0:00

Max, everyone I know who is

0:02

in any way involved with unions

0:04

is absolutely losing their minds this

0:06

week. Oh yeah, the Volkswagen thing. You

0:09

can do it! You

0:11

can do it! It's the

0:13

greatest feeling that I felt like in a

0:15

long, in 13 years. Okay?

0:18

This is wonderful. Those are workers

0:20

of the VW plant in Chattanooga,

0:22

Tennessee who just voted to form

0:24

a union. Right. This is

0:26

a really big deal, and not just for

0:28

auto workers. In a way, to have a

0:31

union form at an automotive plant in the

0:33

South is a big deal kind of for

0:35

anyone who works in America. Yeah,

0:37

even if you're not a line worker

0:39

at a Southern auto factory, this could

0:41

matter for you. I have a feeling that

0:43

most people listening are not line workers at

0:45

Southern auto factories, but it's not going to

0:48

be obvious why this is a big deal

0:50

unless you understand why the South, as a

0:52

rule, doesn't unionize. And what that has to

0:54

do with the entire rest of the U.S.

0:56

economy. But once you see it, you might

0:58

end up cheering like those folks in the video too.

1:03

I'm Erin Ryan. And I'm Max Fisher. This

1:05

is how we got here, a new series where

1:07

we explore a big question behind the week's headlines

1:09

and tell a story that answers that question. Our

1:12

question this week, why are unions

1:14

finally breaking into the notoriously anti-union

1:16

American South? That's going to bring

1:18

us to some bigger questions too. Like, why

1:21

have unions been in such severe decline in

1:23

the U.S.? And could that maybe start changing?

1:25

The story we want to tell you is

1:27

how and why the South became so anti-union

1:29

in the first place. Because this is not

1:31

peripheral to that bigger story of union

1:34

decline in America. It's actually pretty central

1:36

to it. All right, let's get into

1:38

it. Okay, so you might say

1:40

that there are three big chapters to this story.

1:42

And the first of those chapters starts all the

1:44

way back in the late 1800s. In

1:47

other words, for as long as there have been unions in

1:49

America. Yeah, back then the Southern economy

1:51

was mostly farms and textile weaving. I

1:54

have a feeling Max, that race is about to

1:56

feature heavily in all this. Yeah, boy does it.

1:58

You were a member from history. The class That, of course

2:01

as a result of the Civil War. Large.

2:03

Numbers of newly emancipated Southern black

2:05

workers started competing with southern white

2:07

workers for jobs. It's a big

2:09

economic change and for farm owners to.

2:11

Is an argument that everything that happens in

2:14

the South after this with Jim Crow laws

2:16

and six secret hold on power in the

2:18

exclusion of southern black voters is on some

2:20

level of labor economics. story. Okay,

2:23

it's minute. Three, and

2:25

how we got here makes it's first

2:27

veiled reference to Karl Marx. Not bad,

2:29

not bad. again. Anderson to keep up with. Yeah,

2:31

You're saying white workers says more

2:33

wage competition White landowners had to

2:36

pay for labour. The Responses: Jim

2:38

Crow which forced black workers into

2:40

poverty, wages and for recep work

2:42

conditions. So Southern Blacks farmworkers started to

2:44

with the help of trade associations that

2:46

came down from the North. Form.

2:48

Their own unions as a way

2:50

to demand things like therapists. They

2:52

also had support from prominent abolitionists

2:54

leaders like Frederick Douglas, who called

2:57

unions the next big step in

2:59

emancipation. One of those first

3:01

unions was formed in Eighteen Eighty

3:03

Seven by Louisiana Sugar from workers.

3:05

And. You demands were pretty modest. Like a

3:07

daily wage of one dollar twenty five

3:09

cents. That's about three dollars an hour

3:12

in today's dollars. White. Workers in the

3:14

South saw unions like this as a threat

3:16

to the higher pay and higher social status

3:18

that they got from being white. And.

3:20

Way to Leads saw it as a threat

3:22

to their hold on power. What is Black

3:25

Southerners when? From organizing for better wages to

3:27

organizing for the vote. This. Is

3:29

of course part of where the Kkk

3:31

came from. Some. Of those black

3:33

sugar farm workers went on strike,

3:35

a local judge declared martial law,

3:37

and white vigilantes shot and killed

3:39

sixty of the strikers and then

3:41

buried them a mass grave. Here's.

