Conor here: This piece takes aim at GOP governors, which is fair enough, but the larger takeaway might be that the unions are no longer waiting for help from Democrats that isn’t coming. I believe we’re still waiting for Obama on card check, and let’s not forget Biden blocking the railroad workers strike. As the following piece notes, the Biden administration also has no plan to challenge the anti-union laws these southern states are enacting, which means workers are, as always under both parties, on their own.
By Jessica Corbett, a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams.
Since six Southern Republican governors last week showed “how scared they are” of the United Auto Workers’ U.S. organizing drive, Tennessee Volkswagen employees have voted to join the UAW while GOP policymakers across the region have ramped up attacks on unions.
The UAW launched “the largest organizing drive in modern American history” after securing improved contracts last year with a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. The ongoing campaign led to the “landslide” victory in Chattanooga last week, which union president Shawn Fain pointed to as proof that “you can’t win in the South” isn’t true.
The Tennessee win “is breaking the brains of Republicans in that region. They’re truly astonished that workers might not trust their corporate overlords with their working conditions, pay, health, and retirement,” Thom Hartmann wrote in a Friday opinion piece.
“The problem for Republicans is that unions represent a form of democracy in the workplace, and the GOP hates democracy as a matter of principle,” he argued. “Republicans appear committed to politically dying on a number of hills that time has passed by. Their commitment to gutting voting rolls and restricting voting rights, their obsession with women’s reproductive abilities, and their hatred of regulations and democracy in the workplace are increasingly seen by average American voters as out-of-touch and out-of-date.”
Just before voting began in Chattanooga, GOP Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas claimed that “unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy” and the UAW is “making big promises to our constituents that they can’t deliver on.”
The next nationally watched UAW vote is scheduled for May 13-17 at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama.
“Workers at our plant are ready for this moment,” Mercedes employee Jeremy Kimbrell said last week. “We are ready to vote yes because we are ready to win our fair share. We are going to end the Alabama discount and replace it with what our state actually needs. Workers sticking together and sticking by our community.”
As workers gear up for the election, the Alabama House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 72-30 for a bill that would withhold future economic incentive money from companies that voluntarily recognize unions rather than holding secret ballots. The state Senate previously passed a version of the legislation but now must consider it with the lower chamber’s amendments.
The Associated Pressnoted that “Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed similar legislation on Monday” and that Tennessee already has one on the books.
With his signature on Senate Bill 362, “Kemp’s aim is to thwart future organizing attempts by workers at automotive plants in Georgia, such as those operated by Hyundai Motor Group,” according toThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As the newspaper detailed:
Georgia has been a right-to-work state since 1947, when Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, allowing workers to refuse to join a union or pay dues, even though they may benefit from contracts negotiated by a union with their employer. Just 5.4% of workers in the state belonged to a union in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, protects the right for workers to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.
The new Georgia law is expected to be challenged in court, labor experts have said.
Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su told the AP on Thursday that she is not sure if the department will challenge the laws, given the National Labor Relations Board’s responsibilities, but she stressed that “there are federal standards beneath which no worker should have to live and work.”
In terms of joining a union, “that choice belongs to the worker, free from intervention, either by the employer or by politicians, free from retaliation and threats,” Su said. “And what we are seeing is that workers who were thought to be too vulnerable to assert that right are doing it, and they’re doing it here in the South.”
The U.S. labor chief also slammed “unacceptable” union-busting efforts by companies and suggested that protecting the right to unionize is part of President Joe Biden’s “promise to center workers in the economy.”
“He has said he’s the most pro-worker, pro-union president in history, and we are going to make good on that promise. And that includes making sure that workers have the right to join a union,” Su said of the president.
Biden’s commitment to workers and unionizing rights has caught the attention of GOP leaders. The governors’ joint statement nodded to the UAW’s January endorsement of the president, who is seeking reelection in November, and South Carolina’s leader attacked the administration earlier this year.
During his January State of the State speech, McMaster declared that “we will not let our state’s economy suffer or become collateral damage as labor unions seek to consume new jobs and conscript new dues-paying members. And we will not allow the Biden administration’s pro-union policies to chip away at South Carolina’s sovereign interests. We will fight. All the way to the gates of hell. And we will win.”
News From the Statesreported Friday that “of all the foreign-owned automakers in South Carolina, BMW would be the most likely mark in the near term if enough of its workers show interest. The massive plant near Greer—the manufacturer’s only U.S. production facility—employs some 11,000 people, twice the number of workers at Volkswagen in Tennessee and Mercedes in Alabama. It has operated in the Upstate for nearly 30 years and is in the process of adding electric vehicle lines.”
