German Union Boss Threatens VW's Chattanoooga Workers

Aren't unions supposed to represent the will of the ordinary worker?  If so, what to do when ordinary workers - of their own free will - vote against the UAW?  Apparently, they make threats.

this latest tidbit is sure to raise more than a few eyebrows, as it came straight from Bernd Osterloh, head of VW's works council in Germany.

I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the south again. ... If co-determination isn't guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor [of another VW plant in the southern US].

In other words, VW's works council, which has to approve any new plants before they can be built, may block further expansion in southern US states due to the area's apparent anti-union stance.

Source: NYT

Or, to put it another way, "unionize or we'll refuse to create any more jobs in your area."  Or, still another way, "VW's American employees are too stupid to know what's good for them, so from now on we'll decide for them if they'll join a union."

The anti-liberty sentiment among the UAW supporters is striking.  Look through the comments to the Autoblog article, and you'll see response after response stating that Southerners are too stupid and/or uneducated to know what's good for them.

I asked the following question in the comments:

Who is best qualified to decide what is in the Chattanooga plant workers' best interest?
1. The Chattanooga plant workers?
2. The UAW?
3. VW's works council in Germany?
4. Autoblog readers?
5. Someone else?

Here's one response from a UAW supporter.

VW Works Council...they have the decision-making power as to which of their plants get new products (work)...since the Works Council make up 50% of VW's board, they are the ones who call the shots...European/German labor unions are very different from American labor unions, they encourage a collaborative nature between management and workers...voting for the union at Tennessee would have brought that sort of enlightenment to the American shores...there is a reason why Mercedes-Benz, BMW and VW/Audi/Porsche/Bugatti/Lamborghini, etc. are some of the most respected brands on the globe...they treat and pay their workers well, management is held accountable and that results in superior products...it would be great for some of that to rub off on the American psyche...god knows we need it...

See?  VW's Works Council knows the Chattanooga workers' needs better than the Chattanooga workers do.

I also quoted a New York Times article on the vote and added some commentary.

"Mike Burton, a VW worker who led the anti-union drive, said many workers felt that they were paid well and treated well without having a union and thus saw no need to have one. He said many workers objected to the U.A.W. having initially sought unionization based on what it said was having a majority of cards signed favoring a union. 

'We don’t need the U.A.W. to give us rights we already have,' he said. 'We can already talk to the company if we have any problems'.” ~ NYT 

The workers voted and the UAW lost. The workers are best qualified to decide what is in their own best interest. They decided. Leave them alone. 

Here's a response to that comment.

The workers were indoctrinated with bullshit from the right they don't know whats best for them. Maybe the UAW isn't the best for them but they deserve some form of workers council.

Ah, yes.  The old "false consciousness" argument.  How Marxist.

Most Leftists on the national stage are smart enough to realize that telling the people you're trying to convince that they're too stupid to make their own decisions, so instead they're blaming Republicans, the eeeeeevil Right and even (gasp!) the Koch Brothers for the UAW's defeat.

I have one word for you.  Koch!

“I think it was unprecedented that outside forces, whether it was the Koch brothers and the money they spent here, whether it was [Republican Sen. Bob] Corker, whether it was Grover Norquist, all these people who were going to come in and threaten the company and threaten workers, to me was outrageous,” said UAW President Bob King, at a news conference after the tally was announced.

Seriously, if the Koch brothers were as powerful in real life as they are in Lefties' fever dreams of them, they'd be masters of the universe by now.

As the NYT article demonstrates, neither Republican politicians nor libertarian activists defeated the UAW.  The workers themselves did, with a lot of help from the UAW's reputation.

Standing outside the Volkswagen plant, Mike Jarvis, a three-year employee who works on the finishing line, said the majority had voted against U.A.W. because they were persuaded the union had hurt Detroit’s automakers. 

“Look at what happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit and how they struggled. They all shared one huge factor: the U.A.W.,” said Mr. Jarvis, who added that he had had bad experiences with other labor unions. “If you look at how the U.A.W’s membership has plunged, that shows they’re doing a lot wrong.”

Mike Jarvis, by the way, wrote an opinion piece for the NYT explaining why he helped organize opposition to the UAW.

As George Will wrote in the Washington Post:

UAW officials blamed last week’s failure on “outside special-interest groups,” which describes the UAW in Chattanooga. In a characteristically shrill and clumsy intervention before the voting ended, Barack Obama accused Tennessee Republicans of being “more concerned about German shareholders than American workers.” He missed the detail that the shareholders’ company favored the UAW. The UAW, too, blamed Tennessee’s Republican politicians. 

Funny how everyone opposing the UAW is caricatured as an "outside special-interest group" exerting undue influence, but everyone supporting the UAW - including the president of the United States, with the biggest bully pulpit on Earth - is not.

None of that matters.  What matters is that the workers have the right to choose for themselves whether or not they want the UAW to represent them.  The workers declined UAW representation.  That's it.  Period.  End of discussion.

Unless, of course, you believe VW's Chattanooga workers are incapable of making their own decisions and should therefore have their right to choose for themselves violated.  If so, I wonder what other rights the UAW's supporters would like to steal from VW's Chattanooga workers.

It's for their own good, of course.  The UAW and their Democrat allies simply want to do for Chattanooga what they did for Detroit.