The Southern Way
Nice piece from Mike Lillis at The Washington Independent about the tenuous commitment to free market ideology shown by the union-busting southern conservatives who want the domestic auto industry to die, in order to benefit Dixie-built cars from foreign-owned firms:
“We don’t think it is the role of government to intervene,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told the Fox Business Network last week. “We need to let the market and the laws work the way they are already in place.”
Yet this argument — that the government has no business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives, arriving in the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even land, have enticed BMW to South Carolina, Mercedes to Alabama and Nissan to Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the steady emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some are dubbing it the “New Detroit” – a region where real estate is cheap and the labor’s not unionized.
Not coincidentally, these Southern states are represented by the same coalition of GOP senators who led the fight against the recent Detroit bailout proposal. That legislation would have provided $14 billion in emergency bridge loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which say they lack the finances to survive the month. Rallying behind the animated opposition of GOP Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and South Carolina’s DeMint, Senate Republicans killed the legislation.
This is, of course, but a small slice of the larger southern politics tradition which has always insisted since the end of the Civil War that cheap labor and a low-tax, low-service, high-inequality social and economic system are the key to prosperity. This approach left the South perennially poorer than the rest of the country, but over the past couple of decades this made-in-dixie failed approach to economic development has come to dominate national policy. Not coincidentally, during this period the United States has begun to fall behind high-wage, high-service, low-inequality northern European countries in terms of average living standards.
84 Responses to “The Southern Way”
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December 16th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
It’s my reading of economic history and they guys who put together per capita income numbers (and yes, it isn’t obvious how to do this for pre-1870) that the US South was poorer than the Northeast before the Civil War as well, even if you only look at the per capita income level for whites. The South was not a good place to end up in before the Civil War. The South never ‘fell behind’ economically, it started out that way.
No citations right now.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Give me a fucking break. Tax incentives, training, and land don’t happen in Detroit, Ohio, and wherever else? And the South also has GM plants. I guess they want those to fail too? Complete and utter fail Matt.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Why can’t the south organize politically?
No one can convince me that the positions southern GOP senate leaders have taken throughout this debate represents their constituents. In fact, I saw a Corker quote that literally said something like ‘I’d have to explain to my auto worker why he makes $45/hour while the guy in Detroit makes $75/hr.’
Forget the lie about the wages, does Corker really think he can find a single southern auto worker who wants to fight for LOWER wages and WORSE benefits in his own industry?
No way.
Even post civil rights, the south can’t organize. Why? Is it what Michael Lind says, weak political parties going up against strong media produces powerful faux populism?
How strong can culture be?
December 16th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Brad, read a touch of history, southern elites have always conspired with northern elites (and in this case, foreigners) to screw over the southern working class (both white and black).
It’s always a race to the bottom there.
My question is, after 48 years, why not a stronger political organization?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
stefan,
“Remained behind” is probably a better term, but the point that is always made is that the southern anti-union, anti-regulation, low-wage, low-spending model provides it with a competitive advantage over areas of the country with more liberals policies. It doesn’t appear to be working out.
And then consider what’s happened between the Civil War and today – massive immigration of poorer people, most of it concentrated in those same northern states, with the South getting less of a share of immigration.
So what we’ve got are two models of development. If we are to look merely at the fact that one of them has only managed to keep pace, despite the other model being implemented where there is an additional factor tending to drive up poverty rates, that’s pretty strong evidence that the assumed competitive advantage is less than it’s cracked up to be.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Tax incentives, training, and land don’t happen in Detroit, Ohio, and wherever else? Of course they do, but no one is claiming that those areas are bastions of the “free market,” as is being claimed of the South, or that their success owes to their freer markets.
And the South also has GM plants. I guess they want those to fail too? No, just pay less.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Spoken like the white nigger of a Jap whore.
.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
How strong can culture be?
Pretty dang strong, Mike. The unions have been the object of a lot of propaganda in the South. The only way to understand it as a form of identity politics, generated by a false view of history (sold in the Southern Schools, fed by popular culture, from minstrel shows to Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind to a whole ‘country/redneck’ marketing (Larry the Cable Guy). Jimmy Hoffa was tried for racketeering in the 60s, and I well remember the coverage of it and ‘Union Outrages’. The power structure here has opposed unions so long it has become reflexive.
