Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Last week, Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee “ramped up his anti-union rhetoric” in hopes of persuading workers at Volkswagen AG’s plant in Chattanooga to vote against representation by the United Auto Workers. According to Reuters, on February 12th, Corker said he had been “assured” that if workers at the Volkswagen plant in his hometown rejected representation by UAW, the company would “reward the plant with a new product to build.” Bernie Woodall of Reuters said that Corker dropped that “bombshell” on the “first of a three-day secret ballot election of blue-collar workers” at the Chattanooga plant. The most troubling part—as I see it—is that Corker’s claim actually ran “counter to public statements by Volkswagen…”
The following day, Corker said that he was “very certain that if the UAW is voted down,” the automaker would announce new investment in the plant “in the next couple weeks.” It seems Corker hadn’t heard—or chose to ignore—a statement made earlier by Frank Fischer, chief executive of VW Chattanooga, “that there was ‘no connection’ between the vote at its three-year-old Tennessee plant and a looming decision on whether VW will build a new crossover vehicle there or in Mexico.”
Volkswagen officials acknowledged “their desire for a works council, arguing that their model of labor-management relations serves them well in every other country in the world, except China.” Under U.S. law, however, the company would not be able to “set up a works council without first having its employees vote for a union.”
The UAW “was dealt a stinging defeat” when a majority of employees at the Chattanooga facility voted against joining the union “after a high-profile opposition campaign led by Republican politicians and outside political groups.” According to the Washington Post, the auto union’s loss “came in spite of an unprecedented level of support from the company being organized.” Fischer who had actually “encouraged the idea of starting a German-style ‘works council’ at the plant, like those in place at Volkswagen’s other factories'” apparently was “saddened by the outcome.”
Fisher speaking after the union vote (Washington Post):
“Our employees have not made a decision that they are against a works council. Throughout this process, we found great enthusiasm for the idea of an American-style works council both inside and outside our plant,” Fischer said, reading from a statement. “Our goal continues to be to determine the best method for establishing a works council in accordance with the requirements of U.S. labor law to meet VW America’s production needs and serve our employees’ interests.”
Gary Casteel, organizer for the UAW’s Southern Region, said, “Unfortunately, politically motivated third parties threatened the economic future of this facility and the opportunity for workers to create a successful operating model that would grow jobs in Tennessee.”
Casteel was making reference to anti-union remarks made by “Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers, who threatened to withhold tax incentives from Volkswagen if the workers unionized, and attention from D.C.-based activist Grover Norquist.” UAW officials said they noticed that workers began “to turn against the union as they started hearing ‘threats and intimidation’ against the company.”
It appears that the Chattanooga auto workers may have made a big mistake when they rejected UAW membership last week. According to Huffington Post, theirs is the only “Volkswagen plant worldwide without a formal mechanism for workers’ representation.”
Huffington Post:
The German “co-determination” model mandates works councils, which connect employees to management, at all large German companies. Following the union vote, the head of Volkswagen’s works council told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the automaker would hesitate to expand in the U.S. South.
“I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the South again,” said works council leader Bernd Osterloh.
“If co-determination isn’t guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor” of building another plant in the right-to-work South, Osterloh added.
UAW chief says Bob Corker intimidated workers at Chattanooga Volkswagen plant
Now, thanks to Senator Bob Corker and others who spoke out against UAW representation for workers at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant it looks like the company probably won’t be rewarding the facility with any “new product” manufacturing there…or anywhere else in the “right-to-work South.”
SOURCES
Turns Out Anti-Union Volkswagen Workers May Have Screwed Themselves And The South (Huffington Post)
As Volkswagen workers vote, Tennessee senator ramps up anti-union talk (Reuters)
VW workers may block southern U.S. deals if no unions: labor chief (Reuters)
U.S. senator drops bombshell during VW plant union vote (Reuters)
Auto union loses historic election at Volkswagen plant in Tennessee (Washington Post)
All eyes on Chattanooga: VW’s workers are deciding the future of unions in the South (Washington Post)
nick spinelli
Dredd, Corker is a politician. By definition politicians are NOT neutral. They are partisan. If Corker was acting on behalf of the company then he may well had been in violation of labor law. However, not even the UAW is alleging that. You have every right to call Corker every name in the book. But, as far as I can see, he did nothing improper or illegal. It’s not beanbag, it’s hardball.
