Damon Silvers’ Post

Why is @vw workers winning their union this week so important for America? In 1980 the auto industry was the most important source of jobs in America. Every auto plant in the US had a union contract paying middle class wages, health care & a pension. Including Southern auto plants. Then Japanese auto makers backed by the Reagan administration & anti-union Southern governors set up plants in Southern states paying low wages, inferior health care & no real pensions. German & Korean companies followed. By 2008 only half of US auto workers had a union contract. When workers in the Southern plants tried to organize-- as they did many times--they were met with racist divide and conquer tactics, threats to move offshore, threats from their local public officials & illegal firings. And workers lost election after election. The giant foreign auto companies had plants all around the world. Everywhere else they operated their workers were organized. The German workers even sat on their companies' boards. But Southern workers were silenced, treated as if they were somehow less. The Southern plants set off a downward wage spiral. Real wages in the auto industry fell from 1980 to 2008, even as productivity skyrocketed. And then in the financial crisis, Southern politicians made GM and Chrysler lower their wages to level of the Southern plants. The rise of the non union auto sector in the South was key to the US becoming a low wage economy, and to the dominance of hard right politics in the South after 1980. Both these things are key causes for the current crisis of democracy in the US. This week for the first time since before the 1980's workers in a Southern auto plant have succeeded in organizing a union for themselves despite politicians' threats and race baiting. And if one Southern auto plant's workers can organize a union for themselves it suggests others can too. An inspiring addendum-after years of building solidarity between Southern auto workers & German auto workers-when right wing politicians tried to get into the @VW plant, German VW workers & their Works Council stopped them from getting in.@IGMetall @dgb_news @UAW @IndustriALL_GU