I have lived in a county where a heavy industry was unionized in the 30s, and the locals still spout antiunion lies, saying ‘now, it’s not like the Chemical Workers, they ain’t like the other unions’. (BTW, this unionization came after black scabs were brought in, and lynched..the place was a ’sunset’ town for decades, still quite racist, despite the growing number of black families. )
And the organization of the Democrats in the South is weak because there is still a split between the black and white factions: it tend to fall into local groups. In Georgia, there is a John Lewis/Shirley Jackson axis, and a Billy McKenney faction. Jim Martin is a vestige of the old Democratic establishment. Local groups with insular interests dominate, as for democrats (see a county level map of the Presidential vote) Georgia is Atlanta, and some suburbs, Athens, and chunks of Augusta, Albany, Savannah and Macon.
The rest is dominated by the Business crowd, and Baptists.
It’s dang depressing some times.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
If these guys can give so many tax breaks and financial incentives to foreign companies – all in the name of the “free market” – then why is the rest of the country still subsidizing them via federal financial transfers?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Um…I’m pretty sure cheap labor and high levels of inequality were part of the economic strategy of the South before the Civil War as well.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Thanks Mr. Bill, that was pretty helpful.
Where I get stuck is that I think someone can be pro gun, anti abortion, pro military, pro NASCAR, pro country music, etc… and still want to, you know, get paid a decent wage for a decent day’s work.
However, if those interests, the Dem party (I guess) is still cleaved along racial lines, then I guess I can understand how they fail to organize for their interests properly. Maybe it really just is ‘weak political parties.’
December 16th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Slaves, share-croppers, “work at will.” Southern elites don’t care what color their serfs are, and elites in general have no country, which is why they’re willing to sell us out.
.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
So Mr. Bill, does the word ‘union’ = ‘commie’ for many in the South? It’s just a reflex or something? If so, that’s so silly, corporate bosses organize all the time.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Cummings’ Dixiefication of America?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
No, Mike. Southern “work at will” biyatches went to school to learn how to handle that silver tray for massah.
.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
And the South also has GM plants. I guess they want those to fail too?
If it means breaking the union, and fucking over the Yankees? Apparently so.
Of course, it’s not as if the Japanese and German companies are prepared to move some of their core manufacturing to Dixie. That stays at home. (Toyota just put its new Mississippi assembly plant on hold, too.)
Now, the interesting question would be whether “right to work” is simply a legal encoding of long-standing regional culture, or whether a different legal structure would have changed things in the states where it currently holds sway.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
The Southern working classes cannot organize politically because of our peculiar susceptibility to divide-and-rule politics.
Both white and black politicians in the South play this game.
We here in Birmingham are currently governed by a corrupt demagogue of a mayor who is under federal indictment for a host of crimes. He, last year, was elected with an outright majority in a field of seven candidates by running a campaign of race baiting and resentment mongering–very similar to the campaign Sarah Palin ran this year.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
EFCA is coming.
Without a large, existing body of unionized auto workers making the UAW strong, the southern manufacturing plant owners stand a chance of holding off unionization.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I don’t understand how the government providing DIP financing isn’t the default policy option. There seems to be a basic consensus that the big three (or at least GM and Ford) have some value but require substantial restructuring. And that would and should entail that the UAW taking a haircut in the process, just as the shareholders should be wiped out, bondholders get a haircut, and management ousted. That is what would ultimately happen in a bankruptcy. The reason the big three don’t want to declare bankruptcy is the last bit (management being ousted, CEOs aren’t terribly keen on losing their jobs and access to private jets), and the reason the democrats are so keen on a bailout is to protect the UAW, which has been a part of the problem.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
The subsdies given to the foreign companies are around $200,000 per job created. GM and Ford alone employ over half a million people in the US. Do you really think they’ve received $100 billion in subsidies from the various states in which they have plants?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
MATT: check out this ad and the ad buy information from TPM. It’s getting more obvious all the time.
“Blago tried to sell a senate seat, which is why card check is Bay-Ad, ‘m kay? And we’ll tell you this shit because we think you’re too weak to stand up for yourselves and too stupid to know what’s going on.
