When employees are dissatisfied with the way they are being represented by a union, what are some tactics that employees can use to influence the union leaders to make changes in the union’s goals?

In October 2010, two hundred auto workers picketed outside the locked gates of their union headquarters in Detroit, Michigan, to protest an agreement that let General Motors (GM) pay half the wage rate of current employees to newly hired workers or those called back from layoff at GM’s assembly plant in Orion Township, Michigan. The wage cut for the newly hired and returning workers was part of an agreement between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and General Motors that was designed to help GM make money on building the Chevrolet Sonic, a low-price subcompact car, with unionized labor in the United States. In the past, General Motors and other U.S. automakers needed to assemble small cars in Mexico or Korea, where labor costs were lower, which took jobs away from unionized U.S. workers.
The agreement between the company and the union was the first time the union has agreed to a pay cut for workers returning from layoff. The Michigan auto plant builds the Chevrolet Sonic and had previously been closed. U.S. automakers have struggled for years to make money on small cars. Mark Reuss, GM’s president for North America, said that the company expected to make money on the Sonic. The UAW deal, he said, was one of the reasons why the small car will be profitable. Others included a highly efficient factory with new equipment and help from state and local governments.
Meanwhile, the auto workers who have been laid off and who were recalled to work in the Orion Township auto plant felt betrayed by their union. Prior to being laid off, the workers earned $28 per hour, and after being recalled were asked to do the same work for $14 per hour. That is why two hundred of these auto workers protested the deal made between the UAW and GM to lower auto worker wages. Gary Bernath, an assistant director of the UAW, said the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler in 2009 forced the union to make very difficult decisions to safeguard union jobs.
In GM’s latest contract with the UAW that was settled in 2011, the recalled employees at the Orion Township plant had their wages increased to $16 to $19 an hour, which was still substantially below the $32 per hour wage received by experienced UAW employees who work at other GM assembly plants.