories in the United States.
GM pays $63 per hour in wages and benefits compared with $50 at the foreign-owned factories, according to figures from the Center for Automotive Research. And UAW workers at GM pay just 4 percent of their health-insurance premiums compared to a 34 percent average for large firms nationwide.
Looking at those numbers, it’s hard to see why any company would chose to make themselves even less competitive. Then again, the Wall Street Journal reports that the strike will cost GM $100 million a day in lost production.
This leaves the company in a no-win situation. It can halt the hemorrhaging of money by giving in to the union. But this will almost certainly put the manufacturer at even more of a competitive disadvantage over the long haul.
On the other hand, the UAW is in a no-win situation as well. It may be able to force immediate concessions with a strike, but in the long-term its membership will continue to decline as GM struggles to compete against non-union companies.
The fact of the matter is the U.S. has two auto industries.
One, composed of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, is mostly Midwestern and is unionized.
The other American auto industry is mostly Southern and non-union. The owners of these factories are Japanese, European and Korean companies. But their workers are every bit as American as the ones laboring on assembly lines in Detroit.
My wife drives a Honda that was made in Alabama. I drive a Chevy made in Indiana. I can’t say one vehicle is more “American” than the other.
Frankly, I couldn’t give a hoot whether the person who built my car paid union dues.
What I care about is whether the car is a good value and will serve my family’s needs.
And judging by how GM and the UAW are battling to remain relevant, it would appear I’m not the only one that has reached that conclusion.

Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse journalist and a freelance reporter. ScottReeder1965@gmail.com.