Keep being our bitch.”
.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
So Mr. Bill, does the word ‘union’ = ‘commie’ for many in the South? It’s just a reflex or something? If so, that’s so silly, corporate bosses organize all the time.
Oh, it’s not just that. It’s that Unions are AntiChristian, proGovernment, wantpeopletogetpaidforloafingaround, Not Southern. It’s definitely silly, and stupid. And a widely held belief down here. The combinations of Bosses is just what the Aristocracy does (no matter what Adam Smith might say about ‘merchants combining against the Publick’).
And there has been a sort of old linkage of the Southern Elite and the Northern Financiers..
Two odd data points you might ponder are:
Did you know that goods produced in the states of the old Confederacy were subject to double rail freight rates up until the middle of WWII?
The South remains a net receiver of Federal moneys, getting more than it sends to Washington…Even if much is in the form of Defense dollars.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
So, culture + weak political parties; I guess I can accept the answer. I can’t believe it’ll last though, at some point, enough workers enjoying enough freedom will call ‘bullshit,’ especially if times get really tough.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
It’s important to note that outlawing unionization nullifies any kind of labor market freedom. It’s like pretending that a slave system is a free-market system.
The thing in the South is that anti-unionization is inbred–er, I mean, ingrained. My in-laws work in oil, which has seen the greatest rise in workplace deaths in its history. The reasons for this rise are that working safety conditions are given diminished priority as the value of oil increases; since working conditions are worse, turnover is higher.
I asked why oil workers don’t unionize so that they’d get paid a constant salary for set work hours, leading to less turnover and fewer sleep-deprived/drunk workers. The answer: because unions are evil.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
This is, of course, but a small slice of the larger southern politics tradition which has always insisted since the end of the Civil War that cheap labor and a low-tax, low-service, high-inequality social and economic system are the key to prosperity.
Of course, MattY in effect supports something highly similar through his support for MassiveImmigration, he just won’t admit it.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
DTM, pre Civil Rights and pre Voting Rights Act kinda doesn’t count. Southern electoral turnout during those period was shockingly low, often 20% I understand?
That’s my real question, apartheid has been gone (at least legally) from the South for 44 years or so, that seems like enough time.
Luke:
“I asked why oil workers don’t unionize so that they’d get paid a constant salary for set work hours, leading to less turnover and fewer sleep-deprived/drunk workers. The answer: because unions are evil.”
I guess the followup question: Why?
December 16th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I’m genuinely curious and not just asking a rhetorical question. If white Southern Democrats tend to be culturally conservative and don’t like unions, then how exactly do they distinguish themselves from Republicans?
December 16th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
DTM,
“richard,
The worry is that a bankruptcy will cause consumers to stop buying the relevant brands (and there is survey data and other evidence to back up this prediction), and the resulting revenue crash would turn a reorganization into a liquidation. So, basically, the car companies need two things from the government: DIP financing, but also an explicit guarantee to consumers that they will continue operating following a reorganization.”
I don’t really get the notion that bankruptcy in and of itself will stop people from buying. People flew on the airlines while they were in bankruptcy, bought gas from Texaco, etc. That said, warranties do distinguish the auto manufacturers from airlines.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
The puzzled looks and head scratching around here about why some people could possibly dislike unions is remarkable. Why on earth would non-union autoworkers not want the UAW to organize their plant in the near future? The kicker is, I know some of you really don’t know the answer to that question…
Further down the page, Matt has a headline that reads “Department of Fake Conflicts of Interest”. Hopefully a few of you get the irony. Call me naïve, but I really, really doubt that DeMint, Corker & Co’s goal is to drive a stake in the heart of the Big 3 for their own parochial gains. I think they would sincerely like nothing more than for the Big 3, its unions, and its creditors to cowboy up, take some responsibility, make some tough decisions, fix their businesses, and disappear.
I’d love to see more equality in this country. Productivity-killing UAW-style unions aren’t going to be the engine for that. Sorry to hit your sacred cow with my GMC Silverado.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Why on earth would non-union autoworkers not want the UAW to organize their plant in the near future?
Because, like a lot of people, they’ve been propagandized into buying into an idiotic “the left is evil” ideology despite the fact that it goes against their material interests.
