Southern Governors' Anti-Auto Workers Letter Has Everything But 'We're A Family Here'
Seriously, what Walmart union-busting seminar did Kay Ivey steal this from?
Last year, following the successful stand-up strike, the United Auto Workers union launched its plan to start unionizing the entire non-unionized auto industry workforce, which will obviously give auto workers across the nation far more leverage when it comes to bargaining. This is a good thing! It’s an especially good thing for those living in right-to-work-for-less states, who generally have a lot less bargaining power and funding than those who do not.
You would think the governors of states where this was happening would be happy about their constituents making more money they could then spend in their states, bringing prosperity to all, but not all of them are. On Wednesday, a group of southern governors — Kay Ivey (Alabama), Brian Kemp (Georgia), Tate Reeves (Mississippi), Henry McMaster (South Carolina), Bill Lee (Tennessee), and Greg Abbott (Texas) — issued a joint statement against the UAW and the unionization of auto manufacturing plants in their states, on the grounds that companies will leave if cruelly forced to pay their workers enough to live on.
It begins:
We the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states. As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.
Apparently one of the values they intend to live by are tiered payment structures in which workers hired after a certain point will never make as much as those hired before them.
I think the thing I love best about this letter is the way they have peppered in so many of the classic anti-union talking points that we have all come to know and, well, not love, from union-busting seminars and the charmingly informative anti-union websites that so many corporations now put up (for the benefit of their workers, of course).
The reality is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity. We have worked tirelessly on behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry. Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy – in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs. In America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch. No one wants to hear this, but it’s the ugly reality. We’ve seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation. And we are seeing it in the fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs. Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.
Love how that one sentence is just thrown in there between two other sentences that are clearly related.
The actual “ugly reality” is that if businesses cannot afford to pay their workers fairly, then they shouldn’t exist. Workers cannot be so afraid that businesses will go away that they don’t fight for themselves, and part of the reason that the UAW is pushing to unionize every plant in the country is so that these companies have no place to go unless they want to build whole new plants, which cost about $1 billion and could also be unionized. And sure, they could go to China, but right now that’s gonna be a pretty big risk given that a lot of people, including legislators like Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, are calling for a ban on Chinese-made electric vehicles being sold in the United States.
“Chinese electric vehicles are an existential threat to the American auto industry. Ohio knows all too well how China illegally subsidizes its companies, putting our workers out of jobs and undermining entire industries, from steel to solar manufacturing. We cannot allow China to bring its government-backed cheating to the American auto industry. The U.S. must ban Chinese electric vehicles now, and stop a flood of Chinese government-subsidized cars that threaten Ohio auto jobs, and our national and economic security,” Brown said in his own letter last week.
I’ve said this for years, ever since I was but a wee lass screaming about sweatshops and globalization (which, to be clear, is very different from “globalism,” which is a largely antisemitic and entirely crazypants conspiracy theory), but I absolutely think we should ban all US-based companies from manufacturing products in countries where they do not have to pay their workers fairly, and ban non-US-based companies from selling them here. We are by far the largest consumer market in the world — spending twice what the entire European Union spends on consumer goods and over three times what China spends — so we have the power to make that happen. What are they gonna do? Go down to Galt’s Gulch? Only sell their wares in countries that have sweatshops? Probably not, because where are those people gonna get the money to buy their products with what they’re paying them?
But no one ever listens to me.
Anyway, let’s continue on with the governors’ letter. I have helpfully bolded the classic union-busting talking points.
“The experience in our states is when employees have a direct relationship with their employers, that makes for a more positive working environment. They can advocate for themselves and what is important to them without outside influence. The UAW has come in making big promises to our constituents that they can’t deliver on. And we have serious reservations that the UAW leadership can represent our values. They proudly call themselves democratic socialists and seem more focused on helping President Biden get reelected than on the autoworker jobs being cut at plants they already represent.
A more positive working environment for who? Not workers! It’s far easier to advocate with a group than by oneself, and if that were not the case, there would be literally no point to union-busting. Why would they bother? According to the Economic Policy Institute, employers spend over $400 million a year on union avoidance consultants alone. We don’t know how much they spend on other union-busting activities, but $400 million on its own is a lot and certainly enough to make one suspect that their employees will make a whole lot more money in a union.
Additionally, I am pretty sure that workers’ “values” in this case are perfectly aligned with the UAW, in that they would probably like to earn enough money to comfortably support themselves and their families. Gonna say that’s why a supermajority of workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Arizona recently filed for a union vote.
We want to keep good paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector here. A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.
Bullshit!
The only way for workers in the auto industry to get what they deserve is by banding together and demanding it.
I highly doubt that any workers in these states will be the least bit deterred by this letter, given that they’ve probably already heard it all from their bosses and the union consultants their bosses paid millions of dollars to in order to keep them from successfully bargaining for enough to live comfortably on.
Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have their union vote today, and if they vote in favor — which seems likely given that a supermajority voted for a vote — that just might spell the end of the anti-union South.
PREVIOUSLY:
So old I remember when VW Was planning on opening a plant in Tennessee and WANTED union labor, because it was much easier to negotiate and deal with labor disputes that way but the State fought hard against it purely for spite
"I'm pro-union because the odds of three ghosts visiting your boss to make him do the right thing are slim to none" - Charles Dickens*
*Okay, Dickens didn't really say this, but he should have.