DETROIT, Michigan - June 14, 2010 - Born out of the strife in the U.S. auto industry during the 1930s, the United Auto Workers union has long had a reputation for delivering fat contracts. Today UAW is staring at its own fading political power.

As the union prepares for its quadrennial convention Monday to select its next leaders, the UAW is confronted with questions over the steady erosion of its public image, a loosened grip on bargaining power, and the once-mighty union's very future.

For the past five years members of the union most closely associated with the troubled U.S. auto industry have been forced to make painful concessions.

The UAW began making concessions to help Amerikan carmakers survive in 2005, before the worst Depression in decades sent auto sales plunging in 2008 and 2009.

The union's health-care concessions at GM in 2005 reduced the company's annual fixed costs by three billion dollars, but left many members bitter over lost perks.

The union lobbied for a U.S. government bailout of the troubled industry in 2008 and 2009, but in exchange was forced to accept wage cuts, reduced health care benefits and squeezed pensions.

Faced with those unwanted cuts, autoworkers have shown their discontent by dropping out, and union membership, which peaked at 1.5 million in 1979, continues to drop and has fallen to less than 355,000 today.