Pyongyang,
Tennessee
The UAW's German ally takes a dim view of
Dixie's auto boom.
By Holman W. Jenkins,
Jr. in the Wall Street Journal
North
Korea? That's the analogy Germany's
top labor leader recently applied to the American South because, in the
American South, nonunion auto plants are permitted to exist.
Detlef Wetzel,
chairman of Germany's IG Metall union, told Reuters late last year: "Low
wages and union-free areas: that's not a business model IG Metall would
support. If companies entered these [Southern U.S.] states in order to be free
of unions, meaning to not acknowledge a fundamental pillar of democracy, then
we're in North
Korea."
It would be
interesting in an appalling sort of way to plumb Herr Wetzel's reasoning about
when employment of nonunion workers makes a country North Korea. After all, 82%
of German workers aren't unionized either. But no doubt his epithet only
applies in industries that compete with IG Metall for jobs.
This meshes with the
agenda of United Auto Workers chief Bob King, who has sought the German union's help to
unionize the U.S. plants of Volkswagen and Mercedes. What happened to Mr. King's
pitch of just a couple of years ago, that the UAW's new mission was to make
auto makers more productive and profitable? Nowhere is it written the union
couldn't be an asset to an employer, but never in evidence was a strategy to
turn Mr. King's nicey-nice sentiment into action.
His union not only
makes common cause with a German union whose aim is to reduce the
competitiveness of U.S. plants. He lately proposed to boost his union's strike
fund with higher dues in order, as he put it, to avoid "confrontation"
with the Big Three. In fact, the union seeks a confrontation: Its mission in
next year's contract talks is to revoke the "entry-level" wage
established in 2007 to help Detroit match costs with its foreign competitors.
A question the union
gauges only in its inner sanctum is whether, so soon after the bailouts,
politicians are ready to indulge a more militant UAW. Doubtful. Democrats in
Washington may be attached to the idea that the decline in unionization and
rise in inequality are the same thing, mostly as an excuse for doing the
bidding of organized labor, a major funder of the party. But politics does not
trump reality out in the economy.
This month
Seattle-area Democrats were quick to throw organized labor over the side to
save a large Boeing investment in their area. Michigan last year turned itself
into a right-to-work state. In the bankruptcy last year of Twinkie-maker
Hostess Brands, the bakers deliberately forced liquidation of the company to
free themselves from a fellow union, the Teamsters, whose high-cost
distribution practices were strangling Hostess's growth opportunities.
Which brings us to
Volkswagen, the pivotal test of Mr. King's post-bailout focus on organizing the
transplants.
After some hemming and
hawing, Volkswagen has now decided not to invite the UAW into its new
Chattanooga plant on a "card check" basis—without a secret ballot
vote. For one thing, many of the pro-union cards the UAW boasts about were
apparently signed by temporary workers no longer at the plant.
Volkswagen remains
under pressure from IG Metall to accept the UAW into the factory whether or not
workers want it. The union sits on VW's supervisory board and reportedly
threatened to block a new crossover SUV to be built in North America that VW
desperately needs to rescue its faltering U.S. ambitions.
Now this battle seems
to be ending with a whimper, perhaps foreshadowing the same for Mr. King's
Southern strategy. VW just announced $7 billion in fresh investment, certain to
include a new midsize SUV. The company's new U.S. boss says Volkswagen will
"listen" to America rather than the other way around.
Let's keep a bit of
history in mind. In the late 1970s, the company opened a UAW-staffed factory in
Pennsylvania. It was a disaster. When workers weren't striking, the factory
churned out exactly the wrong car for an America of falling energy prices.
After a fast start at the Chattanooga plant, VW finds itself again producing
outdated sedans the market doesn't want. A fix would hardly be expedited by
piping aboard the UAW at the exact moment the UAW is casting aside its
post-bailout cooperative mien.
But the union has to
do something. The UAW collects sizable dues from members yet is losing its
ability to extract for them better wages and benefits than nonunion workers get.
The soon-to-retire Mr. King still talks confidently of winning a VW vote, but
his Southern strategy always seemed a Potemkin exercise to distract his members
until the post-bailout political atmospherics recede and the union can go back
to using its labor monopoly to squeeze the Big Three.
Our guess is the
banquet years of the 1990s aren't coming back. UAW members will conclude that
what they're getting for their soon-to-be-hiked dues is increasingly nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment