Is putting a union
like the UAW into Volkswagen’s only manufacturing plant in the U.S. like a
person injecting himself with cancer cells?
According to Wall
Street Journal editorial board member Steve Moore it is.
While union proponents
may find Steve Moore’s comments last week to a group of business leaders rather
inflammatory, given unions’ track record in manufacturing and VW’s prior failed
experience with the UAW in the U.S., as the UAW tries to unionize Volkswagen’s
plant in Tennessee, there may be some truth to Moore’s comparison.
Wall Street Journal
editorial board member Steve Moore railed against the United Auto Workers
union’s attempt to organize in Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant Wednesday night.
“It’s like inserting a cancer cell into a
body,” he said. “That one cancer
cell is going to multiply and kill the body. It’s a disruptive
influence.”
The outspoken
conservative addressed about 50 Chattanooga business people and civic leaders
at Wednesday night’s event, which was sponsored by The Beacon Center of
Tennessee, a nonprofit lobbying group that aims to advance free market policy
in the state. [Emphasis added.]
Moore’s comments,
coincidentally, come at a time when UAW bosses in Michigan are planning to
increase dues UAW members pay to the union by an astounding 25%.
The purpose for the
dues hike, according to UAW boss Bob King, is to replenish the union’s
strike fund ahead of talks with Chrysler, Ford and General Motors in 2015.
King said the increase
would be the equivalent of a half-hour increase in monthly wages — from 2
hours’ to 2.5 hours’ pay — and would go
into the UAW’s strike fund. [Emphasis added.]
On the heels of the
auto bailouts costing taxpayers billions, while a strike at U.S. auto plants in
2015 is not a certainty, the union’s hiking of dues in anticipation of a strike
does not lend any credibility to the “new image” the UAW is trying to assert,
making UAW boss Bob King’s “business partner” concept more rhetoric than
reality.
If so, it wouldn’t be
the first time.
In the 1970s, like
today, Volkswagen had a plant in the U.S.—only then, the plant was in
Westmoreland, Pennsylvania.
Like today, the United Auto
Workers received help from the German union IG Metall and unionized the
Pennsylvania plant’s workers. That didn’t last long, however.
Due to flagging demand
and an adversarial relationship with the UAW, VW closed that plant, exiting manufacturing in the U.S. for
nearly three decades.
…Several unauthorized walk-outs by workers in
the plant’s first two years left a bitter taste with some managers. One
former VW executive said if he could do
it all over again, he would have urged the company to open a non-union plant in
the South.
‘NO MONEY, NO BUNNY’
In one of the early walk-outs, workers chanted “No Money, No Bunny,”
referring to their refusal to build the VW Rabbit unless they were paid wages
and benefits equal to those of UAW workers at the Detroit automakers. Other walk-outs took aim at what workers saw
as unfair dismissals or treatment. [Emphasis added.]
Now, as VW has opened
a non-union plant in the South, people may begin to wonder if
Chattanooga won’t turn into another Detroit if it becomes unionized, or whether
VW’s experience with the UAW in Pennsylvania won’t repeat
itself in Tennessee.
At its peak,
Volkswagen’s Westmoreland plant had over 6,000 employees. It was organized by
the UAW, true to form, work started with a strike. Ten years later, Volkswagen
closed the plant, production moved to Mexico. Today the entire population of
New Stanton, Pa., is 1,906. The plant is still empty.
Closing the plant did
cost many lives. Reuters talked to Ron Dinsmore, a former VW worker. He “kept a
grisly toll of the pain: the number of suicides of former workers. He stopped
counting at 19. ‘I used to go to every funeral home,’ said Dinsmore, 71. ‘I
quit doing it. It got morbid.’
Perhaps Steve Moore’s
cancer comparison isn’t too far fetched after all.
In 1983 there were 19,066,100
manufacturing jobs in the U.S., 5,302,800 union and 13,673,300 union-free
In 2012 there were
13,935,900 manufacturing jobs in the U.S., 1,335,400 union and 12,600,500 union-free.
Overall, from 1983 to
2012 total U.S. manufacturing jobs are down 27%. Union-free down 8% and Union
jobs down 74%.
Source: http://laborunionreport.com/2014/01/17/suicide-watch-injecting-the-uaw-into-vw-like-inserting-a-cancer-cell-into-a-body/
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