Union-Busting Firms That Warn Workers Against Outsiders Are ... Um ... Outsiders

The UAW lost in Tuscaloosa, but labor last week also scored two southern victories you probably didn't hear about. Both concerned workers at motor-vehicle plants, one of them in Alabama.

“I’m thinkin’ of the kids in the knickerbockers, shirt-tailed young ones, peekin’ in the pool-hall window after school.” Robert Preston in “The Music Man” (1962).

A common argument against joining a union is that a labor union is an interloper, an outsider that comes to town, disrupts the inherently warm familial bond between employer and employee, and then, if workers vote the union in, stuffs its pockets with union dues. But of course the experts who help management fend off union drives are also outsiders. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Mercedes received assistance in fending off the United Auto Workers (headquartered 780 miles away in Detroit, Michigan) from RWP Labor (headquartered 803 miles away in Washington, D.C.) Union organizers from the UAW got paid. Union-busters from RWP got paid a lot more. “You can’t do this alone,” a promotional video for RWP tells management. “You need RWP Labor.” It’s an old song. You got trouble my friend, right here in River City!

In my latest New Republic piece, I explain the jumbo-sized hypocrisy of management-hired outsiders telling workers that they shouldn’t heed outside agitators. I also explain why the UAW’s defeat in Tuscaloosa isn’t nearly so big a deal as the press makes it out to be. Labor scored a couple of significant victories last week at factories that build motor vehicles, one of them involving the UAW in Alabama. You didn’t read about this in your newspaper, but you can read about it here.