However, a UAW spokesperson told the outlet that they don’t yet have the numbers for the BMW and Volvo facilities in the state, and Marick Masters, a Wayne State University professor who studies the union, said: “I don’t think they’re writing anybody off but they know the history of unionization. And I would say South Carolina is a very inhospitable place for unions.”
Wanted to add: And the Pro Act is still stalled so far as I know. In the greatest deliberative body of all times, the U.S. Senate.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975259434/house-democrats-pass-bill-that-would-protect-worker-organizing-efforts
Note that the Pro Act passed the House in March 2021, when Biden was finding other opportunities, so to speak, to waste the nation’s wealth.
Meanwhile, what is it about Southern melodrama? This guy comes from the Lindsay Graham School of Scenery Chewing.
Gov. McMaster of SC:
“We will fight. All the way to the gates of hell. And we will win.”
Even Scarlett O’Hara had better lines.
But back to the Pro Act, which has been lost in the swamp of warmongering that the Biden Administration has become: One more promise to working-class Americans broken.
Southern governors as plantation overseers. Where have I heard things like this before?
“unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy” and the UAW is “making big promises to our constituents that they can’t deliver on.”
The economics of the South are such that it has always oppressed free labor as well. I won’t get into the nostalgia of That Lifetime Employment Program for Black People, but I will point out that the feudal economy of the South has meant constant downward pressure on the working class there.
‘Southern governors as plantation overseers.’
Had the exact same thought. They really hate the thought of workers organizing and having rights. They would much prefer non-union workplaces where workers know their place. Who cares what they make so long as they are under the thumb.
Say, how is that Boeing facility in South Carolina working out with the planes that they manufacture?
Years before Boeing there was BMW at the other end of the state and that’s a huge success unless one considers the area’s Atlanta-fication less than a success. The problems at the Charleston plant probably have a lot more to do with Boeing management than the presence or lack of unions.
How’s the workers paradise of your former Midwest going? Sorry but the world has changed and ground zero for all regions now in lower Manhattan, not among the julep sippers.
As for race relations, years ago the local business minded–then Democrats–decided the feudal model was bad for business. My area has had an industrial boom–often due to foreign investment–for decades. Not to get too regionally partisan but the North may be living on “warmth of other suns” brand fumes given where most of the BLM agitation took place a few years back.
Public subsidies and cheap electricity play an enormous role. Lack of unions and “right to work” laws are not insignificant. Median hourly rate at BMW is ~$20/hour. That is definitely not a good wage considering costs of housing, transportation, food, etc, etc. Can Carolinian have a decent standard of living on $40K/year if you don’t have a hous3 purchased 20-30 years ago? It should be noted that until the new contract legacy UAW plants did not offer anything better for hires after 2008.
The southern states politicians have long subsidized the race to the bottom for the country as a whole. The elites look to turn the US into Mexico or Brazil. Our local pols dole out goodies to cronies under the guis3 of development
Or move their factories to Mexico. BMW has talked about it.
Unlike many here I’ve been a member of a union for a time and they can be as political and bureaucratic and in some instances corrupt as any other institution. Just ask the WSWS which paints a less rosy view of the UAW than Commondreams. Bear in mind that if they could get away with it many businesses in our cybertimes would do away with labor altogether. That’s not just a Southern thing.
The world is changing. We need much more economic equality but that may require a political more than an organized labor solution. On this front the Dem supporting big unions have proven very unreliable. Didn’t they do a lot to block single payer?
I agree the world needs to change back to where companies can no longer just leave a country in search of lower wages and better tax deals. Look what that has done to the US. The country used to have a growing standard of living for the average person with real GDP growth of over 4% and debt declining as a percent of GDP. Now wages are largely stagnant, economic growth is less than 1/2 of what it was and the debt is growing faster than the economy – two to four times faster.
This would require tariffs to block imports and changing the tax code as well, but that would require either reforming or destroying at least one major party. National reunionization would provide the manpower as would a social movement, but that is why the government at all levels is trying to prevent the former and uses infiltrators such as Gloria Steinem or like those grifters who seized control of the national management of Black Lives Matter to destroy the latter.
IIRC this was the major point of Keynes plan in the Bretton Woods agreement to strictly prevent Capital mobility. We can thank Bill Clinton and his Wall Street pals who worked very hard to reverse this and take us back to the 1910s.
The UAW, just like the Democratic, and somewhat the Republican political parties, was completely UN-democratic.
