VW, its workers council, and the UAW

The world hasn’t witnessed such weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth hissy fits as those over the potential organization of a local of the UAW (United Auto Workers) at the Volkswagen plant at Enterprise South since the caterwauling of the Pharisees running around with their hair on fire over an itinerate holy man in Galilee (known at the time as Jesus bar Joses) sitting down to eat with a bunch of publicans, whores, thieves, and other sinners at the house of a leper.

One could easily be forgiven for getting the impression that Volkswagen Motors had advocated that a People’s Democratic Soviet Socialist Workers’ Republic of Chattanooga under which the Christian religion is outlawed.

You’d think the politicians and other high holy men of the State of Tennessee would show some grace and Southern hospitality to one of Tennessee’s biggest employers and best guests by letting a corporation based in one of the very few countries in the world whose economy isn’t totally in the crapper to run its own business the way it sees fit.  But no, apparently that’s asking too much.  As if it weren’t enough to be hassled by Haslam and exhorted against by ex-editors with an axe to grind, now VW is faced with meddling in its affairs by the Koch brothers’ carpet-bagging National Right to Work Committee.

“Right to Work” is a phrase that belongs with the Ministry of Truth’s “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” and the oxymoron Military Intelligence.  Coined by French socialist Louis Blanc in the mid-19^th century in a time of rising unemployment similar to the current situation, “right to work” is now in 21^st century America an anti-labor slogan derived from a post-World War II Orwellian twist on the original.  The discredited “evil empire” which brought us trickle-down economics and the Great Depression perverted Blanc’s slogan in their campaign to tear down the advances in favor of labor under the Wagner Act of 1934.

Make no mistake, these are the same sort of people who believe the accused in criminal cases do not deserve an adequate legal defense if accused of a crime either, no matter how weak the evidence or how dire the results if convicted, not if they can’t afford to pay for it.

As explained previously by others, this is not a hostile action by the UAW in the face of strenuous opposition by Volkswagen Motors.  The UAW has been invited by VW into talks about  representing VW’s labor force on its European-style workers’ council, such as VW has in every single other facility it has on planet Earth.  So all of those throwing stones and rotten eggs at the prospect of UAW opening shop at Enterprise South may be thinking their aim is at the object of their contempt but their missiles are hitting elsewhere.