Labor, and the GOP's Betrayal of Conservative Principles

Last night workers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted on whether the United Auto Workers would play a part in their plant. The vote went against the UAW by 712-626. This has been characterized by some as a devastating loss to the union. I think that is the wrong judgement.

It matters that the vote happened at all. That is pretty impressive in a part of the country where anti-labor forces are allowed to obstruct organizing efforts and otherwise violate federal and state labor laws at will. In this case, the UAW didn't even initiate the effort. Plant workers, with the apparent blessing of VW, courted the UAW. As the drive took shape, Tennessee's Republican Governor and junior Senator went on a blitz to stop the unionization effort. The Governor and Senator were joined by a host of usual suspects; Grover Norquist led the charge.

The various opposition parties made dark mutterings about communists, intoned about "foreign influences" (German labor unions) penetrating their state, and generally tried to scare the bejesus out of the 1,500 plant workers. Images of Detroit abounded, and President Obama's name was thrown about with wild abandon.

It worked, this time. The victory may be Pyrrhic however. The GOP has to own an anti-worker blitz at a time that workers are hurting and concerns about income disparity have achieved traction. This will come back to bite them.

Interestingly, VW had asked "third-parties" to stay out of the union vote effort.

Before getting into the question of why the GOP and the political right are so opposed to labor unions in general, its helpful to look at the ways that unions are a boon to business, industry and conservative politics (here I ask readers to note that I use conservative in its correct sense. When I refer to what the wing-nuts have coopted I use the word in quotes ["conservative"]).

First of all, the American labor movement has been overwhelmingly conservative. While today's GOP wants you to imagine Wobblies storming the factory gates (or Winter Palace), in fact the AFL/CIO for years was the mainstay of conservative Democrats. They rallied their forces against FDR's preferred 1944 VP candidate Henry Wallace and we got Harry Truman instead. In the 1950s and 60s they largely drove the Democrats' anticommunist wing occupied by the likes of JFK, LBJ, and Hubert Humphrey. Labor put the brakes on the Democrats as they courted marginal constituencies in the late 60s and 70s. Look, in retrospect, slow-rolling minorities seeking a place at the table is nothing to be proud of, but it kind of meets the essence of conservatism; go slow, be deliberate, think about unintended consequences.

In the early 80s, labor poured money into Solidarity, the Polish dissident labor movement that did a damn sight more than Ronald Reagan to end the Cold War. When Polish workers struck in 1980; first in the Gdansk shipyards and, then, through the entire country, it ripped away whatever shreds of "rule by the proletariat" were left of the old Soviet system. And America's house of labor was front and forward with money and moral support.

Organized labor is good for business, in part because it relieves a lot of businesses of the cost of administering health and retirement programs. It is popular to point out the ruinous expense of maintaining pensions and health care for retired auto workers; I won't debate that they were costly, but the auto manufacturers did not have to pay the cost of administering those programs, that was borne by the UAW.

Labor is also good for business and industry because it provides standards for workers to train to, and follow. Workers who are trained through union sanctioned apprenticeships to the journeyman and master level know what they are doing. I know I always feel safer  knowing a union electrician fixed the wiring in my house.

Labor does push business and industry to pay workers better. But even that is conservative and good for business - as long as you define "good" as good for the long haul and not good for next quarter's balance sheet so you can churn your stocks and make a quick buck at your company's expense. Henry Ford figured out years ago that if he paid his workers well enough to buy the cars they were building that they would work better and he would get richer. Ford was not a bleeding heart. He understood enlightened self-interest.

Similarly, a nation that pays its workers well invests well. Such a nation wants workers to be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise; so they can fully participate, be invested, in the life of the nation. And those too are conservative values.

So, why the GOP opposition? It is partly historical. Reflexive GOP opposition to union efforts in the 30s opened the door for Democrats under FDR to lock up the labor vote as a key element of the Roosevelt coalition. In zero-sum politics anything that hurts your enemy helps you.

Going back to Henry Ford, who bitterly opposed unionization, he thought that the union diluted the workers' sense of loyalty to him and his company. He may have been right. The workers may have liked Henry's wages and paternalistic views, but they also knew that Henry was getting on in years and would not be at the helm for long. Would another generation treat them like family, or would they become expenses in a ledger? A modern comparison is Walmart. Sam Walton was a latter-day Ford in many respects. He took pretty good care of his workers and looked poorly on unions. His heirs have not done well by their workers and are one of the contributors to rising welfare and medicaid expenses because they refuse to pay a living wage and expect taxpayers to subsidize their paltry wages.

Labor remains a core piece of the Democrats' coalition, although private sector unions have been on their knees for decades. That makes any UAW inroads into the South particularly troublesome. Southern states have been historically hostile to organized labor and have also -- historically -- had the most poorly paid workers. In the worst economy since the Great Depression, the GOP probably does not want workers in the GOP's geographical base putting two and two together and starting a regional push to unionize.

GOP hostility to labor has been a feature of the party's right wing for a century. Republican moderates realized the value that labor brought to the table and worked with them. George Romney had the labor vote in Michigan pretty well locked up. Richard Nixon was endorsed by the Teamsters in '72, and the AFL/CIO refused to campaign against him that same year.

Democrats haven't always been there for labor either. I suggest that labor's decline and the dearth of conservative Democrats that started in the 70s are related phenomena and not good for the Democratic party.

But, given the GOP's current rank hostility toward labor, Democratic diffidence is tolerable and acceptable. Labor's attitude toward the two parties reminds me of Jean Seberg's line in Paint Your Wagon: "Well Joseph, I may not know what I'm getting, but I know what I've gotten."