The 2022 rule changes finally allowed for a democratic election of the UAW’s highest officers. The workers appear to have chosen well. From what I can see, Shawn Fain has been a godsend for the workers, he actually represents them instead of getting in bed with companies he negotiates with. Prior to this change there was no rosy view to be had of the higher levels of that Union.
I was a member of a corrupt union for 20 years, I stayed hoping for change (did not happen while I was there), and also as at the local level there was actual useful representation going on.
“The problem for Republicans is that unions represent a form of democracy in the workplace, and the GOP hates democracy as a matter of principle,” Gee Hartmann, Democrats aren’t much better.
I’ll give Republicans this: they straight up tell me they are against unions and bodily autonomy. The Dems tell me they are for these things at election time but their actions are always to undermine these things.
In short, at least Republicans aren’t complete liars.
I’m no fan of the Democrats, but labor law is one of the few places where, sometimes/often there is a material difference between the two parties: Republican nominees to the NLRB are axiomatically anti-worker and seek to undermine the mission of the NLRB itself, whereas D’s tend to appoint people who believe in the right to organize, however truncated that right is in the US.
You could argue that this just illustrates the D’s conception of governance as a PMC jobs program, and I’d also agree with you there, but the NLRB can be a pathway for worker advancement, and Democratic appointments to it are in the aggregate better.
Weak tea, I know, but such are the times…
Certainly hearing Republican politicians rail against Workers cooperating for mutual benefit is upsetting but expected.
I bet 99% have never worked in or under a Union Contract to experience the difference it makes in an hourly workers life.
It’s even sadder to hear a non unionized hourly worker run down Unionization without any personal experience with one—ignorant of the respect and benefits to be had.
And my state is filled with those that think like our Governor Henry does.
Ignorance has a strong voice here.
However, the Longshoremen Ruling is really what Henry and his Cronies were seething about:
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/union-wins-big-supreme-court-210000476.html&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjjjOjFueeFAxV1TTABHcnQAuoQFnoECAAQAg&usg=AOvVaw3IqYgo6InCbmkSgxxN20LT
With the decision, ILA union dockworkers will gain exclusive rights to operate cranes at the Port of Charleston’s Leatherman Terminal.
The story is a bit at odds with the intro.
But it does have local relevance since BMW’s huge and only US assembly plant (currently expanding) is a few miles from where I type.In Tennessee Volkswagen changed their tune and acquiesced to a union and I suspect BMW and Mercedes might so so as well since they are luxury brands that have unions in Europe. Perhaps if they are anti-union it as much to please local politicians as to save money on building cars that cost a lot and could charge a little more. They get many tax and other incentives from local government.
As for the politicians, they are business Republicans who are as opposed to unions as any business including those in the supposedly virtuous North. On Wall Street they take care of the union problem by sending production overseas (or, once, to the nonunion South). Let’s not turn this into some kind of moral fable.
Guess we’ll see what happens but those politicians have a lot of power in states where voting union supporters are very few. Better paid BMW workers (and there are lots–10,000) are still unlikely to do much for the other workers at the surrounding Walmarts.
While I agree with the basic thesis, I think that the history has a relatively minor error.
The Republican Party has been anti labor union almost since its founding in 1854. It’s not a recent development.
pretty sure the national republican party plank in the 1950s explicitly stated their support for the rights of workers to form and / or join a union.
of course, i don’t think they’ve actually had a plank for the last two presidentials, so . . .
I have a close relative who has been working as a temp in a Government agency in Vancouver, BC. It is supposed to be the equivalent of the IRS. After winning several accolades from past Project Leads and Managers she recently came under a new Project Lead (a fellow Indian from Punjab). This woman turned out to model her leadership skills closely on the online course conducted by Captain Bligh. Random warnings, unexplained low score ratings etc. Close to tears my relative approached her previous boss who told her to talk to the Union. She did and saw instant results. The Union Chief told her, “NEVER be in the same room with this person without someone else being present and always try to include me in ANY meeting regarding performance issues”. The Union boss then started asking this new Project Lead some tough questions like, “She has been getting scores of 9-10 in the past 2 years, how come in a space of 3 weeks you are giving her 3s and 4s? The Project Lead started hemming and hawing etc. Initially she refused to hand over the written scores and said, “I need my Manager’s input” – when the Union boss said, “Oh I know her well, I can get it straight from her” upon which this Lead went, “no, no, no, I have not asked yet”. My relative till this incident was a straight Evangelical anti Union Christian and this incident is bringing home to her how beneficial Unions can be.