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Not when they have class.
hskiprob,
We should have followed Lindbergh? Really? Is he one of your role models?
Fallen Hero: Charles Lindbergh in the 1940s
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/sfeature/fallen.html
Excerpt:
The Lindberghs had seen the effect of Nazism on a revitalized Germany in 1936. That year, Charles was asked by the American military attaché in Berlin to report on the state of Germany’s military aviation program. While in Germany, Charles and Anne attended the Summer Olympic games as the special guests of Field Marshal Hermann Goering, the head of the German military air force, the Luftwaffe. Lindbergh toured German factories, took the controls of state-of-the-art bombers, and noted the multiplying airfields. He visited Germany twice during the next two years. With each visit, he became more impressed with the German military and the German people. He was soon convinced that no other power in Europe could stand up to Germany in the event of war. “The organized vitality of Germany was what most impressed me: the unceasing activity of the people, and the convinced dictatorial direction to create the new factories, airfields, and research laboratories…,” Lindbergh recalled in “Autobiography of Values.” His wife drew similar conclusions. “…I have never in my life been so conscious of such a directed force. It is thrilling when seen manifested in the energy, pride, and morale of the people–especially the young people,” she wrote in “The Flower and the Nettle.” By 1938, the Lindberghs were making plans to move to Berlin.
In October 1938, Lindbergh was presented by Goering, on behalf of the Fuehrer, the Service Cross of the German Eagle for his contributions to aviation. News of Nazi persecution of Jews had been filtering out of Germany for some time, and many people were repulsed by the sight of an American hero wearing a Nazi decoration. Lindbergh, by all appearances, considered the medal to be just another commendation. No different than all the others. Many considered this attitude to be naive, at best. Others saw it as an outright acceptance of Nazi policies. Less than a month after the presenting of the medal, the Nazis orchestrated a brutal assault on Jews that came to be known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Nazis and their sympathizers smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, burned homes and synagogues, and left scores dead. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Lindberghs decided to cancel their plans to move to Germany.
Having returned to America in April 1939, Lindbergh turned his attention toward keeping his country out of a war in Europe. At the time, most Americans shared his isolationist views. Germany invaded Poland five months later, drawing Britain and France into the war. Two weeks later, Lindbergh delivered his first nationwide radio address in which he urged America to remain neutral. In the speech he criticized President Roosevelt, who believed the Nazis must be stopped in their conquest of Europe. Lindbergh saw Nazi victory as certain and thought America’s attention should be placed elsewhere. “These wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder… This is not a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion.” Building on his belief that “racial strength is vital,” Lindbergh published an article in Reader’s Digest stating, “That our civilization depends on a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back… the infiltration of inferior blood.”
As Germany pushed on into France and began its Blitzkreig bombardment of England, Americans began to alter their isolationist views. One group, however, had no such change of heart. The America First Committee was the most powerful isolationist group in the country. Its 850,000 members came from all professions and backgrounds. The AFC was headed by Robert E. Wood, head of Sears Roebuck. Impressed by what they had heard from Charles Lindbergh, the AFC invited him to join their executive committee. Lindbergh accepted the invitation, but insisted on drawing no salary. He also insisted on writing his own speeches and would not submit them for approval. One such speech was given in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941.
With his hero status already greatly tarnished by his philosophical and political beliefs, Lindbergh delivered a speech in Des Moines that fully knocked him off his pedestal. Announcing that it was time to “name names,” Lindbergh decided to identify what he saw as the pressure groups pushing the U.S. into war against Germany. “The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration.” Of the Jews, he went on to say, “Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” The speech was met with outrage from numerous quarters. Lindbergh was denounced as an anti-Semite. His mother-in-law and sister-in-law publicly opposed his views. Civic and corporate organizations cut all ties and affiliations with him. His name was even removed from the water tower in his hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota.
