At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga auto plant, the United Auto Workers won’t take no for an answer. Despite losing a recent unionization election, union officials are challenging the results. More noteworthy still is their opposition to the efforts of several VW employees, represented by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, to intervene in the legal proceedings to defend their decision not to unionize.
The UAW’s legal challenge isn’t surprising. It’s just the latest example of Big Labor’s new approach to organizing. Union officials have increasingly turned to coercive and misleading tactics.
Today’s labor movement faces an uncomfortable reality: Most employees just aren’t interested in joining a union. Private-sector union members, who once made up a third of the workforce, are now down to less than 7 percent.
But Big Labor won’t change its pitch.
The UAW’s Chattanooga campaign is a perfect example. UAW operatives initially sought to organize VW workers through a “card check” drive, a process that allows union organizers to badger, harass and even intimidate employees face-to-face until they sign cards, which are then counted as “votes” for unionization.
With the help of National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, several VW employees were able to stave off the UAW’s card check drive and force their employer to request a secret ballot election.
VW and UAW officials struck a so-called neutrality agreement that granted union organizers special access to company facilities leading up to the election. Copies of this agreement acquired by local media show the company and the union “aligning” their media messages and working to unionize the plant.
Still, Chattanooga VW employees ultimately voted against a UAW presence, 712 to 626.
The UAW’s Chattanooga failure is symptomatic of Big Labor’s larger problems. Once celebrated as advocates for the working man, unions have become political organizations.
From 1989 to 2014, 14 of the top 25 campaign donors were labor unions. In the 2011-12 election cycle, unions spent more than $1.7 billion dollars on politics and lobbying.
In states without right-to-work laws, employees are often made into unwitting or unwilling contributors to unions’ political agenda. Although workers technically have the right to opt out of union political spending, union officials frequently ignore their requests to stop collecting dues for politics or throw up bureaucratic hurdles to discourage employees from asserting their rights.
Polls of union members show overwhelming support for right-to-work laws, which ensure union membership and dues payments are voluntary. This is especially true in the 24 right-to-work states – including Tennessee and Georgia – where that free choice is already protected.
Moreover, vocal – and sometimes violent – union opposition to public-sector labor reforms in states like Ohio and Wisconsin have only added to the perception that Big Labor is more interested in defending its political privileges than advocating for working men and women.
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