Sorry to hit your sacred cow with my GMC Silverado. Case in point.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I’m sure the southern republicans would have no problem with the state of Michigan or Ohio offering the big three subsidies in order to support their bloated cost structure.
Though subtle, there is a distinction between federal and state expenditure. As a resident of an area that has no real automobile manufacturing, I’d prefer my congressman and two senators keep their hands off industrial planning. I’ll take my chances with the threatened economic meltdown.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
You really can’t compare buying a commodity that you immediately take physical posession of to dropping $20k+ on a depreciating asset that will require maintenance over a period of years.
At this point the airlines have been in and out of chapter 11 so often that nobody cares when it happens.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
A unionized workforce is sympton of a failed relationship. It really isn’t in the best interest of the general public.
When a company’s labor force chooses to unionize it is usually due to a legitimate complaint with management. When management and labor have a healthy trusting relationship, unionization is the last thing on the workers mind. Once a company pisses off it’s workers like the big three did decades ago the workers unionize and the resentment takes on a life of its own.
The resentment and us/them mentality is so strong that both parties become more interested in winning the small battles and lose sight of the big picture like saving the firm. Concessions from labor are a nescessary part of the long term survival of the auto makers. My guess they won’t budge because it will be more satisfying to them to kill GM and Chrysler than saving their crappy jobs.
I say this from my limited perspective as union labor in a machine shop and a non-union worker in a variety of industrial and service workplaces. Union shops, although financially rewarding, can be some pretty miserable places to work. Primarily because of the negative vibe between labor and managment.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
One of the dumbest things Matt has ever written.
I mean, I don’t live in the south–at least, I don’t think I do–but the local GM plant has received millions of dollars in tax breaks just in the last couple of years.
And of course GM didn’t mind asking for handouts when it opened a plant in TN. TN is in the south, btw.
The macro bit is hardly worth discussing. Starting points matter might be a good starting point for the discussion. What idiocy. Is it the industrial policy of states like MI and AL and TN that’s failed the south, or the failure of the same? Doesn’t matter, does it, to make the point.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Ummm, saying the South has “remained behind” or “stayed poor” ignores the fact that the income gap between the South and non-South declined by about 75% between 1960 and 2000. Those poor ignorant Southern workers support business promotion policies because their relative welfare has increased dramatically in the last two generations.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
The warantee issue and the supposed surveys that nobody would buy a car from a car company in reorganization is nonsense.
Only the Detroit auto makers would identify the fact that they will fix your car for free as a selling point for their cars. Who the hell buys a new car thinking it’s going to break down.
I have had five new cars (3 Japanese and 2 domestic) and never had to excercise the warrantee. Anything that breaks isn’t covered anyway. If the warrantee was so valued by customers, why don’t most owners buy the extended warantee.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
“I don’t really get the notion that bankruptcy in and of itself will stop people from buying.”
Don’t take it from me, take it from Nissan. I was watching the Redskins game this Sunday and saw a Nissan ad telling me “You don’t just need a car, you need a car company”–a pretty thinly veiled shot at GM et al.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Then why was Hyundai pushing a 10 year / 100,000 mile powertrain warranty so much over the past few years? Or 5 year / 60,000 mile bumper to bumper?
December 16th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
So what dumbass said the American Civil War was over?
December 16th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
There’s an explanation for the fact that poor Southerners don’t organize or vote their interests, and it has nothing, or at least very little, to do with race, for example.
In much of the non-urban south, white people lead lives that have more to do with family and community and what I suppose could be considered traditional activities and interests (like hunting) than the interests of the urban southerners or much of the non-urban north.
There’s not much competition, or even what much of us would call ambition, among a lot of rural Republican voters in the south. Housing, childcare, food costs aren’t overwhelming enough to make people feel like they’re falling behind. Preventitive medicine barely exists, and the price increases aren’t palpable if you only go to the doctor every few years at most. If your car breaks, it’s not hard to find someone to fix it for the cost of parts.
A lot has happened in 150 years that hasn’t helped rural Southern whites one bit, but is called progress. The main things that helped them were the combustible engine, rural electrification, and Medicare/Social Security. Everything else has been, at best, a wash, and at worse a challenge.