3:44

A bit of America on a lawyer for you.

3:46

One of the sugar farm owners. Guy

3:49

named Andrew Price. Was spotted participating in

3:51

the massacre. He says no charges and

3:53

a year later white voters in that

3:55

same town elected to Congress. Cool, Cool.

3:58

Love. To read American history. Not

4:00

to bring up Karl Marx again, but if religion

4:02

is opiate for the masses and an American history,

4:04

racism is kind of the them as. Such.

4:08

As of old, there were other

4:10

incidents like this of black workers

4:13

trying to unionize and getting gun

4:15

down in Arkansas and Ninety Nineteen

4:17

and North Carolina in Nineteen Twenty.

4:19

Nice. But it's not just that black

4:21

workers are being prevented from unionizing. White

4:24

workers in the South were resistant to

4:26

it to. To explain why here's

4:28

a history and named James see com.

4:30

He's an emeritus professor at the University

4:33

of Georgia and he's written a bunch

4:35

of books about the political economy in

4:37

the South Are producer Ml with Frank

4:40

talk to Philly certainly politicians as well

4:42

as employers. He used. For

4:44

Bugaboo. Loads of use being

4:46

in favor of race mixing.

4:49

Use a call It In

4:51

all their propaganda. And

4:53

some the white workers muslim when I

4:55

used to work on the sideline people

4:57

and the the young. The argument to

5:00

them was is here in a union

5:02

known as the as Good A Job

5:04

as you do when you know you

5:07

may find yourself actually working for a

5:09

black person So. Racism. Join a

5:11

union, and it might god

5:13

forbid elevate black workers alongside

5:15

white. Workers Yes, Though Professor

5:18

Com emphasize that white southern

5:20

elites were driving a lot

5:22

of the effort to block unions,

5:24

their entire hold on power,

5:26

after all, rely on keeping

5:28

poor and working class people divided

5:30

along racial lines and union

5:32

certain that I'm equally to swim

5:35

is hard to imagine the extent

5:37

to which the institutions of

5:39

garden in the South we're

5:41

committed to keeping unions. Out.

5:44

From. The local sheriff. To.

5:47

The state Patrol from the

5:49

mayor to the gun. They.

5:51

Use every facet of their

5:53

office in their their authority.

5:56

Against union organization I'm inclusive

5:59

The University Town and Union

6:01

Busting Seminar. For. Several

6:03

years. Teaching. Executives have

6:05

to keep their plants from being A

6:07

and said these lenses State University. Is.

6:10

Just not some gonna primitive

6:12

called for all thing with

6:14

southern white workers that that

6:17

really can't just explain. The

6:19

say reunion eyes solely on that

6:22

basis. There. Are so many

6:24

instances of. Things. In.

6:27

American history that are nice and people like

6:29

that. We didn't get. When

6:31

you look back on it, you're like why can't

6:33

we have this nice thing The answer is racism.

6:35

Racism is why we can't have The nice thing.

6:38

Here are we mention that the story

6:40

can be divided into three chapters, and

6:42

that was chapter one. Dot. It

6:44

the early years of American unions and

6:46

the Civil War, up to the Nineteen

6:48

Thirties, a period when racism and Jim

6:50

Crow lead southern white workers and elites

6:52

to cooperate in setting unions. Out of

6:54

the South. the result was that by the

6:56

time labor unions really took off in America

6:59

and the Nineteen thirties and forties, there is

7:01

already this long history of cultural antagonism to

7:03

unions in the South. This. Is chapter

7:05

two of our story: the union boom years

7:07

from the thirties through the sixties. This.

7:10

Is a time when organized labor with stronger than

7:12

ever. But there were also some new barriers to

7:14

unions going up in the South in addition to

7:16

the old ones. This. Is part of

7:18

a story that is a little bit more

7:20

driven by industrial economics and economic policy. Okay,

7:23

go on. So. Here's a big

7:25

one when Str past the National Labor

7:27

Relations Act the law that created a

7:29

lot of the union collective bargaining rights

7:31

so have today. Southern. Politicians to

7:33

go she added to get agricultural

7:36

workers and domestic workers excluded. Those.

7:38

Sectors dominated the South's economy, so this

7:41

cut off a lot of Southerners from

7:43

America's big labor rights revolution, which Southern

7:45

political leaders didn't want in their states.

