Labor, Unions and Politics
Terry H. Schwadron
April 23, 2024
Last Friday’s vote by autoworkers to unionize a Chattanooga, Tenn. Volkswagen plant is one of those non-governmental signposts that should draw a lot of attention for its economic impact, as a cultural statement and for its reach into our political races.
For openers, the first such auto-manufacturer unionizing vote in the South in nearly a century will result in negotiations for better wages, benefits, and job security for the 3,613 workers involved since non-union autoworkers typically earn significantly less than those in United Auto Workers-represented plants.
But the lopsided 75% approval vote (only a majority was needed) in a part of the country that regularly resists unionizing efforts tells us something more both about perceptions of fairness in our consumer-driven economy and about the efforts to lure foreign auto-making investment to the South specifically because there is a culture of lower pay.
The labor victory will spawn more such efforts, including one next month at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, followed by votes at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri. Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the UAW a foothold among foreign automakers in the South, the least unionized part of the country.
But it also suggests that voters in general elections take another look at Republican governors who have lined up to oppose union efforts and at the labor records of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, whose actions on labor differ mightily, despite what campaign promises may reflect. Specifically, this vote is a victory of sorts for Biden, who joined UAW picket lines in Michigan and whose government has overturned many labor decisions by the previous Trump administration.
Unions and Economic Impact
An immediate question is whether the UAW’s concerted drive in Tennessee a quirk or forerunner of a possible trend is. Petitions for union elections are up 35 percent this year over last, and Gallup reports that American support for unions has risen to 67 percent after hitting record lows. In the last year, we’ve seen high profile strikes in health care, hotel, and entertainment industries.
Much of the increased labor support has come along with spreading technology developments, including artificial intelligence, that are perceived as threatening jobs or significantly changing them. Much of it, obviously, is simply about pay and benefits in a society that wants more pay and flexibility and sees too much economic benefit going to the wealthiest classes. Some of the unionizing is going on at previously nonunion companies, including Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and others.
A critical piece here is that the vote came as Republican politicians in Tennessee had actively opposed it, arguing that unionization would threaten jobs and the region’s economic prosperity. Governors of six Southern states issued a joint statement against the vote, saying, “We want to keep good-paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector here. A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.”
The hypocrisy seems obvious that Republicans who criticize the Biden administration over cost-of-living decisions and inflationary prices are systematically on record opposing unions that would seek to raise middle-class incomes.
Trump, Biden, and Labor
All of which brings us to the differing records on labor between Trump and Biden, and their opposing positions on the role of the National Labor Relations Board to dissuade or promote union elections and worker interests.
While Trump regularly presents himself as a “populist” and specifically as a would-be defender of autoworkers, his record as president belies a heavy anti-union hand.
Multiple articles from the Economic Policy Institute detail anti-labor acts during Trump’s four years. The EPIreports that under Trump, the NLRB “systematically rolled back workers’ rights to form unions and engage in collective bargaining with their employers, to the detriment of workers, their communities, and the economy.” The organization even suggests that “The Trump administration’s attacks on workplace union voting rights forewarned of the broader threats to voting rights in the upcoming election.”
Last June, The New York Times detailed how the NLRB, with a Biden-appointed Democratic majority, restored standards that the Trump-era group had eliminated, including one to count more workers as employees rather than contractors, effectively allowing more working as drivers, construction workers or janitors to take collective actions.
We have seen both Trump and Biden claiming autoworker support, but the actions were different than the words. Biden joined a UAW picket line, the first president to do so, and earned himself endorsement by that union. Biden promotes himself as the “most pro-labor” president.
CNN reported Trump claims of support from blue-collar union members, adding, “But his record as president is decidedly anti-union,” citing several anti-union setbacks starting in 2017 to make it more difficult for unions to win representation at nonunion workplaces.
Trump Supreme Court appointees have made it easier for government employees nationwide to not pay union dues even if their workplace is unionized. Trump proudly and repeatedly made promises that he would stop businesses from moving operations out of the country or shut them, including at a massive auto assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that closed anyway.
Trump regularly rails against environmental rule changes by Biden to advance a change to electric vehicles rather than gas-fueled engines, arguing in part that more jobs are needed to build gas cars.
The vote in Tennessee is just one skirmish in a bigger set of values clashes. What makes it stand out is that it is happening outside the clutches of government, so long as government agencies allow workers to speak.
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