We just had an important election.
No, it wasn't to determine who was going to serve in some official
position; instead, it was to determine if a group of workers was to
be represented by a labor union. Those workers work for a Volkswagen
plant in a southern state, Tennessee – a “right to work” state.
A right to work state is a state that disallows union-only work
sites. That is, you don't have to join a union in order to work
there. It is also a state that allows non-union workers to share in
the benefits that a union is able to negotiate for its workers. I
worked in a right to work state. I belonged to the union that
negotiated the collective contract that determined my income and
other benefits. I had colleagues who did not belong to the union,
but they were paid the same as I and had all the benefits I enjoyed.
We were represented by the union because teachers – before my time
– in my school district voted for that representation. That was
the type of election these workers in Tennessee just had, but they
voted NO. So they will continue to have no union representation.
Labor unions pose a challenging
concept for federalists. On the one hand, a union is a federation
among workers of a company or governmental work place, such as my
school. They coordinate their needs; they negotiate; they
compromise; they choose those fellow workers who will attend union
meetings; they act collectively. In other words, they come together
and subsume their individual immediate interests for the good of the
collective. But in doing so, they potentially undermine the
collective for which they work. That is, especially if one views
such situations as a zero sum game, they strive for shares of revenue
that could go to other groups or projects or activities that the
company or governmental entity wishes to support or achieve. Yet
unions can be and often are sub-groupings within a business or
government agency which can function to better the efforts of those
employed. If this is a function of the union, then a union can be a
way to further federalize the whole workplace in question.
The Tennessee workplace is an
automobile assembly plant for VW located in Chattanooga. The
election garnered the attention of local politicians within the
state. The Republican governor and the state's US senator, also a
Republican, came out with statements concerning the election in the
weeks preceding it. They proclaimed a mix of threats. The governor
said that if the workers voted for the union that auto parts
suppliers would not move to the Chattanooga area. Senator Bob Corker
claimed that VW executives were ready to add a production line if the
union were turned down. He and other Republicans began to associate
potential consequences of accepting the union with the conditions one
finds with the Detroit auto industry. They blamed the industry's
woes on the actions of the United Automobile Workers union. The
U.A.W. is the union that was vying to represent the Chattanooga
workers. What is curious about all of this is that VW took a public
stand of neutrality concerning the election and even seemed
positively disposed toward accepting a union presence at the
Chattanooga plant.
This positive stance seems to
indicate a more federal approach to the whole question of union
representation. It turns out that VW has been working to make its
American production plants more in line with its German plants. A
main feature of that model is the presence of unions and work
councils. These are structural elements that allow and promote
worker input into the production processes and strategies so as to
arrive at the most efficient means of producing their cars and other
vehicles. The company, according to reports, favors these structural
elements to achieve a set of goals: higher morale, more effective
work rules, better cooperation between workers and executives, and
more reasonable plant hours. So Senator Corker's claim of an
antagonistic VW view of the union seems, on the face of it, to be
untruthful. But would an American union function as do their German
counterparts? Are they not guilty of driving American automakers
into the ground and near extinction?
This is a complicated question.
To decipher a meaningful answer, let me suggest a somewhat dated
book. For a good review of the history of the American auto industry
– and the related history of the Japanese automakers – I suggest
The Reckoning by the late David Halberstam. In his review of
events starting in the nineteenth century, one can find a role that
the unions played in the downturn of the auto industry. But really,
a much more causal factor was the oligopoly that the auto industry
became, especially after World War II. One needs to remember that
that war destroyed the global industrial capacity outside the United
States. This put American automakers in an almost monopolistic
position. This, while accruing unbelievable profits for American
firms, encouraged a general disposition to engage in sloppy and
inefficient practices among their production processes. In addition,
it created a culture among workers and executives that through the
years downgraded the quality of the product they were producing.
This not only placed American cars and other vehicles at a
disadvantage when compared to the inevitable competition that began
to emerge, especially from Japan, but left American automakers in a
self-imposed malaise that made it extremely difficult to overcome in
order to meet the new, stiffer competition. Yes, unions played a
role. There seems to have been an understanding between U.A.W. and
the Big Three (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) to allow ever
larger wages for workers as the added expenses were simply passed on
to the consumer. This whole arrangement almost killed the industry
here in the USA. But the union was not the sole culprit in this
history of demise.1
So times have changed, although we
are still paying for the shortsightedness of the past. The question
is: have the players learned from their past sins? “Mr. [Bob]
King [a union executive leading the Chattanooga effort] said his
union, long known for contentiousness and strikes, was turning a new
leaf and supporting cooperation to help automakers succeed.”2
Apparently, Tennessee workers did not believe this claim. They did
not see any great benefit in joining a union. It turns out that
entry level workers in the Chattanooga plant make the same amount as
unionized entry level workers up north. The point is: upper tier
workers up north make $9.00 more an hour than upper tier workers in
Chattanooga. We know that during the past decades, the level of
median wage nationally has been decreasing and the pace of that
decrease mirrors the decrease in union membership. Why? My
understanding is that even though at any one time only a minority of
workers belonged to unions, the fact that they were more vibrant in
the past enabled the unions to secure notably higher wages for their
members. In turn, these higher wages competed with those that other
employers paid, in effect forcing these other employers to pay more.
The general effect was that all wages were higher than they are now
with lower union membership. This election in Tennessee was
important because it was a good chance to encourage further
unionization in the South. Well, that failed in this round. Mr.
King said, “One great thing about the U.A.W., one great thing about
workers, is we don't quit … We face setbacks and we get up to fight
another day to make sure workers have a voice.”3
Here's hoping for an eventual federated voice both among workers and
between workers and their bosses.
1Halberstam,
D. (1986). The reckoning.
New York, NY: Avon Books.
2Greenhouse,
S. (2014). Defeat of auto union in Tennessee casts its plans into
doubt. The New York Times,
February 16, p. 19. The facts reported in this posting about the VW
union election are reported in this article.
3Ibid.
