Chattanooga Shoo-Shoo

Subject: Re: Chattanooga Shoo-Shoo


626 workers understand the value of a united front.
712 workers have chosen to look out for #1, and to Hell with their fellow
workers. And to Hell with those future workers who will be paid lower wages
and fewer benefits because 712 workers chose job security over collective
bargaining.
626 workers can hold their heads high. 712 workers can say, "What, me
worry?"

Alfred E. Newman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Loran Bailey" <rogerbailey81@aol.com>
To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 5:35 PM
Subject: Chattanooga Shoo-Shoo


http://socialistaction.org/2014/02/chattanooga-shoo-shoo/


Chattanooga Shoo-Shoo

Published February 18, 2014. | By Socialist Action.
March 2014 UAW 2

By BILL ONASCH

In a stunning setback for labor, workers at a Volkswagen assembly plant
in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted 712 to 626 this month to reject affiliation
with the United Auto Workers.

It was supposed to be a lead pipe cinch. United Auto Workers President
Bob King, with the backing of fellow union bureaucrats in Germany,
convinced Volkswagen America that it would be in their interest to have
a German-style works council in their Chattanooga plant.

A works council requires a union. Today's UAW is not the same union VW
dealt with when they built Rabbits in Pennsylvania 35 years ago. No more
confrontation, King's UAW is all about the shared interests of partnership.

VW couldn't simply designate the UAW as the union participant in the new
council. Since the Obama administration never delivered on their 2008
card-check pledge, the union needed to be certified as a bargaining
agent through an NLRB election. In preparation for this process the
company and union negotiated a Neutrality Agreement that granted the UAW
access to VW workers while management refrained from th anti-union
captive audience meetings that have become the norm in representation
elections. VW issued a public neutrality declaration as well and asked
outside third parties to mind their own business.

The Agreement also contained commitments from the union about bargaining
for a contract if they won Labor Board certification—which I'll come
back to.

This was as good a scenario as union organizers could hope for, and they
quickly signed up a majority of VW workers. Most experts expected the
union would win and started speculating about the prospects of the UAW's
organizing Mercedes and BMW plants in the South along the same lines.

But, as should have been anticipated, there were powerful outside third
parties who considered the encroachment of even meek unionism in the
Volunteer State to be their business. Prominent Republican office
holders, assisted by a billboard campaign furnished by Carl Rove, warned
that the UAW would bankrupt Chattanooga just as they had Detroit.
Convincing threats of denying future government incentives for expansion
to a unionized VW plant also had a chilling effect. Undoubtedly, some
votes were swayed by this last-minute fear mongering.

But that alone wasn't what sunk the UAW boat. In my opinion, the union
bureaucracy had sewn their own seeds of failure. Historically, workers
seek unions to better their wages, benefits, and working conditions. The
UAW for decades was the pace setter for what came to be called
middle-class jobs—but those days are long gone. Especially since the
historic 2007 Big Three contract surrender—later enhanced by bankruptcy
terms imposed by President Obama at General Motors and
Chrysler—Solidarity House has focused on just the opposite.

Through big concessions, the UAW has succeeded in making their core
employers competitive with transplant rivals. But the flip side of these
give-backs is that the workers in the transplants now get wages and
benefits competitive with UAW workers—in fact, sometimes better.

One of the conditions of the Neutrality Agreement committed the UAW to
"maintaining and where possible enhancing the cost advantages and other
competitive advantages," that the company "enjoys relative to its
competitors in the United States and North America, including but not
limited to legacy automobile manufacturers." Legacy refers to the
UAW-organized Big Three.

This commitment to the company to make competitive advantage supreme law
was made by King without any consultation with VW workers. It is little
different than the sweetheart deals former SEIU President Andy Stern
used to cook up with CEOs. It became the main issue of the in-plant
"vote no" forces and had more impact on votes than any politicians' threats.

The inconvenient truth is that the UAW, under its present
mis-leadership's helping the boss to hold down labor costs, has little
to offer to the unorganized. I'm frankly surprised there were so many
votes for the union (626 for, 712 against, 89 percent voting). The only
hopeful sign in this disaster is that so many had the foresight to
recognize that a bad union that can be changed for the good is better
than no union at all.

This humiliating defeat in Chattanooga is a fresh confirmation that
give-backs to the boss not only fail to maintain existing jobs; they can
also doom efforts to organize what is now an unorganized majority in a
once virtually all-union industry.

Photo: UAW President Bob King — By Carlos Osorio / AP







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