The UAW, Having Stripped Detroit Bare, Looks To The South

By Matt Patterson & Julia Tavlas

The United Auto Workers union, having looted and stripped Detroit bare, have set their sights south, to the right-to-work states and the foreign-owned auto plants they host.  German car maker Volkswagen, for example, has operated an assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee since 2011, producing Passat sedans. The factory has 3,350 employees, making it vital to the economic health one of the state’s largest cities……At its peak in 1979, the UAW boasted a membership of 1.5 million. Today…. it boasts a mere 390,000. In the last 12 years, the Detroit-based auto companies have shed 200,000 jobs—three-fifths of its hourly workforce. Meanwhile, foreign-owned car companies have created some 20,000 new jobs in mostly southern factories.

And so the UAW’s only hope is to find a new host. The Chattanooga Volkswagen plant must appear a robust specimen. The Volkswagen Passat won the 2012 Motor Trend Car of the Year award (which judges models on a variety of value and safety criteria), propelling it to sales of over 117,000 that year alone.  No wonder the Passat, and the Volkswagen plant that manufactures it, has attracted gleam-filled gaze from the north. But if the UAW gets its way, it could do for the foreign auto makers exactly what it has done to the once great American car industry.

Increase costs, decrease quality. Kill jobs….To Read More…