Roy Exum: Send Immigrants Instead!

  • Thursday, November 19, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

After the National Labor Relations Board approved the United Auto Workers’ attempt to organize a small portion of Chattanooga’s Volkswagen assembly plant on Wednesday, I quickly deduced I’d much rather have a bunch of swarthy Syrian immigrants come into our town. We can ferret out the terrorists and shoot ‘em easier than we can rid ourselves of the infestation of the union leeches.

All any educated worker at the VW plant who is willing to do his homework needs to do is to go online and type “UAW” in any news engine search box.

They will learn Ford is rejecting the latest union effort because there is a huge rift between the union leadership and the rank-and-file workers.

This is hardly hyperbole; it is fact. At a Chicago assembly plant where 4,000 union members work for Ford, a whopping 68 percent voted against the union’s latest offer this week. Go ahead, see for yourself. You’ll also see where the Ford plants in Louisville, Ky., this week rejected the proposed UAW contract by a whopping 2-to-1 margin.

The lesson: These voters are already union members, but they are clearly disgruntled over the latest union proposal. But they are stuck! Why do VW employees want the same headaches? “I hate it," UAW member Roxanne Upshaw told a Louisville TV station. "I don't think they did anything for legacy employees. I'm a legacy employee and I don't think they gave us anything back except one holiday, so I am voting no."

A second-tier worker in Chicago was also mad. “It’s pretty obvious that the UAW is a pro-company organization that is designed to keep our wages low and the company profits high. This contract’s a joke. Eight years to get to full pay, or what they call full pay. The pension issues are horrible too. The 401(k) is a joke."

“Working conditions are horrible here as well,” griped the Ford worker. “When it rains outside, it pours in from the roof here at Chicago Assembly and people get rained on. There’s rats and cockroaches too. It’s disgusting. You can literally look outside the factory. There are holes in the wall.”

Everybody is mad. This from another loyal union man in Chicago the day before yesterday: “They (the union) should have kept their word, but they didn’t end the two-tier system. That was what was promised in the first place. We lost COLA (cost of living adjustment), no pension and all that. We sacrificed to help the company out to keep it from going bankrupt. Now, they are trying to force a sellout contract down our throat.”

A recent contract the UAW thought was solid at General Motors is also on the rocks. While 55 percent of GM’s productions workers approved a new contract, the skilled trades workers rejected it so the UAW line is, “We are still in talks,” but the truth is the GM workers are all watching Ford to see if a better deal will finally emerge.

In the meanwhile, Volkswagen officials are scrambling for ways to keep the UAW on a short leash so in Nashville yesterday leaders from the European union IG Mettal joined UAW types at the Spring Hill plant to announce a “partnership” that would embrace a joint venture called the Transatlantic Labor Institute. Why in Nashville if the target is Chattanooga? The UAW doesn’t dare take the blush off this week’s NLRB decision and allow VW workers to see an option. This is kindergarten smoke-and-mirrors stuff.

The Translantic Labor Institute’s idea is to get German manufacturers in the South, like the Mercedes assembly plant in Tuscaloosa and the Volkswagen facility in Chattanooga, to adopt a worker’s council type of arrangement where supervisory boards are one half workers and one half management.

Understand this: VW’s interim chairman, Berthold Huber, spent five years at IG Mettal and in 2013 wrote a letter to the Chattanooga plant urging them to institute a workers council which would send dollars where? To the European union and its 2.3-millon members, of course. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, worker council representation is illegal in the United States, but there is too much money to be made from the VW payroll for the skimmers to ignore it.

The UAW loves the partnership idea because it is all about money. Face it, the UAW doesn’t collect a penny from the Volkswagen plant and now the UAW is taking the stance of settling for a nickel instead of a dime – at first. The UAW is so desperate to get a toehold at VW they even flew in actor Danny Glover for a grip-and-grin photo op the other day. Isn’t that impressive? What’s more, Danny is already back in California, signing “for deposit only” on his UAW appearance-fee check. Now who’s the sucker, and why do you suddenly think they really care about you?

The reason the UAW is so aggressive at Volkswagen is because of all the foreign-owned automobile assembly plants in America, the Chattanooga facility is thought to have the most “stupids,” which is European slang for idiots. No? Then how did the UAW get here in the first place?

Face it, if a VW assembly employee looks at the employment package he or she is now earning, and then dares become so gullible a worker believes the UAW will tighten his hold on the rope after your payroll deduction, the company needs you in the diesel promotional department.