Do I think most folks get worked up about public religion or abortion? No. But the deal is that they feel like the Republicans won’t do their lives– the non-economic part of their lives, which stand in for the whole– any harm.
For the left to mean something in the rural south, they have to be able to deliver on tangible improvements in the quality of people’s lives. A free hospital in every county seat would be a start. Real rural public transportation, even if that means 75% of buses run empty. Rural electrification and the TVA should be the model.
Give them something that makes their lives better and they won’t pay a lick of attention to Bob Corker.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
One of the reasons I kinda like Jesse Jackson is that he had the balls to tell southern blue collar workers the truth to their faces.
When he was campaigning for President in the 1980s and tried to form the Rainbow Coalition, he looked out at a sea of white faces and told them he was in town to solicit the nigger vote. That when he looked around he saw a lot of people being screwed by the elites. It didn’t matter how white their skin was, he knew niggers when he saw them and he wanted their support.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
“So, culture + weak political parties; I guess I can accept the answer. I can’t believe it’ll last though, at some point, enough workers enjoying enough freedom will call ‘bullshit,’ especially if times get really tough.”
These things can last for hundreds of years. Take the examples of Southern vs. Northern Italy, Ireland for nearly 70 years after independence, east Germany, etc. – places where cultural attitudes should change but don’t. An interesting analogy is Shelley Baranowski’s The Sanctity of Rural Life: Nobility, Protestantism and Nazism in Weimar Prussia where a backwards agricultural region (Pomerania) continually increased and radicalized its adherence to conservative economics and politics as it’s economy declined.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Pseudo:
Now, the interesting question would be whether “right to work” is simply a legal encoding of long-standing regional culture, or whether a different legal structure would have changed things in the states where it currently holds sway.
————————
Yes, it really does matter. During the early 40s, the South was actually the fastest-growing union areas (admittedly from a really low baseline, but still), hence why the CIO targeted the South with Operation Dixie. Right-to-work was established to block this, and was quite successful. For more on this, see “Counter-Organizing the Sunbelt: Right to Work Campaigns and Anti-Union Conservatism, 1943-1958,” by Elizabeth Shermer in the Pacific Historical Review in February.
December 16th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
The “Right To Work Magna Carta,” by Dallas newspaperman and freedom-from-unions activist William B. Ruggles:
Yeah. That was in nineteen-forty-f***ing-one, and douchebag declares the ‘greatest crisis’ faced by the U.S. was the control of unions.
Thus he proposed a 22nd Amendment which would mandate open shops, and helped launch the National Right To Work Committee and its related scholarships & study programs.
Also, the NRTWC is trying to push connections between Blagojevich and the SEIU, as part of the campaign launched by the right wing anti-labor “Center for Union Facts.”
Man, it’s great to be back in the 1920s again!
December 16th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Of course, MattY in effect supports something highly similar through his support for MassiveImmigration, he just won’t admit it.
I’ve never read Matt support “massive” immigration. The US lets in about the same number of immigrants as she did in 1900. So, the influence of immigration on labor markets should be something like one-fourth as strong as it was 108 years ago given the fact that our population and labor force have quadrupled. Of course, the economy is at least twenty or thirty times larger in real terms as it was back then, as well. The reality is that, over the last century, the effect of immigration on wages has massively diminished — it just hasn’t diminished massively enough to suit the xenophobes.
December 16th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Steven A, the parts of the south where the CIO organized were largely urban. Nashville for example was a union stronghold up until when its factories were closed, and still votes 2/3rds Democrat, despite being one of the whitest of the big southern cities.
It’s the rural south where the battle is lost.
December 16th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
“Those poor ignorant Southern workers support business promotion policies because their relative welfare has increased dramatically in the last two generations.”
That’s an excellent point, and maybe, just maybe, this astonishing rise in their wealth has made them think that they don’t need no stinkin’ unions.
However, that trend is about to reverse, we’re all going to lose wealth, and when that happens, I’m having a hard time believing that even culture-soaked southern workers won’t want to organize for better wages/benefits (and certainly don’t want their Senators fighting against good wages/benefits for similarly employed northerners).