7:48

It also sealed in the. South from

7:50

what became an explosion and union

7:52

membership after World War Two. Thanks.

7:54

To the postwar economic boom, factories

7:56

are sprouting up across the North

7:59

midwest. Union strengthened by FDR's new

8:01

laws won over a lot of those factory

8:03

floors. But there were relatively few factories

8:05

to unionize in the South, which, going to

8:08

its reliance on agriculture, hadn't industrialized to the

8:10

same degree. I've got some stats here

8:12

that really show the gap between the North and the

8:14

South. All right, lay them on me. So

8:16

between 1939 and 1953, which is

8:18

the peak of that manufacturing boom,

8:21

the number of unionized workers in New York

8:23

State more than doubled, from a little under

8:25

one million to over two million. Rough

8:28

math, that's got to be close to half of

8:30

working adults in New York. Yeah, nationally, 35

8:33

percent of working adults were in unions as

8:35

of 1953. That

8:37

year was actually the peak of union participation in the

8:39

country. Okay, so that's an industrial

8:42

northern state. And now a southern

8:44

agricultural state? Okay, North Carolina, same years, 1939

8:46

to 1953, went from just 25,000 union workers to That

8:53

is barely enough to tailgate outside

8:55

an F-50 football game. So

8:58

the South is getting totally left behind by

9:00

the organized labor wave. Yeah, the Teamsters,

9:02

who were one of the biggest unions of the world

9:04

at that point... Still are. Right, still

9:06

are. And that 1939 to 1953 window, they recruited 700,000

9:08

new members nationally. Would

9:13

you like to guess how many of those were in the South?

9:15

700,000 nationally? I'd say maybe

9:17

one or two hundred thousand in the South?

9:20

Across all of Texas, Tennessee, Georgia,

9:22

and Alabama, just 6,000 new

9:25

Teamster members. Okay, but

9:27

there must be some unions in the South by the

9:29

1950s. There are some

9:31

textile unions, and West Virginia has one of the

9:33

highest membership rates in the South thanks to mind

9:35

workers. Overall during this period,

9:37

the union participation rate across the South was

9:40

about half of what it was nationally. And

9:42

that ratio has actually held. It's consistently been

9:44

about half of whatever the national rate is.

9:47

Southern states, we should say, also

9:49

all passed so-called right-to-work laws during

9:51

this period. Yeah, and just to

9:53

explain, right-to-work laws allow workers in unionized

9:56

workplaces to opt out of union membership

9:58

or paying dues. Intended

10:00

to make it harder for you is to farmers

10:02

sustain themselves. Okay, so the circle back

10:04

on something. We're talking earlier about the role

10:07

of Jim Crow and institutionalized racism in keeping

10:09

unions out of the South for so long.

10:12

for be three century or. So. He

10:14

would think that the rise of the Civil

10:16

Rights movement in the sixties would smash those

10:18

barriers and allow unions to finally come in.

10:20

but that's not what happened. The reason

10:23

that civil rights failed to pave the

10:25

way for organized labor in the South

10:27

is still debated, but everyone agrees that

10:29

these two moments of had a complicated

10:32

relationship. Often they've been natural allies. When

10:34

Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Birmingham,

10:36

for example, it was the United Auto Workers

10:38

Union that sent down officers with bail money.

10:41

But other times they worked at

10:43

cross purposes, especially in the south.

10:45

That's blur interests is. No,

10:47

well in the broader, sincere and distance

10:49

and to coincide. And

10:52

political sense. That

10:55

is again James Com, the Historian of the South.

10:57

Political. Economy: for once I use

10:59

moves a week. The. Last thing

11:01

a civil rights leader would have wanted. In

11:04

the South was an affiliation with to

11:06

do you Use a Sudden Movement. I

11:08

mean they have enough trouble as it

11:10

was there are even call communists. And.

11:13

I don't think they would have can even.

11:15

To. Do with that even is.

11:18

The unions were a suitably

11:20

supporting. The. Civil Rights Movement?

11:22

you know any point Person and

11:24

bar with the unions would have

11:26

understood that. That. Yeah.

11:28

This is not something they can openly

11:30

embrace. Our encourage and the spread out

11:33

in other ways to unions were seen

11:35

as associated with the Democratic party and

11:37

the Democrats had become hated by a

11:39

lot of southern whites for pushing civil

11:42

rights. So that said into suspicion of

11:44

unions. And while all this was

11:46

happening, unions are getting more and more deeply

11:48

entrenched in the North and Midwest. They're building

11:51

cultural ties similiar to and local communities, all

11:53

of which gives them a kind of resilience.

