Volkswagen’s storied history is full of surprises and amazing twists. The latest one is a big surprise to those who haven’t been paying attention to the automotive industry. With a 75% “for” vote from the 3,613 workers at VW’s Tennessee plant, they became the first car maker in the south to unionize since the 1940s. Now aligned with the powerful United Auto Workers (UAW) union, they will have some serious negotiating power going forward that they had been lacking.
In response to this major change, five state governors penned a statement speaking out against UAWs. The way they see it, this is horrible for American employees and their citizens.
“We the Governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states. Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy—in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs. We’ve seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation.”
As the UAW continues to target southern states to join up with them, Texas and Alabama are next on their checklist. Given their propensity to donate to Democratic-based causes and campaigns, many conservatives have remained anti-union. Mind you, UAW tends to be more conservative in terms of their voting members simply by the nature of the people their employment attacks. Blue-collar, gun-carrying, beer-swilling Americans who keep this country moving forward.