December 16th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
“Yeah. That was in nineteen-forty-f***ing-one, and douchebag declares the ‘greatest crisis’ faced by the U.S. was the control of unions.”
Douchebag didn’t think there was much of an international crisis. For him, international fascism wasn’t too much of a threat to him – he had domestic fascism (and was a major enthusiastic supporter of it, and was himself a functionary of that system) right there in Dallas. What international crisis? If Japan or Germany had taken over the US, Ruggles would just be the new editor of the Volkische Texakaner Beobachter rather than the Dallas Morning News. Probably wouldn’t even need to move to a new office.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I don’t really get the notion that bankruptcy in and of itself will stop people from buying. People flew on the airlines while they were in bankruptcy, bought gas from Texaco, etc. That said, warranties do distinguish the auto manufacturers from airlines.
I think the point is that you want your car company to stay in business so that you can get replacement parts if the car breaks down. This isn’t an issue with goods and services that are quickly consumed.
December 16th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
“Ummm, saying the South has “remained behind” or “stayed poor” ignores the fact that the income gap between the South and non-South declined by about 75% between 1960 and 2000. Those poor ignorant Southern workers support business promotion policies because their relative welfare has increased dramatically in the last two generations.”
Indeed. Has anyone actually been to a town that hosts one of the transplant factories? Or asked the workers and town residents there how they feel about the factories? The transplants have brought a massive amount of wealth and jobs to their host states.
As for the generally business-friendly policies of these states, they may have something to do with the net positive share of internal migration enjoyed by these states relative to the declining Northeast and Midwest, as well as their relative gains in income and other social indicators.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Matt,
Now that you are against “cheap labor,” I look forward to your upcoming posts on how we need to crack down on illegal immigration and not employ noncitizens in Obama’s public works programs.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
“Indeed. Has anyone actually been to a town that hosts one of the transplant factories? Or asked the workers and town residents there how they feel about the factories? The transplants have brought a massive amount of wealth and jobs to their host states.”
Indeed indeed. And maybe that’s why they’re amenable to anti union propaganda, but it’s a new era now, and it won’t last. I’m thinking finally worker interests will overcome southern culture nicely in the next decade or so.
December 16th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I live in East Tennessee and I see some of this up close. There are three related arguments regarding unionization: economic, cultural and political.
1) Economics: If workers feel that they are making a decent enough living, given the cost of living in the area, they are unlikely to be swayed by unionization drives. Remember that much of the wage gap between foreign and Big 3 companies is explained by cost of living in, say, Alabama vs. Ohio. Same thing goes for working conditions; if they aren’t egregiously bad, workers won’t feel the need to unionize.
2) Cultural: The South has always held to a paternalistic ethos where workers feel that the bossman has his best interest at heart. What’s ironic, however, is that the bossman is now a foreigner and some folks around here find that culturally untroubling. Now, I live in an unusually white part of the South so the racial history – wherein the paternalism was not so keenly felt on the workers’ side – is less of a factor. Still, in Appalachian culture, everybody knows everybody. And with the exception of coal mining and Alcoa, the unions are considered “outsiders.”
3) Political: The Dixiecrats and Republicans have always loathed unions and have played social differences up to divide the working class. Republicans here actually despise unions more than Republicans in the North.
My own feelings are mixed. The Big 3 suck. Period. Their cars are terrible. And if foreign carmakers want to come down South and build, go right on ahead.
What irks me is the shortsightedness of much of the South’s political leadership. Instead of capitalizing on the new industry and investing in education, they just pimp the low tax policies to solidify the plutocracy’s hold on power. There are exceptions – VA, NC and partially GA – but here in TN we are caught between business folks who want to invest in education and infrastructure and anti-tax jihadists.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Re: What’s ironic, however, is that the bossman is now a foreigner and some folks around here find that culturally untroubling.
Don’t the foreign car companies usually have American management, at least at the levels where line workers will be interacting with them?
Re: Still, in Appalachian culture, everybody knows everybody. And with the exception of coal mining and Alcoa, the unions are considered “outsiders.”