11:55

Their. This will much later play

11:57

into unions' troubles expanding into the.

12:00

South where there isn't that familiarity. but you'll

12:02

see what I mean. We get there were

12:04

putting the seventies. Which marks the end of chapter

12:06

two of our story and the start of our

12:08

third and final chapter. Yet so to sum

12:10

up, Chapter to the South managed to cut

12:13

it so far from what was otherwise a

12:15

revolution Organized labor throughout the rest of the

12:17

United States. It. Did this the regulations and

12:19

economic policies that are still very much

12:21

with Us and still barriers unionization in

12:23

the South. And. The South also

12:25

did this through in a weird and

12:27

and written way timing. By. Industrializing so

12:30

much later than the rest of the Us,

12:32

it's staved off the wave of union organizing

12:34

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15:52

few big economic changes all happened at once

15:54

to set this off. The South's

15:56

big textile industry completely imploded.

15:58

Garment making jobs... moved overseas and

16:01

everyone knew they were never coming back.

16:03

At the same time, a big bad recession

16:05

hit the US and Europe. That led manufacturing

16:07

companies in both places to start looking for

16:09

ways to cut costs. Southern

16:11

leaders thought they saw a way to make all

16:13

these problems solve each other. Was it

16:16

through a big football game? It's

16:18

a great guess. No,

16:20

the South had finally industrialized. Way

16:23

to hustle, guys. Way to keep up. So

16:25

Southern leaders went to corporations in Northern

16:27

states and in Europe with an offer.

16:30

They said, hey, relocate your factories

16:32

to the American South. Our labor is

16:35

cheap because our economies are still mostly

16:37

poor, rural. And if

16:39

you're worried about safety standards or costly strike, if you're

16:41

worried about work or blowback, if you have to close

16:43

a factory, then don't. Because we don't really have unions

16:45

down here and we don't want them. It

16:48

is diabolical, Max. I know you didn't want to

16:50

do an accent and that's probably wise. But

16:52

just know that as you were speaking, I heard you

16:55

in the voice of Charlie Daniels singing

16:57

Devil Went Down to Georgia, specifically the part

16:59

where he narrates the deal with the devil.

17:02

Devil went down to Georgia. He was looking for a soul to steal. He

17:05

was in a bind because he was way behind and he was willing to make

17:07

a deal. When it came across

17:09

this young man sawin' on the fiddle and playin' it hot

17:11

and the devil jumped up on a hickor-dup and said,

17:13

boy, let me tell you what. Let

17:15

me turn down much of that song we're gonna hear. Well,

17:18

okay, that is what this is. It is a

17:20

deal with the devil. In the late 70s and

17:22

early 80s, a lot of companies said yes and

17:25

they moved their factories to the South. There's

17:27

a name for this practice. It's called offshoring.

17:29

We typically think of offshoring as an American

17:32

company moving its factory off its

17:34

shores to China or Mexico, but the

17:36

South was one of the first. Yeah,

17:38

the unions did try to follow these

17:40

factories down, but the Nixon administration had

17:43

just weakened a bunch of the FDR

17:45

rules meant to support organized labor. God,

17:47

what a dick. Yeah, he is. This

17:50

was also thanks to the recession, a weak labor

17:52

market. That made workers easier to replace and gave

17:55

them less power at work than they'd had during

17:57

the strong labor market of the post-war boom years.

