UAW vote – Memphis Flyer

A couple of weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of a union election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, one in which ranking state officials strained mightily to influence the outcome, we professed dismay, in particular, at the role played by Senator Bob Corker.

If the senator chooses to consult our archives and read our news clips from the 2006 and 2012 elections and our coverage of him in general, it might serve to remind him that we have not been antagonistic toward him, historically. Au contraire, we saw the former Chattanooga mayor more or less as that rare thing in contemporary Republican politics — a moderate who was able to work across the aisle in significant bipartisan ways.

All the more our disappointment, then, at the senator’s flagrant interference with the process by which workers at the Volkswagen plant were asked to vote up or down on the issue of their representation by the United Auto Workers (UAW).

The senator has just struck again — this time on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), where in a Monday op-ed, Corker maintained that the UAW, which narrowly lost the election and has appealed the result with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), “want[s] critics like me silenced.”

Now, we grant that Corker is taking everything personally, based perhaps on the notion that, as his press releases on the subject invariably conclude, “Much of the negotiation that led to Volkswagen choosing Chattanooga occurred around the dining room table of Corker’s Chattanooga home.”

Fine, and we bet the senator sets a good table, but the fact is that his public statements in advance of the election misrepresented the issues of the union election, and his WSJ op-ed continues to do so. For one thing, there is no mention in the op-ed of the fact that Volkswagen management itself not only didn’t express concern about the UAW, but had indeed seemed to welcome the union as a means of implementing the company’s traditional “worker’s councils” formula.

In the op-ed, Corker says that the UAW “tried to press the narrative that any future expansion of the plant would be contingent upon the UAW organizing the employees.” That stands the facts on their head. It was Corker, not the UAW, who tried to link VW’s expansion with the union vote by insisting publicly that VW would manufacture a mid-sized SUV in Chattanooga if, and only if, the workers rejected the union — a misleading assertion that was vehemently and explicitly denied by VW management and one that is at the heart of UAW’s NLRB complaint.

There are six or seven other blatant omissions or misrepresentations in Corker’s WSJ piece. It would take more space and time than we have at our disposal to address them all. Suffice it to say that if an employer — in this case, Volkswagen — had said and done the things that Corker has, in a union-busting course that has unfortunately been abetted by other state officials, it would be a prima facie violation of NLRB regulations. Just ask any unbiased lawyer conversant with those regulations, labor or management.

Last fall, in our November 21st issue, we surveyed the then-brewing struggle between pro- and anti-union forces relative to the pending worker election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. “Who’s the Laughingstock?” We asked in our headline for that editorial — the reference being to what we had hoped was an off-the-cuff remark by U.S. Senator Bob Corker, regarding the fact that the Volkswagen management, both German and American, declined to be alarmed over the prospect of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union gaining representation at the plant.

VW would become a “laughingstock” if something that dire were to happen, Corker suggested, whereas we saw such a label being more appropriate if affixed to official buttinskies like himself. After all, Volkwagen executives had made it unmistakably clear that a UAW presence at their plant would more likely be beneficial than not — especially since it would make the Volkwagen’s traditional reliance on “workers’ councils,” easier to achieve. “Volkswagen considers its corporate culture of works councils a competitive advantage,” VW spokesperson Bernard Osterloh said at the time, adding, “Volkswagen is led by its board and not by politicians.”

Never mind that the UAW was already an established presence at the General Motors plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Of course, Corker had already distinguished himself (or something) by leading the resistance in 2009 to President Obama’s highly successful plan to resuscitate the then-ailing automobile industry in Detroit, headquarters of GM. But we thought that, having vented his union-baiting opinions and saluted the flag of Tennessee’s sacrosanct right-to-work law, he would settle down and allow the worker election in Chattanooga to be held in peace.

He did not. Instead, Corker placed himself at the head of a quasi-official coalition to stop the potential unionization of the VW plant, by any means necessary. Even as VW’s management was graciously allowing union organizers to address workers inside the plant, Corker et al. launched an execrable threat campaign to intimidate Volkswagen and scare the plant’s workers.

Abetted by such unsavory rightwing outsiders as Grover Norquist and the infamous Koch brothers, the Corker coalition went to its union-busting task. Corker said publicly that VW would manufacture a mid-sized SUV in Chattanooga if the workers rejected the union. (In other words: reject the union, boys, and there’ll be more work for you. Plant manager Frank Fischer promptly disputed the senator’s assertion, and Corker blithely called him a liar. Then Bo Watson (R-Hixson), speaker pro tem of the state Senate, went Corker one better, threatening legislation to revoke the existing state financial concessions granted to VW by the state if the UAW should win the vote. (In other words, “we’ll take away the work you already have if you vote yes.”) And, oh yes, surprise: Our go-along governor said he thought suppliers would think twice about serving a unionized plant.

The bottom line: After all this pressure from officialdom, the UAW bid was narrowly defeated, and Senator Corker actually boasted in a press release that the whole Volkswagen-in-Chattanooga project was hatched around his kitchen table. Fair’s fair: Wouldn’t want to give Boss Bob indigestion, would you?

We, however, are inclined to retch.