Another neat math trick is for a VW worker to look at his pay stub and figure out what his union dues will be. Take the “before” and “after” numbers to the family dinner table and discuss it, not with some snake-oil salesman from Detroit but those you love the most and who each depend on your Volkswagen check to live. (A warning: don’t allow the family to vote unless you like sleeping in the dog house in freezing weather.)

Again, all the UAW wants is money. In 1979 there were 1.5 million paying union dues in the United States, but now the UAW rolls are one-third that. The only prospects for growth are the foreign manufacturers and, when the NLRB approved a union vote for about 12 percent of VW’s Chattanooga workforce on Dec. 4 and 5, it gave the union another crack at taking the Chattanooga workers’ money.

And where will it go? To the UAW’s old-folks fund; it is so very obvious. If the UAW had 1.5 members 35 years ago and less than 500,000 today, you would roughly have about a million pensioners today, I’d say. Pension costs are rising while jobs are being phased out by robots. Go ahead, study on your own. You’ll see. (Robots don’t pay union dues, work around the clock, and don’t whine.)

Everybody knows Volkswagen has some terrible issues and it is just like the UAW to pile on. What is hard to fathom is why some of VW’s skilled trades people – smart people – buy into selling their soul for a handshake with Danny “For Deposit Only” Glover? Or why any reasonable person could possibly think the UAW, also a much-noted “For Deposit Only” group, could lure them down a trail filled with broken promises, pension havoc and literally decades of employer mistrust.

As for me, I’ll take the Syria refugees and, after we weed out the terrorists among them, the others can go to work at VW for much less money than Chattanoogans now make. Any refugee would do anything to have a job like Volkswagen offers. And do you think a Syrian refugee who cannot even speak English would be as stupid to join the UAW? Puh-lease.

* * *

This just in from Ford Assembly in Chicago: “People are upset, because the objective was to eliminate the tiers, but they’ve added more tiers. And they have the smokescreen with the eight years grow-in period, but we only have four years to the end of the contract.

“And for the older employees, a lot of the concessions they gave up to keep Ford profitable and keep it afloat, they aren’t getting their money back. In 10 years we’re going to be making the same money now, and we’re going to be behind the increase in the cost of living.

“That’s why people are voting ‘no.’ They’re looking at the long-term. They’re not looking at the lump-sum bonuses and profit sharing. And you know, it’s going to be a struggle. We’re going to have to move back with our parents, or in with each other. And they’re taking the money from us.

“There’s a lot of educated people who work at this plant, who have degrees. They’re not dumb. They see that with the union, somehow there’s been a breach, and everything’s crumbling under us.

“When the UAW goes to pay a PR firm to sell us the contract, we know there’s some shady business going on. Things are starting be uncovered, and people are not as slow or as stupid as they thought we’d be.”

* * *

Over 2,000 members of the United Auto Workers went on strike at Wisconsin’s Kohler plant Tuesday after 94 percent of the workers voted against a contract that still included the two-tier pay system. UAW officials are frantically trying to keep a unified strike from taking place where disgruntled Ford, GM and Fiat-Chrysler workers would also strike.

A Sheboygan County judge issued an injunction on Wednesday against the Kohler strikes after acts of violence were alleged by the company’s security office.

* * *

Bernie Ricke, a union official in Detroit, doubted a strike by automakers would take place. “The reality is you get nothing for the first week you are off and you get $200 (a week) afterwards. I don’t think people are thinking the reality of it. A strike doesn’t do anybody any good. Doesn’t do the worker any good, doesn’t do the company any good. It’s obviously the last resort in negotiations, but I think a strike would be bad for both sides.”

Many rank-and-file workers feel a strike has become a management tool instead of a union tool. “You go out on strike and in no time you are impoverished,” explained a Ford worker, “but without a strike you have no bargaining tool.”

The UAW has not called a national auto strike since the Ford walkout in 1976.

royexum@aol.com

 

 

 

Opinion
We Owe Rhonda Thurman So Much
  • 3/28/2024

Thank you, Rhonda Thurman, for your excellent representation and service. You have totally fulfilled your commitment to be the voice of your constituents. Balance is always the objective in making ... more

Democratic View On Top State Senate Issues - March 28, 2024
  • 3/28/2024

Constitutional amendment would ban state taxes on property. Who would benefit? 8:30 a.m. Senate Regular Calendar — HJR 0081 would amend the Tennessee Constitution to prohibit the legislature ... more

Democratic View On Top State Senate Issues - March 27, 2024
  • 3/27/2024

Gov. Lee reveals $797M of new spending, but withholds funding for legislature’s voucher proposals View the Lee Administration’s Budget Amendment — The Lee Administration made its last revisions ... more