18:00

Another factor is that southern states had

18:02

built up a lot of their factories

18:04

out in rural areas. This is something

18:06

they were able to do because of

18:08

more recent advances in electrification. This is

18:11

another perk of industrializing late. It

18:13

gave those factories access to cheaper

18:15

rural labor, and in theory

18:17

also made them less likely to unionize because

18:19

they were far away from cities that might

18:21

have other unions. The point is

18:23

that offshoring factories became the new economy of

18:26

the south, and a lot of those factories

18:28

were run by European car makers. After

18:30

decades in which factory and union had

18:33

been synonymous in America, the south

18:35

ended up with a whole bunch of factories,

18:37

but almost no unions. The business

18:39

council of Alabama described it as a

18:41

perfect three-legged stool for economic development of

18:44

loose business regulations, cheap workers,

18:46

and quote, the lack of

18:48

labor union activity and participation. Remember

18:51

that all of those barriers to unions

18:53

we mentioned in the earlier parts of

18:55

the show are still in place. Racial

18:58

divides, right to work laws, cultural distrust

19:00

of unions as the tool of integrationists

19:02

and democrats. But now there's a

19:04

new one too. Southern leaders have explicitly

19:06

promised to keep out unions as a

19:08

foundation of the entire region's economy. And

19:11

they started making good on that

19:13

promise pretty quickly. In South Carolina

19:15

in 1977, state leaders successfully fought

19:17

Philip Morris's plan to build a

19:19

cigarette plant that would have created

19:21

2,600 jobs for the

19:23

sole reason that Philip Morris plans for

19:25

union. Anti-unionist versus the

19:28

cigarette factory. Has there ever

19:30

been a more clear-cut team nobody

19:33

situation? Sacklers versus the

19:35

cartels maybe. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's it.

19:37

It's so dumb because it's not even like

19:39

the Philip Morris people were anti-union. The

19:42

state deprived its own citizens of thousands

19:45

of union-wage jobs that this company wanted

19:47

to give them. And South

19:49

Carolina had a big ally in this

19:51

fight too. Michelin, the French tire maker,

19:54

had just set up its own non-union

19:56

factory in the same South Carolina town

19:58

and they helped to fight Morse plant.

20:00

Both Michelin and South Carolina feared that

20:02

if even one union factory set up,

20:04

they would push up wages for the

20:06

whole area and it might even lead

20:09

union sentiment to spread beyond that plant.

20:11

European factories became a huge presence in the

20:13

South and they still very much are, now

20:15

with a lot of Japanese and Korean companies

20:17

in there too. Especially car makers and

20:19

especially starting in the 80s.

20:22

The 80s also being the start of

20:24

the bad times for unions in America. At the

20:26

start of that decade about one in four workers was

20:28

a member of a union. That's already down from

20:30

one in three during unions peak in the 50s. By

20:33

the end of the 80s it had dropped from one

20:35

in four to less than one in six.

20:37

All right here he comes. The guy we bring

20:39

up on every show. Oh Karl Marxigan? No,

20:41

no the other one. Ronald Reagan. Oh yeah.

20:44

It is for this reason that

20:46

I must tell those who failed to report

20:48

for duty this morning. They

20:50

are in violation of the law and

20:52

if they do not report for work within 48 hours

20:55

they have forfeited their jobs

20:57

and will be terminated. End

21:00

of statement. What a dick.

21:04

That was from 1981 when Reagan

21:06

ended up firing 11,000 air

21:09

traffic controllers for striking. This

21:11

signaled what became a big change in treatment of

21:13

unions in the US. Reagan followed

21:15

Nixon and further weakening those FDR

21:17

era protections for unions became a

21:20

lot easier for companies to bust

21:22

unions or to discourage them from

21:24

even forming. This is a big part

21:26

of the story of why unions declined in America but

21:28

it's not the whole story. Globalization is

21:31

of course the other big part.

21:33

Advances in communication and transportation made

21:35

it more feasible to move plants

21:37

overseas just as cheap skilled labor

21:39

pools were coming online in Asia

21:41

and Central America. At the same

21:44

time the American economy was shifting away

21:46

from manufacturing jobs which were mostly union

21:48

to service sector jobs which mostly weren't.

21:50

Okay so up to this point we've

21:53

mostly talked about the forces arrayed against

21:55

unions that made things hard for organized

21:57

labor but this one this

21:59

is one where the unions take some blame. Remember

22:01

back to those union boom times from the 40s

22:03

and 50s when the wind was at their backs

22:06

and they marched through one factory after another.

22:08

But they did not march through

22:10

the service sector of the economy.

22:12

Restaurants, retail, typing pools, bank tellers.

22:15

Ah yes, the yucky parts of

22:18

the economy where workers were disproportionately

22:20

likely to be women, which made

22:22

the male-dominated unions disproportionately likely to

22:24

ignore them. And that turned out

22:26

to be a pretty big own goal for

22:28

organized labor in America because the service sector

22:31

would by the 80s really take

22:33

off. Software, health care, finance, media.

22:35

Yeah, Erin, you and I are

22:37

both in a union. So many

22:39

meetings. But I love

22:41

them all. And the first big

22:43

newspaper union formed during the Great Depression

22:45

partly because reporters noticed that unionized

22:48

printing press operators made more than them.

