A Lesson From Chattanooga

A worker at VW's sole U.S. plant in Chattanooga.

A worker at VW’s sole U.S. plant in Chattanooga.

This article originally appeared at billmoyers.com and is republished here with permission.

“…we’re outraged by politicians and outside special interest groups interfering…” – UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams

Many factors led to the United Auto Workers’ (UAW’s) loss in the recent union election at the Volkswagen (VW) factory in Tennessee. Likewise many lessons can be learned. One especially important lesson concerns how one factor – “outside influence” – works so one-sidedly in the United States.

Several UAW spokespersons and supporters bemoaned “outside interference” in this election. It was chiefly Republican politicians and activists and business groups that tried actively to persuade VW workers to vote against unionizing the factory, while the VW management remained neutral. Yet outside interference always influences union elections. Outcomes are never results merely of what employers and employees say and do in election campaigns.

Just as important is the way workers see the larger world and their places within it. That emerges from the workers’ families and households, the education they received, the mass media they engage, and from political parties and government. All their life experiences shape how they think about everything including voting in union elections.





How workers thought about and responded to union activists in the 1930s reflected the “outside influences” stemming from their socialist and communist allies. Those influences helped to make unionization so stunningly successful then.

Consider the claim – evidently somewhat effective in Chattanooga – that high wages won by the UAW caused Detroit’s economic collapse. That the UAW’s enemies would make that claim is not remarkable; that some workers took it seriously is. Every significant decision at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler since their beginnings was made exclusively by their major shareholders and boards of directors, all small handfuls of individuals. They alone decided what vehicles and fuel efficiencies to produce, what technologies to use, how many workers to hire, and where to locate or relocate factories (north, south, at home, or abroad). They always excluded workers from participation in those decisions (and opposed the UAW’s participation in wage decisions). They insisted on management prerogatives and expertise and corporate responsibilities.

While Detroit’s auto industry was booming, those decision-makers took full credit; it was all about their entrepreneurial geniuses. Then, their many bad corporate decisions (on auto design, technical composition, fuel efficiency, marketing and much else) badly weakened the industry. That plus far better decisions among European, Japanese and Korean auto producers reduced US firms’ profits and market shares. US firms’ major shareholders and boards of directors then decided to leave Detroit, ignoring their decision’s disastrous effects. In contrast, while German manufacturers pay their unionized workers much more than their US counterparts, they have not abandoned their workers or their cities. Germany has no equivalent of Detroit.

As Detroit declined, auto-company decision-makers conveniently reversed themselves and asserted their non-responsibility. They were suddenly not the powerful “captains of industry” they once called themselves. Instead they want folks to believe that the UAW forced high wages on them and that they left Detroit because the UAW victimized them. Some Tennessee workers found such assertions plausible and voted accordingly. By contrast, the profound impact of German unions and their socialist and communist allies on public opinion there helps explain why this year VW’s unionized German workers are enjoying a 5.6 percent wage increase at a time of 1.2 percent inflation.

richard wolffOnly a sustained counterprogram of mass education could at least partly shift “public opinion” so that it functions less as an anti-union “outside interference.” The construction today of an alliance parallel to the one that proved successful in the 1930s might accomplish that counterprogram. Labor needs to rebuild collaborations with academics – students as well as teachers – and political activists who understand past and present contrary to the claims promoted by business, the wealthy and conservatives. In short, a besieged labor movement needs again to become part of a much broader social movement. This time the urgency is less to grow (as in the 1930s) and more a matter of organized labor’s survival.

Richard Wolff
Professor Richard D. Wolff


  1. Terence says

    Let us not overlook what I think is the central issue in the Tennessee UAW vote: race. The majority of workers in the VW plant are white men who think unions are a Northern invasion that helps black people, i.e., the Civil War. One of the billboards put up by anti-union groups read: “The UAW spends millions to elect liberal politicians, including Barack Obama” (my italics), a clear appeal to racism. Southern white workers have a long sad history of acting against their own self interest rather than act in solidarity with non-white workers.

  2. harry says

    Germany has no equivalent of America. I lived there twice, once behind the iron curtain. The citizens are much like ours, they want to work for a fair wage and they do that and even have meetings with management. The union leaders were allowed to go onto the work floor and talk with employees, an act not often done in US companies, giving the union contact with workers at work, it is usually done at union meetings or outside the work place.
    As for your article, there is a lot of opinions given but little facts. You have to say who did what and where did he or she do it. Saying a GOP member spoke to the workers is not enough, did he/she speak to them on the work floor as did the union leaders or did they speak to the worker outside the work area, or did they use newspapers. This whole article sounds like sour grapes, the union did not get its way and that by its very nature means something illegal happened. Face up to the facts, most of the workers were happy with what they had as to wages and work rules. The workers voted to remain as they were and not hire the union to lead the workers in other directions. The bottom line is the union lost fair and square.

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