Who wants a union? Not Southern autoworkers, it seems

[The Northerner]

Foreign automakers are placing their U.S. factories in the region because of generous incentives and a workforce famously resistant to unions. That's presenting a huge challenge to the once-formidable United Auto Workers.

Deric Golden has what he calls his dream job, fixing small flaws on the sedans being churned out at the Hyundai factory here.

So when two organizers from the United Auto Workers knocked on his apartment door one day, hoping to get him to sign a union card, he quickly sent them packing.

"I told them I didn't work at the plant," said Golden, 29. "I just wasn't interested."

It's the same story in town after town along the southern tier of Auto Alley, a corridor that runs north-south along interstates 75 and 65 from Lexington, Ky., to Montgomery.

Foreign automakers — including Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen — are placing their U.S. factories in this region because of generous state and local incentives and a workforce famously resistant to unions.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0329-autos-unions-20110329,0,4755334.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+-+Business%29

[FLAprogressive]

1. they've been permanently brainwashed, the UAW shouldn't bother. you can't fix ignorance.

[GoCubsGo]

28. Yup.

I agree with the brainwashing part. I don't agree that the UAW shouldn't bother, and you CAN fix ignorance. It's called "education". It will take a lot longer with these folks, but remember that many of them of descendants of unionized mill workers. If their ancestors could do it, so can they.

[melm00se]

32. a union can only form

if there is unhappiness about something amongst the workforce.

if they are happy with their:

Pay
Treatment
Work environment

there is no way a union will form.

[svsuman23]

37. you I think, are right.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

51. Thing is, the continued existence of those conditions tends to be fragile.

But people in general aren't that good at forward, preventive thinking.

[Armstead]

59. There ARE decent employers ya know

I am fully supportive of the union movement.

But unions have a purpose, and if employers give good wages and working conditions, and there is a good relationship between management and employees, a union is not necessary.

The important thing is not to stand on rigid ground on this, but to ensure that the law continues to allow workers to bring in unions in those circumstances where it is necessary.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

62. Perhaps the possibility of them joining a union, even if they're not in one right now...

...contributes to keeping some employers honest.

[Armstead]

64. That's part of it...But there are decent people who hire other people too

Yes there are also a lot of employers who will get away with as much they can (and sometimes more), but one should be careful about painting with too broad a brush.

Just because someone has a business does not automatically make them evil.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

66. You'll see I placed the word "some" at a strategic location in my post. -nt

[Dogtown]

68. It is incredibly naive

to believe in the continued good-will of an employer.

A decent employer will recognize the need and benefits of collective organization.

To paraphrase the GOP, "If he's not doing anything wrong, he has nothing to fear (from the workers)."

[Armstead]

70. When there is no more goodwill, then it becomes time to organize

I think if you honestly look around at your friends and family, you will find a good number who are happy in their jobs and with their employer.

Yes there are also many abusive situations too, but it is simple minded to assume that every employers is bad simply because they are an employer.

[Dogtown]

75. Organize *before* the good will runs out

or you'll have to buck an authoritarian management already prepared to disrupt organization.

Companies often change management, usually without formal notice.

When Mom & Pop are bought out labor is faced with attempts to organize in a suddenly structured, anti-union milieu.

If Mom & Pop are benevolent, they won't object to a union, especially one that is more of a benevolent organization than a confrontational unit.

One specific benefit is supplementing reduced income during economic lay-offs not associated with management abuse, or support for ill or injured workers, supplemental to insurance.


Things change. Organization prepares for change, and is not necessarily an indictment of management in any given company.

[Blue_Tires]

49. someone should just enlighten him on what his union counterparts

in Asia and Europe are getting for building the same cars...

[FLPanhandle]

56. The aren't ignorant

For these folks this is a "dream job" with better pay, better working conditions, and much better chance for moving up than anything else they can get.

They are smart enough to know that and smart enough to not want to put it all at risk.

They know the risk is high they could lose it all and have to pay money each paycheck to a union and for what benefit?

Far from ignorant, I think they've made a careful assessment of their work options & cost/benefit of union membership.

[CatWoman]

57. can't fix stupid, either

I live among these people.

Oy

[blondeatlast]

76. I share your frustration here in AZ. It's imopossible for outsiders to really

understand what it's like in red state hell. Words simply fail.

[Newest Reality]

2. Golden doesn't realize it,

but he is a lifetime member of the Stockholm Syndrome Worker's Union.

[brentspeak]

3. He'll know how stupid was when he loses his "dream job" for arbitrary management reasons

And with absolutely no recourse.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. That's not true.

Only about 60% are stupid and vote against their own economic self interests, including my two stupid sisters that proudly still sport "W" stickers on the backs of their cars. My 93-year-old mother thinks they are batshit crazy, as do three or their five kids. The other two kids are just like their stupid mothers. I told one nephew (Obama supporter) that the McCain/Dingbat 2008 ticket would get 60% of the vote here in Alabama, and he didn't believe me. He has lived out of the state for several years, and that explains that.

[Liquorice]

11. You can find stupid and brainwashed anywhere. I have

relatives in the Northeast, and some of them are right-wing idiots.

[cordelia]

26. Speak for yourself

[littlewolf]

5. most southern states are also right to work state ....

[raccoon]

78. Yep. And unfortunately in such states, many people are so brainwashed against unions that they

react to the word "union" the way a vampire reacts to a crucifix.

[Liquorice]

6. Being in the union is some kind of terrible thing akin to being

in the NAZI party in the South. There have been decades of propaganda against unions, to the point where I have witnessed people at one factory fighting against going union and getting better wages/benefits. The bosses make sure to tell everyone that unions are evil and if they try to unionize they will close the doors. They got people terrified of unions in the South. It's extremely depressing.

[susanna]

7. What's really intriguing about this...

Is that many of the U.S. automakers have unionized plants in the mid-south. And those workers use the union to their benefit; yet their deep-south neighbors are against the very idea.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? It does me.

[Elwood P Dowd]

9. My father came from an area in North Alabama that actually seceded from the state

when the Civil War broke out. There was one family that had three sons fight for the South and three sons fight for the North. Parts of North Alabama and Tennessee were totally different from the rest of the South back in the day.

[delunapark]

10. And worth a mention...

HUGE Tax Exemptions from the states.

[Frances]

12. Most people in the deep South

know that the reason the auto factories moved there is because of cheap labor and that if labor complains the auto companies will move to third world countries, just the way Vanity Fair and other garment companies did.

[Sherman A1]

21. Precisely

just as it did with the MIlls. From the NE to the SE then overseas always chasing cheap labor.

[FLAprogressive]

13. not anymore, I think most have closed....

[csziggy]

18. There are parts of Northern Alabama that unionized with Hungarian miners

Who immigrated in the 1890s-1900. My brother-in-law's ancestors came from a town where the first trade guilds were started in the 1400s and they saw unions as being a continuation of that history. Before that, the mine owners played off black workers against white. Once the Hungarians unionized the workers negotiated together. They had a big strike about 1920 and shut the mine down in one town, Brookside. The mine owners decided to just shut the whole thing down.

The miners ended up going to Harlan County, Kentucky to work, often leaving the women of the families back in Alabama where they raised the children and took care of the old people.

[Blue_Tires]

50. the reporter could have at least gone to the Corvette plant in Bowling Green

to get their opinion...Just a short drive down the road...

[Azathoth]

14. The right to be exploited is a proud Southern tradition

It's their God-given right to be taken advantage of by their employers, their politicians, and their religious leaders...and they're prepared to fight to the death any liberal fascist who tries to take that right away.

[Populist_Prole]

16. As a transplant I have found that to be all too true in so many cases

For all the image so many like to project of free-wheeling rebel wildmen, they sure do knuckle under to the authority of the groups you mention. It's almost as if argument is regarded as impolite. It was quite jarring to me at first and it puzzles me even more to this day.

[ohheckyeah]

15. That's quite a change from this:

August 3, 2005
Last month, Toyota made a decision that didn't get a lot of press, but sent ripples of concern through state houses across the South.

The Japanese auto giant announced that it was going to bypass offers of hundreds of millions of dollars in "recruitment incentives" (corporate subsidies) from several Southern states, and would instead set up shop in Ontario, Canada, which was offering much fewer give-aways.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
http://southernstudies.org/2005/08/toyota-reveals-limits-of-great.html

[PA Democrat]

24. Bingo. Low taxes and a poorly educated workforce may not

be the corporate paradise that some would have us believe.

I was just about to google the story you posted. States that boast low taxes are typically not cranking out the best students from their public schools. The money to educate our kids has to come from somewhere.

[ohheckyeah]

63. I guess they didn't learn the lesson well enough

and will have to get burned by training once again. And,of course, you are right. Taxes are needed for public schools or we can just accept that we are a nation of uneducated or undereducated people.

[OHdem10]

17. The auto companies, I am sure were drawn to those states

because they are right to work.

I also wonder if these new Governors in the Rust Belt
are aiming to make places like Wisconsin Ohio Indiana
etc Right To Work States. Starting with killing Unions.
This thought has been with me since they started.

Tonight I heard a Wall Street Guy tell Lou Dobbs that
it would be good if the country does what Wisconsin
is doing. Help growth according to him. I thought
to myself --cheap labor here in the US is the new
growth policy. Cheap Labor to compete with China.
Get the salaries cheap enough that Wall Street makes
a profit and we can keep jobs here.

They are not looking at the big picture. Cheap wages
mean U.S. cannot buy their own products much less those
from over seas.