22:51

But most of the service sector never

22:53

unionized and most jobs in America are

22:55

now service sector jobs. So as that

22:57

sector has grown, union share of the

22:59

workforce has shrunk. This became an especially

23:01

big problem for unions in the South.

23:04

It's one thing to try to organize nurses or

23:06

retail workers in say Pittsburgh where everyone knows someone

23:09

who's been in a union. They know how unions

23:11

work, they've seen the value of it. But

23:13

try the same thing in Charlotte or

23:15

Dallas. You're going to face more skepticism

23:17

from communities that haven't had that firsthand

23:19

exposure. That's also why companies and managers

23:21

in the South have had an easier

23:24

time scaring workers with claims that unionizing

23:26

will cost them their jobs. Yes,

23:28

it's become a mainstay of anti-union propaganda

23:30

to say just look at what happened

23:32

to Detroit as if the

23:34

decimation of Detroit auto jobs have been

23:36

caused by unions rather than by you

23:39

know the automakers offshoring those jobs to

23:41

union-free places like Mexico or Alabama. As

23:43

of 1990, 15%

23:45

of all auto jobs in America were located

23:48

in the South today. It's double that at

23:50

30%. Meanwhile, the share of auto jobs in

23:52

the Midwest has dropped from 60 to

23:55

45%. Which is to

23:57

say the South opening itself up as

23:59

an anti-union. Union Offshoring Center started to

24:01

hurt organized labor, not just in the

24:03

South, but in the whole country. That's

24:06

the big takeaway of the third chapter of our

24:08

story about the South making itself the anti-Union alternative

24:11

to the Midwest. And nothing illustrates

24:13

that like the auto industry. Yeah,

24:15

the auto industry's shift to the South

24:17

has displaced thousands of what would otherwise

24:19

be Union jobs. All of this

24:21

is why the question of whether the South stays

24:23

Union free is also a question about the fate

24:25

of organized labor in America. Because if

24:28

the South keeps this up, then it

24:30

can continue chipping away at unions nationwide,

24:32

luring away more and more Union jobs

24:34

and converting them into non-Union jobs. But

24:36

if unions could finally break into

24:38

the South, then there would no

24:40

longer be this Union free zone that

24:42

employers could escape to. Any

24:44

company that wanted to operate in the

24:47

U.S. would have to accept that their

24:49

workforce might maybe possibly could unionize. But

24:52

Southern states see this and they're fighting

24:54

back. I'd say something else,

24:56

I don't think we need unions or something

24:58

American. I don't think we're going to have

25:00

a whole lot of stuff to do with our own

25:04

employees. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank

25:07

you. You look like a cat. I'll say the word.

25:09

We're just looking at the class. Thank you very much.

25:13

Yeah, the American South very

25:15

famously doing better than the state of New York.

25:20

That was Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant at a

25:22

public event in 2017. The

25:25

next part of his speech wasn't captured on

25:27

video, but he went on to urge Mississippians,

25:29

especially ones working at a big Nissan plant

25:32

in the state, not to vote

25:34

for unions or they would end up, he

25:36

said, losing their jobs. He said, quote, if

25:38

you want to take away your job, if

25:40

you want to end manufacturing as we know

25:42

it in Mississippi, just start expanding unions.

25:44

A week later, as has happened over and over

25:47

again in Southern auto factories since the 80s,

25:49

the plant's 3500 workers

25:51

voted against unionizing. We started this,

25:53

I mean, my whole line was

25:55

just, they were just yes. But

25:58

when they saw it. started

26:00

bringing in those anti-union videos. I

26:04

seen my coworkers just, the

26:06

look on their face in the bed, I just can't do it. I'm

26:09

afraid of losing my job. Right now,

26:11

I got job security for 15 years,

26:13

sir. We have

26:15

not had a layoff. We have never missed a beat.

26:17

What do you think of their campaign? They

26:20

don't have one. We've been treating like, you know, they want

26:22

to say we treated with it. They treat black people like

26:25

slaves. I have been driving an Infiniti for 15 years. I

26:28

make great money. More money than people

26:30

with degrees make down here. Those

26:33

are two of the Nissan workers talking to Vice

26:35

News around the time of the vote. And

26:37

these are explanations that labor activists say you

26:39

hear all the time at these Southern factories.

