NO GO

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.