“Should there be another UAW vote at VW?”
http://www.timesfreepress.com/polls/2014/feb/should-there-be-another-uaw-vote-vw/results/
Corker failed to keep his word about making no additional comments during the time when the UAW election was being conducted:
EXCLUSIVE: Leaked GM Video Raises Questions About Senator Corker’s Anti-Union History
BY Mike Elk
2/4/14
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16222/exclusive_leaked_gm_video_raises_questions_about_senator_corkers_anti_union
Excerpt:
On Monday, the United Auto Workers announced that they had filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board to represent 1,600 workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga facility. The voting for the closely watched union election will be held from February 12 through the 14. And despite a Grover Norquist-backed political operative’s plan to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on challenging the workers’ move to organize, Volkswagen itself is not opposed to the union drive.
“Volkswagen Group of America and the UAW have agreed to this common path for the election,” said Frank Fischer, chairman and chief executive of Volkswagen Chattanooga in a statement. “Volkswagen is committed to neutrality and calls upon all third parties to honor the principle of neutrality.”
Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also claims to share in that vision of neutrality. When asked about the election, he sent a statement to the Detroit Free Press that read, “During the next week and a half, while the decision is in the hands of the employees, I do not think it is appropriate for me to make additional public comment.”
Dredd, Corker is a politician. By definition politicians are NOT neutral. They are partisan. If Corker was acting on behalf of the company then he may well had been in violation of labor law. However, not even the UAW is alleging that. You have every right to call Corker every name in the book. But, as far as I can see, he did nothing improper or illegal. It’s not beanbag, it’s hardball.
Dredd, Corker is a politician. By definition politicians are NOT neutral. They are partisan. If he was acting on behalf of the company that may have been illegal. But, not even the union is alleging that. You have every right to call Corker a shithead or whatever else you care to, but as far as I see he did nothing illegal or improper.
Republican-Funded, Anti-Labor Campaign Succeeds in Tennessee As Volkswagen Workers Reject UAW Union (Democracy Now)
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2014/feb/22/uaw-appeals-vw-union-vote/
Excerpts:
“The union said that “the ‘fist’ of the state officials’ threats about tax incentives for a new product line was amplified by the ‘velvet glove’ of a United States senator.”
…
“It’s immediately unclear how long it will take for the NLRB appeal to come to a conclusion.
Stranch said the case will go to a hearing officer and administrative law judge, who will make a finding.
“It should move pretty quickly,” he said.
Raudabaugh said there could be a hearing and it may take months for the case to wind its way through the NLRB process.”
http://media.timesfreepress.com/news/documents/2014/02/21/UAW_Election_Objection.pdf
nick spinelli
Dredd, VW is a progressive company. They have work councils in all their plants w/ a very cooperative environment between employees and management. So, the UAW could not paint this company as evil. This Neutrality Agreement was what swayed the more independent employees to vote against the UAW. Dem employees are pretty much pro union. Rep employees are pretty much anti union. Again, like in political elections, independents were decisive. Volkswagen provided NO OPPOSITION to this vote. The UAW apparently couldn’t sign a Neutrality Agreement w/ Corker.
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Which would have been the perfect place for Corker to show his neutrality instead of bowing down to the Ayn Rand worshipers (they affectionately call her Jesus, pronounced “Shesus”). He showed us his “neutrality” alright.
His cultural amygdala does not include any circuits for play fair, or play neutral, in the eyes of fair and neutral observers.
He is the new age republican thug (29 year old baby).
Dredd, wrote “Which would have been the perfect place for Corker to show his neutrality instead of bowing down to the Ayn Rand worshipers (they affectionately call her Jesus, pronounced “Shesus”). He showed us his “neutrality” alright.
His cultural amygdala does not include any circuits for play fair, or play neutral, in the eyes of fair and neutral observers.
He is the new age republican thug (29 year old baby).”
Dredd, you are so full of excrement, I can not even comment on such nonsense. If we had followed Rand and guys like Lindbergh, instead of FDR and his socialists engineers, we would not have to be having this thread.
As I commented, I don’t support his showmanship on this issue, but “Shesus” and “republican thug”. Pure yellow journalistic nonsense from a socialists thug.
Justin, Learn how to party and live away from mommy and daddy.