26:42

I'm making good money, better than most of

26:44

my community. I can't risk that. Something

26:46

labor activists stress is that these Southern

26:49

factories are mostly in low-income and rural

26:51

communities, where people might be less than

26:53

a generation removed from poverty.

26:55

That can make people understandably risk-averse.

26:58

Especially if the only unions you've ever heard

27:00

about are the ones from Detroit, you know,

27:02

where all the factories closed. Southern states

27:04

have other tricks to suppress unions, too.

27:06

Some like Georgia even bully companies out

27:08

of recognizing unions by threatening to revoke

27:10

subsidies if they do. A

27:12

lot of these states hand out hundreds of

27:14

millions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives

27:17

to these factories. For a big car

27:19

maker, losing that can be even scarier

27:21

than a strike. All of that brings us

27:23

to the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. The

27:26

United Auto Workers have been trying for years to

27:28

unionize the plant, and for a long time it

27:30

looked like the Southern anti-union playbook was working.

27:33

VW had opened the plant in 2011 and

27:36

got 85,000 applicants for just 2,000 jobs. Which

27:40

is to say, the people who ultimately got

27:42

hired have said that they feel very lucky

27:44

to be there, and they don't want to

27:46

risk being seen as a union troublemaker and

27:48

losing their spot. When that plant first

27:50

opened, though, VW came out and said it actually

27:52

wanted some sort of worker representation, like they had

27:54

at their plants in Germany. So it

27:56

seemed like a union might finally

27:58

happen. Until state- leaders came out against

28:01

it. Remember the view in

28:03

the South is that allowing any unions would

28:05

undermine their pledge to say union free. There

28:07

is a fear that the South, if it

28:09

lets in unions, could trigger a mass relocation

28:12

of all those factories to some other even

28:14

cheaper location, probably abroad, that would beat the

28:16

South at its own game. Whatever

28:19

their reason, suddenly VW wasn't so union friendly

28:21

anymore. They refused to voluntarily recognize the union.

28:23

This meant that the union could only form

28:25

if it won a vote from the majority

28:27

of workers. They held a

28:29

vote in 2014 and they did lose it. Then they held

28:32

another after years of organizing

28:37

outreach in 2018. But after 2018 a few

28:39

big things changed. And not just in Chattanooga.

28:45

These were national changes, which is why

28:47

people think the story of this one

28:49

plant might suggest that the future could

28:51

be getting less bleak for unions in

28:54

the South and maybe even for the

28:56

US as a whole. COVID is

28:58

a big part of this. The labor market

29:00

tightened way, way up, which is great news

29:02

for workers' collective power. At the

29:04

same time, problems with supply chains

29:06

mean that Americans were suddenly more

29:09

reliant on domestic manufacturing. That's

29:11

good for unions. Because even with

29:13

the South swallowing up manufacturing jobs, factories

29:15

left in the North and Midwest are still

29:18

heavily union. Popular support for unions

29:20

has been spiking too. They are now at 70%

29:22

approval, according to Gallup, even though

29:24

union membership is at an all-time low of only

29:26

10%. The reasons

29:28

for this are complicated. People tend to

29:30

think more favorably of unions when the

29:32

economy is strong, for example. But it

29:34

helps embolden unions that are already emboldened

29:36

by the labor market. You may have

29:38

noticed this. Strikes and other labor actions have been up

29:41

ever since the pandemic. According to one count, they jumped

29:43

by 52% from just 2021 to 2022. And

29:47

something else. The UAW had

29:50

its first ever direct election, and

29:52

the new leadership seems to be

29:54

much more popular with potential recruits

29:56

like those VW workers. We've got

29:58

the power! And

30:01

when we launched our stand-up strike, we've

30:04

outsmarted, we've outorganized

30:06

corporate America and won

30:08

a future for tens of thousands

30:10

of workers. And

30:13

we're going to keep going until we

30:15

win social and economic justice at the

30:18

Big Three and beyond. That's

30:20

UAW president and the Caitlin Clark

30:22

of organized labor, Sean

30:24

Fain, speaking to union members in

30:26

Chicago last fall. Specifically, he

30:28

was talking about a historic strike

30:30

that the UAW led across all

30:32

three of the so-called Big Three

30:34

American automakers of Ford, GM, and

30:36

Chrysler. That they held the strike

30:38

at all was a big deal, but it

30:41

also works. After six weeks of work stoppages,

30:43

the UAW auto workers won their biggest raises

30:45

in decades. That victory specifically

30:47

seems to have really resonated with

30:50

people at the VW plant in

30:52

Chattanooga. Researchers held a third

30:54

vote over unionization and approved it by 73

30:56

percent. Everybody started

30:59

seeing what we could get when the Big

31:01

Three went on strike. And

31:03

they said, wait, hold on. If they can get all

31:05

this, we should too. We do the same job, just

31:07

in a different location. This is

31:09

great news, but we're still left with the question.

