It's less about the size of the local and more about anti-democratic shenanigans instituted by business unionism. They have the same problems at the auto plants, too.
Size-wise, I alone was a lead strike captain for about 200 workers, which isn't even all of the workers in my building.
As for the UAW chapter, we have 10 worksites in the local and my worksite employs more than 6,000 workers unionized with UAW. We had 48K workers simultaneously able to strike, in the largest strike in our sector of the economy in US history, and we were somehow not able to leverage that power into wages that deal adequately with current inflation, let alone a COLA, let alone a diet COLA. We are employed by the third-largest employer and largest landlord in the state of California and they are benefiting from our impoverishment. Our present wages make up 1% of their yearly operating budget.
UAW staff at my worksite had no plan for what to do when they were handed strike power and have behaved egregiously. We dropped the COLA demand on Day 4 of the strike. Now, a bunch of lousy behavior and abuse of rank-and-file and one garbage contract later, we are left scrambling because the strike has ended and our contract has been ratified, but there is no back to work agreement. In light of this silence from both our union and our bosses, middle management has not been informed about rights and responsibilities. We have a major production deadline in the next couple of days while all the workers who might complete the work for that deadline are out of contract and most are visiting their families on vacation, which is a recipe for workplace abuse and disaster.
Striking workers returning to work are now informing middle management about pathways for completing struck labor in order to smooth over the situation. This is, dare I say it, a goddamn mess.
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