What is the purpose of college? Anyone
raff, The unions fat cats and corrupt Dem politicians are why Detroit is bankrupt. It’s often tough to tell the difference. The vote was held, the union lost. Deal w/ it.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA, Thank you, Dr. Harris. Much better. I thought there for a minute my ex-wife was right when she kept saying I was nuts. LOL Have a good day, everybody. It’s a sunny day here in South Jersey and I’m going out on my bike. We’ll catch up later.
I wrote a response, in more ordinary words, only to find it being rejected for posting; I write as I do because what I write in simpler terms is consistently “Askimeted” by WordPress.
Askimet apparently does not understand scientific jargon well enough to reject it, and I wonder if many people do non understand it well enough to either reject, accept, or otherwise relate to it.
Perhaps a brief quotation I find attributed to Oliver Cromwell may be a useful summary of my prior #@$% writing: “I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken…”
As for whether I happen to like, or not like, Senator Corker, I tend to like people whose beliefs I experience as abusive and damaging, and I tend to like such people because I find it very useful to be able to recognize beliefs, which, when acted upon, tend to generate disasters.
I do not dislike the messenger merely because I find the messenger’s delivered message to be of terrible news.
If the eventual result, in Tennessee, of Corker’s apparent anti-union message was Volkswagen not expanding its employment opportunities in Tennessee, then it seems to me that Corker’s belief system about the expected long-term effects of his message was mistaken.
Four books, the reading of which, I have personally found to be useful in my understanding of the relationship of human society to human safety:
1. Herbert Bloch, Disorganization: Personal and Social, Knopf, 1957.
2. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure: Revised and Enlarged Edition, The Free Press, 1957.
3. Marshall B. Clinard, ed., Anomie and Deviant Behavior, The Free Press, 1964.
4. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Anchor Books 1967 Edition, 1966.
As for Berger and Luckmann, I harbor the carefully studied view that, while models of reality may be of social and/or individual construction, individuals and their societies are of tangible reality construction.
The nature of existence surely is the basis of all that exists, including diverse social constructs.
What if social constructs are, from the view of accurate science, hypothetical notions which are, in principle, scientifically falsifiable if actually false?
For the sake of proper disclosure, I am an “AFSCME Retirees Member.” I worked for many years, as a co-op undergraduate and graduate bioengineering student, at Cook County Children’s Hospital, in Chicago, during which time, the job title I held became unionized. However, AFSCME and another union sought to represent those of my job title. The other union won the election, and its union rules violated my conscience as the AFSCME union rules did not; therefore, I paid union fees but not union dues while employed at Cook County Children’s Hospital.
When I write in simple words with enough detail for my writing to make sense to me, the WordPress Askimet filter consistently rejects my writing.
What Sen. Corker did was outrageous. It is obvious that he lied about the future jobs in order to “convince” employees to vote against a union. The idea of employees banding together to strengthen their negotiating power would upset the skewed view of Corker, et al.
And no, it wasn’t unions that brought Detroit to Bankruptcy. If the car companies were not bailed out, Detroit would be in worse shape and so would the state of Michigan.
Bruce, Detroit is bankrupt even though hard working taxpayers bailed out 2 of the 3 automakers in Detroit just a few years ago. And, that was done more for the unions than the company. Ford, which has a good relationship w/ their employees didn’t need the money.
why do you think VW built in Tennessee in the first place? Right to work. They don’t want the UAW to do to Chatanooga what they did to Dertoit
Bob Corker Devastated Organized Labor in Chattanooga. Let It Be a Lesson.
BY ALEC MACGILLIS
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116653/bob-corkers-uaw-intervention-chattanooga-vw-vote-speaks-volume
Excerpt:
One of the less-noted legacies of the Tea Party era in American politics is the transformation it has wrought on the way we view mainstream, died-in-the-wool, pro-business conservatives. So eager are Washington pundits for glimmers of rationality on the right that politicians who not that long ago would’ve been regarded as bedrock conservatives have acquired, by contrast to the likes of Ted Cruz, a halo of benign moderation. Take, for instance, the special election for Mobile, Ala.’s congressional seat last fall—so far to the right was one contender for the seat (he warned of “homosexuals pretending like they’re married” and the “end of a Western Christian empire”) that the alternative backed by the Chamber of Commerce and countless big corporations was hailed as a sort of Southern Nelson Rockefeller, never mind that he also had the enthusiastic backing of the NRA, pro-life groups and a PAC that is a chief backer of Cruz.