31:12

Does it indicate more like this to come? Maybe

31:15

even a crack in the Great Southern

31:17

Wall, Hemingian unions? Which again

31:19

would be a really big deal for everyone,

31:21

not just auto workers. When there

31:24

are more unions, wages are higher across the

31:26

board, work conditions are better, people

31:28

tend to live longer and healthier lives

31:30

even, and they're less prone to far-right

31:32

politics which has always had a special

31:34

power to appeal to people who feel

31:36

left behind. And the Southern anti-union

31:39

economy has been a big part of

31:41

holding unions back everywhere. But

31:43

it's not totally clear whether that's cracking yet.

31:45

There are some ways in which the VW

31:48

plant was unusually inclined to unions, and it

31:50

took even them a decade to get there.

31:52

Still, there is some reason for optimism. For

31:55

one, the contagion effect that Southern leaders have feared for

31:57

so long could turn out to be real. breakthrough

32:00

with the big three inspiring VW-Tetanuga

32:02

workers to support unionization, seems

32:05

like evidence of that. The strong labor

32:07

market is another big tailwind for unions too.

32:09

At the same time, there have been some even bigger

32:11

economic shifts, like a big decline

32:14

in off-shoring. Yes, this is huge.

32:16

Factories are not fleeing abroad the way

32:18

they used to. China is no longer

32:20

the draw for American factories that it used to

32:22

be. Its economy has grown and out. Its labor

32:25

is too expensive. Other countries like

32:27

Vietnam or India still offer cheap labor,

32:29

but no one can really replicate China's

32:31

supply chains. Speaking of supply chains,

32:34

they're still a mess, which is more

32:36

good news for American manufacturing and therefore

32:38

American unions. We're even starting to

32:40

see what economists call re-shore. That's

32:43

when factories come back to the U.S. It's the

32:45

opposite of off-shoring, and if you have not heard

32:47

the term before, that's because it's pretty unusual. It's

32:49

also impossible to like imagine, like how do you

32:52

shore again? Well, Wisconsin's doing it.

32:54

Maybe it's becoming a thing. Not

32:56

a big numbers yet, but there are factories spinning back

32:58

to life and parts of the Upper Midwest. Put

33:01

another way, at least for the moment,

33:03

the manufacturing industry's race to the bottom

33:05

is on hold, which is bad news

33:07

for the southern scheme to undercut those

33:09

unions with non-union workers. As

33:11

for whether this Chattanooga vote is going to

33:13

usher in a wider trend, we'll have a

33:15

hint of that pretty soon, actually. The UAW

33:18

is holding another unionization vote at a Mercedes

33:20

plant in Alabama just next month. And

33:22

there you have it, chapters one through

33:24

three of the struggle of organized labor

33:26

in the south to form unions.

33:29

Chapter four, TK. Now

33:32

let's go out with these local ABC News

33:34

affiliate interviews with workers at the Mercedes

33:36

Alabama plant. We're just as

33:38

good as any worker anywhere. Mercedes

33:40

makes billions in profit off of

33:43

our labor, and we're

33:45

just looking for a fire deal.

33:47

I believe Mercedes will become a

33:50

destination employer

33:53

again. People wanting to come here

33:55

again. Right now, it's... the

34:00

line, but we have new

34:03

groups of people coming in every week and

34:06

people just aren't staying anymore. It's really

34:09

about ending the Alabama discount and that's

34:11

not just about money. It's

34:13

about the workers here in Alabama for

34:15

the same work that all the auto

34:17

workers in the whole country do. All

34:26

we got here is written and hosted by me, Max

34:29

Fisher, and by Erin Ryan. And a special thank you

34:31

to what a day's talented host, Treville

34:51

Anderson, Priyanka Arabindi, Josie Duffy Rice,

34:53

and Juanita Toliver for welcoming us

34:55

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