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  3. In 1979 the United Auto Workers(UAW)had more than 1.5m members, and nine of the country’s ten bestselling cars were American bra

In 1979 the United Auto Workers(UAW)had more than 1.5m members, and nine of the country’s ten bestselling cars were American bra

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问题     In 1979 the United Auto Workers(UAW)had more than 1.5m members, and nine of the country’s ten bestselling cars were American brands. The Toyota Corolla came eighth; the first time a foreign-branded car had cracked the top ten. Today the UAW’s membership is around 400,000, and not all of those are car workers: over the years the union has sought recruits on farms, in casinos and at universities. And of the top ten bestselling cars in America last year, seven were foreign-badged.
    Americans are not only buying foreign-badged cars, they are also making them: seven of America’s 15 most productive assembly plants last year were foreign-owned. Although the UAW has had some success at organizing foreign-owned partsmakers, it has so far failed to organize workers at the carmakers themselves. Its attempts in recent years to get into Nissan’s plants in Tennessee and Mississippi have failed. Now it has set its sights on German carmakers: Mercedes and, especially, Volkswagen.
    At VW’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the UAW, with support from IG Metall, which represents workers in VW’s German plants, has been pushing for the creation of a works council. In German law, such factory-level bodies are distinct from labour unions: they cannot call for strikes, and their membership is limited to employees at the plant in question. Their relationships with management tend to be less adversarial than American unions’. But the UAW seems to see them as a foot in the door towards eventual union recognition.
    The status of works councils under American labour law—in particular, whether a company can have a works council without a union—is unclear. Managers are legally prohibited from "assisting" labour unions, and the National Labour Relations Board has tended to interpret that ban strictly. If VW workers do choose a works council, one way of satisfying the law might be to bring in an outside union to represent employees, thereby giving the UAW a way in.
    It is no coincidence that most of the foreign-owned plants have been built in "right to work" states in the South. Such states ban "closed shops" in which employees are forced to join a union at their workplace. This makes it harder for unions to gain influence, even if they have recruited some of the workforce at a plant. But the UAW’s boss, Bob King, has acknowledged that it must keep on trying to organize the foreign-owned assembly plants, otherwise it may not have a long-term future.
    When the foreign carmakers arrived, the UAW was strong enough to force them to pay the wages it had negotiated with the American car giants in Detroit. But as the number of jobs in the foreign-owned plants grew, and Detroit’s workforce shriveled, the union lost that price-setting power. Since the cost of living in the South is relatively cheap, the foreign carmakers could pay less than the American ones but still find plenty of willing recruits.
It can be inferred from the first paragraph that
选项 A、automobile industry in the U. S. is facing great recession.
B、UAW sets up more generous requirements to its members.
C、it is quite difficult for UAW to recruit automobile workers recently.
D、assembly plants workers have little interest in joining unions.
答案C
解析 推理判断题。根据题干提示定位到第一段。该段第三句说，UAW的会员人数已不足1979年的三分之一，并且目前还有很多会员并不属于汽车行业。由此可知，目前UAW在汽车制造工人中招募会员并不是件容易的事，因此选[C]。虽然该段最后一句说，目前销售前十名中美国车仅占有三款，但这并不能证明美国汽车制造业萧条，故排除[A]；[B]在文中没有提到，故排除；该段没有提及汽车组装厂的工人对加人工会是否感兴趣，故排除[D]。
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