Can Autoworkers Union Bosses Really Kick the Job-Killing Habit? Don’t Bet On It!

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UAW seeks toehold in South with Tennessee Volkswagen plan

Roughly three decades ago, then-UAW chief Owen Bieber and his lieutenants tacitly admitted their tactics had killed vast numbers of American manufacturing jobs, and signaled that they would change their ways at a new plant in Tennessee.   But little really changed.  Now the UAW hierarchy is once again promising to be different in the future.  But why should anyone believe UAW union  bosses now?  Image: UAW/Vimeo

Writing in George Mason University’s Journal of Labor Research back in 1986, economist Morgan Reynolds accused top bosses of the United Autoworkers (UAW) union of “consciously exporting American jobs.”  What Reynolds meant is that, by refusing to renegotiate productivity-quashing work rules and rigid, one-size-fits-all salary structures that were making UAW-controlled U.S. auto and auto-parts factories uncompetitive in world markets, UAW kingpins were making it inevitable that more and more of the sector’s jobs would go to workers overseas.  And it was hard for Reynolds to see how UAW officials could be unaware of what they were doing.

Indeed, then-UAW President Owen Bieber and other union officials tacitly acknowledged that their tactics at plant after plant were hurting workers and the company when they agreed to what they and General Motors sold as a radically different type of contract for the company’s Saturn factory in Spring Hill, Tenn.  In exchange for a host of extraordinary special favors from the company, UAW bosses went along with work rule changes for the then-under construction factory that were supposed to foster harmonious relationships and productivity and slash the absenteeism, slowdowns, and featherbedding that had plagued other plants owned by GM, Chrysler and Ford.

However, within a few short years after the Saturn plant began producing cars, UAW bosses from Detroit began turning up the pressure on GM and its Tennessee workers to scrap their special contract and replace it with standard-issue union class warfare.  For a time, Saturn workers successfully resisted, realizing that their jobs were at stake. But in the end, the UAW hierarchy got what it wanted, and starting in 2004 the Saturn experiment was over.  The Spring Hill plant became just like any other UAW-controlled plant, until it shut down for good in 2009.

Today UAW bosses have their eye on the currently union-free Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., and once again they are promising that, if they get the monopoly-bargaining power they seek, things will be different in Chattanooga than they are everywhere else UAW bosses are certified as employees’ “exclusive” representative.  Big Labor-cheerleading California academic Harley Shaken is actually quoted as saying in the news article linked above, Volkswagen believes “the UAW will make it a more competitive automaker.”

It’s hard to believe Volkswagen officials are really preparing to repeat the mistake GM made with Saturn three decades ago, but such naivete is not so rare in corporate America.  More unlikely is that Volkwagen’s Tennessee employees are ready to go the way of Saturn.  Will they really stake their economic futures on a bet that UAW kingpins are finally, after decades and decades, prepared to kick their job-killing habit?

 

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