I think it’s important to keep in mind that Appalachia and the South are not quite the same. West Virginia said a big No Way to secession after all. Appalachia stretchs into Ohio and Pennsylvania and even parts of New York. It isn’t all Dixie and Confederate flags.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Now that you are against “cheap labor,” I look forward to–
Apart from your little acolytes, Popeye, no-one gives a flying fuck what you look forward to, unless it involves a vow of silence. Though the topic is relevant, because you’re the shiny-suited used car salesman of bullshit racial determinism.
December 17th, 2008 at 1:07 am
For the most part, I find this to be a world-class discussion of Southern political economy.
That said, I think that the combination of Scotch-Irish individualism, identity politics and highly constrained commitment to public education militate strongly against the sorts of political and social impulses that might be amenable to union affiliation.
My East-Tennessean grandfather was third generation Irish-American, born on the farm and urbanized after a period of heroic front-line service in the brutal European winter of 1944-5. After the war he lived as a middle-class family man, never spoke of the horrors of that war, worked as a lineman, ran a paper route in his VW bug and never, ever crossed a union line. I do my best to preserve his ethos in a life that center upon America’s attempts to constructively interact with a world beyond itself. It’s awful hard these days for me to do so while maintaining a connection to a dominant (but possibly waning) Southern culture that has come to be dominated by some of the worst excesses of disparity, insularity and socio-ethical bankruptcy. I am now the prodigal son of an uneducated elite that cannot imagine what might be compelling beyond a certain degree of conspicuous but utterly self-referential wealth. Whatever kept my grandfather on this side of the picket line has been marginalized, but some of us have not forgotten and know that his spirit lives on – even in an age he might find highly unfamiliar.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:11 am
This is quite possibly one of the most ignorant posts I’ve read on the internet this year.
The poster laments the tax incentives given to manufactures to the south but ignores the tremendous investment in our national highway system in the 50’s and 60’s that basically built Detroit. There would be no Big Three were it not for our interstate system.
The poster claims the South isn’t about free market, and yet the Big Three operate almost exclusively in closed shop states giving their unionized workforce a lock on the labor market. How can a job truly be free if you have to join a union to take that job? So much for the first amendment right to freedom of association. If you want to work in a closed shop state, you’d better join the union.
It’s a shame that the Big Three weren’t taking the profit they were raking in from SUV’s over the past decade and using it to come up with better cars instead of bigger SUVs. This is a crisis of their own making as they ignored the small car segment.
I’ve lived in North and South Carolina all my life and never felt particularly poor or ignorant. Personally, there is no place I’d rather live than in the South. I wonder how many days Matthew has spent in the South? I don’t pretend to be an expert on NYC and he shouldn’t pretend to know jack about the South.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:44 am
That wasn’t his point.
Are you feeling your ignorance, now?
.
December 17th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Is it just me (and my inadequate knowledge of economics), or does anyone else see a similarity between the priniciple of comparative advantage playing out in globalized, international free trade and sectional trade in the U.S.?
In both instances, the largest factors influencing the location of manugacturing is not physical resource or transportation costs, but a lax regulatory environment, favorable tax treatment, and a large, poor working class.
Well, once the regulations are all gone, the taxes lowered to the absolute minimum, labor costs remain the only viable factor over which to compete. Today, unlike the time of Adam Smith, all three are largely determined by governmental action.
From a manufacturing view point, behooves the U.S. to increase the size of the working poor class vis a vis the world, just as it behooves Dixie to do the same vis a vis the rest of the U.S. Or, if a manufacturing base is desirable, to change the rules abroad and at home.
IMHO, a large prosperous middle class is essential for the future of any free and democratic society; such a middle class will not exist absent a strong industrial, manufacturing base; unions are esential in ensuring that the wealth created is not concentrated in the hands of the few; and international and domestic policies to the contrary must be reformed.
December 17th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
“It’s a shame that the Big Three weren’t taking the profit they were raking in from SUV’s over the past decade and using it to come up with better cars instead of bigger SUVs. This is a crisis of their own making as they ignored the small car segment.”
I actually agree with that.
You know why that’s not the case? Wall St., public companies, the quarterly incentives fuck everything up. If you don’t take maximum profits when possible, you’ll be replaced as CEO for someone who does, no planning for the long term allowed.
Think about this: Several investment banks had been around for 80-100 years. A mere 10 years after they go public, poof! they’re gone.
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