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Some old-fashioned union activism


Old-fashioned union activism is loosed upon us again. 

The UAW. Wow.  The UAW has won an organizational vote at a VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2024/04/19/tennessee-workers-vote-to-join-uaw-union/73382830007/  

Once upon a time, when my own age figured in the single digits, there were the "Big Three" auto makers in Detroit Michigan and they dominated the auto industry not just in the US but in the world. So much so that union-management relations came to seem a domestic US centric affair. 

During the Kennedy administration, the Attorney General's pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters drew some heat from Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Why? Well, first because Goldwater was entertaining thoughts of a run for President himself. But that wasn't the reason he gave, "I need the issue, people." 

No, Goldwater said that the Kennedys were going after the wrong union and the wrong union leader. The real crooks were at the UAW, he said. The focus on Hoffa was a deliberate distraction from the wickedness of Walter Reuther.

It was in the years between Hoffa's entry into prison (1967) and the US break with the Bretton Woods agreement (1971) that foreign automakers became of very great importance. VW from one direction, Toyota from the other.  Lots of others from lots of other countries in due course. The organization of the industry was plainly no longer a domestic concern.  The role of labor unions in US industry began a long decline fueled largely by the fear, and sometimes by a corresponding reality, that the non-unionized shops overseas would eat our lunch if we insisted on unionization at home. 

This also inspired a lot of hostility against the importers. They eventually responded to the hostility in part by locating plants within the US, so they would no longer be seem as importers.  "Buy American" could be perfectly consistent with "Buy VWs" if the VWs are made in Chattanooga. 

And that, my children, brings us full circle to the rise of the campaign to unionize US based shops of foreign companies at this vote.  Such developments point to the new frontier (to adopt a Kennedyesque expression) of a re-born unionism. 


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  1. Paul D. Van PeltApril 26, 2024 at 9:40 AM

    there is an amazing amnesia throughout this land. beneficiaries of unionization die, by the score, every year. Big Corporate claps collective hands, with undisguised glee, and labor disputes wreck havoc, putting able, qualified workers on the streets, looking for gainful work. company attitude is similar to how things were before unionization: if you don't like THIS job, find another. I do not know how or if this affected the great depression. maybe there was no effect or a negligible one? I just wonder,see.

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