Full disclosure: I was a child of the American labor union – the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, to be specific. We grew up believing collective bargaining put a roof over our heads, food on our table, and clothes on our backs.
Because it did.
In return, my WWII combat veteran father climbed hill country power poles for 30 years. He was never a union leader, and never organized a picket line. But ours was a union home: When a company truck happened by, my mother would invariably say, “There goes our bread and butter!”
My dad worked until he reached the mandatory retirement age. After he’d done his stretch, the union saw to it that Columbus & Southern Ohio Electric delivered on the health care coverage and pension it had promised him. And when my father died in 1997, the IBEW helped pay for his funeral expenses.
The Battle of Chattanooga
That’s why it’s better that my old man isn’t around to see what’s become of the once great American labor movement. He could scant imagine the rapid decline brought on by the proliferation of unregulated industries, globalized trade, and “right to work” laws.
Organized labor’s latest setback took place last month in Chattanooga, where a legion of outside interests and anti-collective bargaining politicians combined to defeat the United Auto Workers’ unionization of an existing Volkswagen plant – one of a growing number of foreign auto facilities that dot the South.
The 712-626 vote was a double blow for Detroit-based UAW brass. Not only was the Chattanooga plant a tactical objective, a victory also would’ve provided a battle plan for organizing union shops in other parts of the Southeast.
After such a clear loss, the union’s brain trust is surely recalibrating its Southern strategies, starting with its underestimation of unified, hard-right resistance like what was brought to bear in Chattanooga.
But whatever its miscalculations, the UAW at least rightly refrained from matching, barrage for barrage, the worst of conservative vitriol. In a Huffington Post account of the events running up to the vote, United Steel Workers president Leo Gerard describes what we should hope is the most surreal narrative spun by either side:
“Some big time GOP groups are backing efforts to persuade VW workers to reject the union. GOP anti-tax guru Grover Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform, has bankrolled consultant Matt Patterson’s scheme to kill union efforts in Chattanooga, according to an investigation by In These Times.
In an op-ed, Patterson compared the UAW organizing effort to the Civil War. Using the charged language of those who fought to sustain slavery and glorifying a battle won by the forces of slavery, Patterson wrote:
‘Today, Southeastern Tennessee faces invasion from another union – an actual labor union. . . One hundred and fifty years ago, the people of Tennessee routed such a force in the Battle of Chickamauga. Let their descendants go now and do likewise.’”
The Second Battle of Chattanooga
Followers of this bitter engagement were not surprised when the UAW filed an appeal with the National Labor Union Board (NLUB) late last week. Citing undue interference from Haslam, Corker, and allies, the union posited that VW employees experienced intimidation from “…a coordinated and widely-publicized ‘coercive campaign’ to deprive workers of their federally-protected right to support and select the UAW as their exclusive representative.”
The union’s appeal was barely submitted before its opponents mounted a turn-the-tables defense, accusing Volkswagen of doing some meddling of its own. (VW officials maintained an open stance despite blistering anti-union pressure.)
Even though Democrats currently hold a 3-2 NLUB majority, few labor experts believe the UAW can meet the Board’s standards for setting aside a duly executed election. Labor laws are silent overall on opinions made by parties not affiliated with the employer in question. If they’re right, the second battle may turn out no differently than the first.
The Real Battle: The Fight for the Middle Class?
If the labor union’s best days are in the past – and let’s be honest, they are – it may portend more than we want to know. In a report from last September, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress traced the decline in labor union membership with that of the middle class. The numbers are noteworthy:
- 60% of middle-income workers earned 53% of national income in 1968, compared with today’s 45%.
- During that same period, participation in large unions dipped from 28% to an unprecedented 11%.
The graph used to track these numbers depicts downward trends strikingly similar in number and pattern. Despite its leftist bent, the Center suggests a parallel but not necessarily causal relationship between the dwindling middle class and union membership.
Whether or not it’s coincidence or cause-and-effect, the same transfer of wealth from haves to have-nots so obvious elsewhere is shot through the literature on collective bargaining, lending credence to the notion that the ongoing battle between unionists and anti-unionists is after all a battle for the middle class. If my dad were here today, he’d tell you it’s not a battle we can afford to lose.