[Selatius]

19. They're not supposed to look at the big picture. That was never the goal.

The goal is to transfer wealth from the middle class and the working poor to the people at the top. It may be true that without a middle class, there will be very few people left to afford the products, but if it got to that point, then the wealth transfer will be so complete that each baron of capitalism will have more than enough wealth to own a self-sufficient plantation, or fiefdom if you want to use a medieval term.

[Sherman A1]

22. Agreed & Well Said

It is unfortunate that what you said is true, but nonetheless it is exactly the case.

[quaker bill]

23. All it has ever been about

is cheap labor. With the execption of a brief respite during the Clinton Admin, all tax, trade, labor, immigration, and macroeconomic policy (monetary and fiscal) has been pointed at creating a cheap labor market here. It has been sold in a number of misleading ways so that one might think there actually was another purpose such as "freedom".

The "freedom" conservatives have been promoting is the freedom to work hard, work cheap, and die poor, but on very rare occasions someone wins the lotto in business and we get to see it on TV, so it is all OK, as long as I still have my guns....

[JohnnyRingo]

20. When the UAW is gone, Hyundai won't have to pay this idiot as much.

He doesn't get paid on his merit, he's compensated just enough to stave off interest in forming a union. That, and they assure him that the company will unbolt the machinery n a week and move it to China if he signs a union card.

[XanaDUer]

25. Ah

"I don't want to give any more pieces of the pie to anyone else. I need it for myself," said Kevin Carroll of La Grange, Ga., who was unemployed when hired by Kia Motors Manufacturing last year.

The West Point, Ga., Kia plant, which opened in 2009, has had more than 100,000 applications for just 2,100 positions.

[Kingofalldems]

27. Unrec for nonstop anti-union anti-Democratic party OPs

[white_wolf]

31. How was his post either of those things??

He wasn't say the southerners were right, he was passing along a news story for God's sake.

[Better Believe It]

29. How can a union that negotiates huge pay and benefit cuts expect to organize non-union workers?

If the United Auto Workers officials can't/won't improve working conditions and benefits what incentive do non-union auto workers have to support a union organizing drive?

I suppose the organizing drive theme could be:

Vote UAW and cut your pay!

[Chris_Texas]

30. Many responses in this thread are insulting

These workers are not stupid and it is ignorant as hell to suggest that they are.

Unions are a service business -- they are not entitled to members, they have to earn them. Workers pay them a cut of their wages in exchange for something. Or that's the theory. The reality is that these workers do not feel as if the return on their investment into the union justifies the cost and risk. That's all their is to it.

[melm00se]

33. winner winner chicken dinner

if the union has nothing of value to offer why form one?

[blindpig]

34. The reality is that getting involved can cost your job.

Try even mentioning unions at the BMW plant in SC and you're toast. This 'right to work' bullshit is viscous.

Much of this is the residual effect of the failed Textile Strike in 1934. People were shot dead, many were blackballed, it was traumatic for the working class. It was erased from the popular memory, too painful. The imposition of the 'right to work' laws and Taft-Hartley prevented any major retry.

It's gonna take fearless, relentless organizers and maybe now is the time with fightback in the air, maybe so folks from the UE, a union that hasn't forgotten what it's all about.

[socialist_n_TN]

36. It's not just the auto worker down here either...........

My wife and daughter are both RNs and I've talked to my daughter about unionizing and she said that when even the word "union" is MENTIONED by someone at her workplace, the lower level management jumps all over it, insinuating that you'll be fired. I memtioned that that was illegal, but that they could fire you for something else "officially" and there wouldn't be any legal recourse. Right to screw worker states are VERY tough nuts to crack.

I saw something the other day about the UAW trying to work with European (and Japanese?) union organizers to help show these southern workers the benefits of unionization. I like it because it's outside the proverbial box thinking.

I also was at a meeting the other day with some AFL-CIO, SEIU, and AFSCME (is that right?) reps and the AFL guy said they were going to try again to organize some of the auto plants here in Tennessee in the near future. I'm hoping that the timing is better now than before for this to be successful.

[melm00se]

39. what happens if

the union provides little or no value (real or perceived)?

I detect an underlying tone that these southern workers are just too dumb to understand why they need to organize and that they should just do it (because they are told to do so).

I have seen absolutely no discussion as to what value the union would bring to these workers. Until or unless the positive value of the union is described, they (the workers) are going to tell union organizers to go away.

[blindpig]

42. Value

Of course there is 'value'. Fairer wages, health insurance, better working conditions, job security, pensions, has that no value?

Conerning southern workers, did you not read my post?

What do you think people fought and died for?

[melm00se]

45. that assumes that they

(the southern workers) see what the union brings is better than what they have now.

if they view that they have:

good working conditions
fair wages
job security
a pension (be it defined benefit or otherwise)

what does the union bring to the table?

As I said in a post above: workers have to be unhappy for a union to form. if they are happy with what they have, what does the union bring to the table?

[blindpig]

53. They can be unhappy and still fear unemployment.

As has been said even talking about organizing will get ya canned. Workers have none of those things here, how happy an they be? Happy to be able to feed their families perhaps, like the rankest sort of slaves, but that's about it. While the owners are farting thru silk, working not but benefiting from the appropriated labor of the workers.

A while back workers at a Milliken mill were being organized. Roger Milliken promised that if they had a union vote he would fire everybody, and even though the workers voted down the union out of fear old Roger fired them all anyway.

Whose side are you on, the workers or the owners?

[sudopod]

35. A Union is not a business.

And workers in the South feel the way they do because they've been misled.

Southerner here, btw.

[old mark]

38. I agree that unions got fat and lazy - and greedy, not for their members, but for themselves.

I KNOW many unions are still working hard for their people, but some are just generating money for themselves, and often the quality of a specific union depends on the region ald locals...some are great, some are not.

The Unions MUST look at themselves and get their business right, and they must do it NOW! It is very late in the game.

Mark
retired AFSCME Steward

[nessa]

73. +1 (nt)

.

[Nye Bevan]

40. Perhaps they feel they are treated sufficiently well that they don't need a union?

And management is aware that they need to continue to treat their workers well, because if they do not, they will unionize? Which means that unions are actually kind of working the way they should, without anyone being a member.

[Lars39]

41. Treated better than most all the other companies for which they've worked.

But ignorant of how much better their working conditions and benefits could be with a strong union in place.

[xchrom]

43. +1

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cordelia]

46. Alerted

[Blue_Tires]

52. +1

The very fear of organization is what keeps those foreign automakers in line (sort of)....

[blindpig]

55. Maybe it's the difference between any employment and

union employment. Management is ruthless in preserving it's perceived prerogatives, fires on the slightest suspicion and blackballs 'trouble makers'.

[Shagbark Hickory]

47. Lets not forget that it costs money to be in a union. nt

[Armstead]

48. Many union leaders say that they are not looking to build membership when not needed

I've done research into this related to my job, talking to labor leaders on a regional level.

They say they do not necessarily believe that all workplaces should be unionized. The larger goal is to create a situation where employers will give workers a fair deal, whether the place in unionized or not. In addition to the more direct involvement of actually bringing in a union, the principle is that the "threat" (from the employers standpoint) of a union drive helps to keep employers honest.

The principle is that unions will go in when asked by the workers when the workers believe there is a need for it.

If a non-union workplace provides good pay and decent benefits, a union does not necessarily want to go through the process of attempting to organize a union.

There is, of courser, a dilemma in that approach, because the less promionent unions are, the less influence that have -- and tuse undercut their own power.

But the basic point is that many unions tend to focus on situations where conditions cause workers to feel they need representation.

If these automakers are giving their employees good wages, etc. then the union is still serving a purpose.

[blindpig]

54. Union leaders who say that sort of thing are scabs.

They betray the working class.

[Armstead]

58. Hardly. You may disagree but they are committed to their cause

[blindpig]

61. "Aristocrats of Labor"

We got ours and fuck the rest of ya.

[Armstead]

65. You're entitled to your opinion, but you're pissing on a ,lot of good union people

[blindpig]

67. How good are they if they would deny what they have to others?

That's a very limited sort of 'solidarity'.

[Armstead]

69. They're not denying anything to anyone

If employees at a workplace request an organization drive, they'll help organize one..


You are a bit too rigid in your views

[Octafish]

60. Brainwashed.

Brain-dead.

[Initech]

71. Too much RW hate radio, too much Fux News, not enough critical thinking.

[rustydog]

72. If you are told the plant will just shut down if you unionize, you

may be inclined to be anti-union.

[JHB]

74. Not to discount some of the commentary above, but...

...what portion of the quotes can be attributed to these guys thinking "if I'm going to have my name in the paper, I'd just be drawing a big, fat target on my ass if I said anything good about unions"?

Some mean it, if only becuase "some" always do. But all of them? it's worth wondering.

[RedCloud]

77. They should car all their cars SAMWAWS

Slighty Above Minimum Wage Auto Workers

[PVnRT]

79. Huh?

At Toyota's Georgetown, KY plant, the average pay (granted, with bonuses) is around $18-$25 per hour. That's not up to unionized plants (~$27 an hour), but it's hardly minimum wage, and it's a damn good job in an area without much for large-scale manufacturing.

What they do lose out on is increased job security and pensions; I'm not sure if benefits are comparable or not, but I'm guessing they get less there, too.

[RegieRocker]

80. The south has hated union forces for a very long time. And yes

it is about civil war. They simply do not like the word union.