Or take Bob Corker. The Tennessee senator is a classic pro-business Southern conservative, who made a fortune in the construction and real estate industry (his company’s initial specialty was building drive-thru windows at Krystal restaurants) before becoming mayor of Chattanooga. But in recent years, Corker has taken on a patina of centrism in Washington, simply by virtue of his willingness to stand up on occasion to the likes of Cruz when they have threatened to take the GOP caucus in the Senate completely off the rails. “Tennessee’s junior senator rises as go-to deal maker,” enthused a 2013 USA Today headline.
Amid this fog of relativism comes the highly clarifying moment of the United Auto Workers’ failed attempt to unionize the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. There are many plausible explanations for the UAW’s narrow defeat, laid out in turn by, among others, Mike Elk, Rich Yeselson, Harold Meyerson and Erik Loomis. Perhaps the UAW was undercut by its neutrality agreement with VW, which gained its organizers access to the plant but prevented them from visiting workers at their homes and, by pledging restraint in wage demands, left workers uncertain just what material improvement they could expect from joining the union. Perhaps VW was just too benevolent – or non-malevolent—an employer to inspire much oppositional solidarity among workers. Or perhaps the mostly white, mostly male Southern workforce at the plant was just too culturally resistant to the whole idea of unionization—not for nothing did the billboards and flyers passed out by anti-union agitators link the UAW to Barack Obama and dystopian images of bankrupt, post-white flight Detroit. (Note that Eastern Tennessee is very dark on this map showing the parts of the country where Obama performed less well in 2008, while winning the country as a whole, than loser John Kerry had performed in 2004).
But the postmortems agree on this: much credit for the UAW’s defeat goes to Bob Corker and other Republican politicians in Tennessee who took the lead in making the case against the UAW even as the employer, VW, signaled that it would be amenable to unionization, and who thereby struck a bigger blow against liberalism than Cruz or any Tea Partier could claim to have done in recent years. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam warned that auto-parts suppliers would be less likely to settle in Chattanooga if VW went union and state senator Bo Watson warned of the legislature stripping the plant of its tax incentives. By far the most influential, though, was Corker’s declaration just days before the election, following weeks of outspoken comments against the UAW, that he had it on good authority that VW would put a second assembly line that Chattanooga is in the running for in Mexico instead if the Tennessee plant went union. “I’ve had conversations today and based on those am assured that should the workers vote against the UAW, Volkswagen will announce in the coming weeks that it will manufacture its new mid-size SUV here in Chattanooga,” he said.*
t is hard to overstate how remarkable an intervention this was: a United States senator going out of his way to quash a union election back home with an insinuation that was highly dubious, given VW’s seemingly sincere openness to a union at the Chattanooga plant, but that nonetheless took on an air of authority given its high-placed source. Plenty of Democratic congressmen in Washington are rhetorically pro-union, but they would need take a far more active role to come close to matching Corker’s influence here—perhaps Sherrod Brown and his security detail could start paying house visits alongside Teamsters during their next organizing drive in Ohio?
Regardless, that Corker should put himself out there as brazenly as he did in this instance should dispel any question of what the stakes were in this election. Liberals worried about income inequality know that the gaps opening in our society have expanded in striking correlation with declining rates of unionization, and that income inequality is lower, and manufacturing more robust, in countries such as Germany that feature higher rates of unionization and employer-worker cooperation such as the “works council” that unionization would have brought to the Chattanooga plant. Conservatives seeking to guard business interests are no less aware of how much the corporate bottom line has benefited from diminished bargaining power on the part of employees, which is why the Wall Street Journal’s victory-lap editorial declared that “the last thing the U.S. economy needs is to import European labor practices.” The Chattanooga election involved a mere 1,500 workers, but the momentum boost of a UAW victory in the South would’ve been incalculable and would have fed into planned efforts at the Mercedes plant in Alabama and the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
Elaine M:
I’m new to blogs. This is my first and only blog so far. Will you kindly explain to me how you are able to post a news article and I am not able to post my news article after 3 attempts. Thanks.