Southern governors raise pressure in fights with auto unions

Republican officials are gearing up for more fights over unionization efforts at auto plants after a historic vote in Tennessee last week.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Monday that bars companies that get big tax incentives from the state for building mega-projects, such as auto factories, from voluntarily recognizing unions without a secret ballot. Alabama lawmakers followed suit later in the week, approving a similar measure there. The bills are based on a Tennessee law passed last year, which the conservative group the American Legislative Exchange Council has been promoting.

Supporters of the measures said they would allow workers to decide whether they want to join a union using a secret ballot.

“We are ensuring that when the state invests state resources to drive job creation, that hardworking Georgians who hold those jobs have the agency to determine whether to be represented by a labor union,” Republican state Rep. Soo Hong said last month, according to the Georgia Recorder.

But union leaders and Democrats say the laws violate the National Labor Relations Act, which governs the process for how labor unions are recognized. Under the law, companies can voluntarily recognize unions that present evidence—like signed cards—that a majority of its workers favor a union. But they can also insist on an election with secret ballots.

“Let’s be clear: What this bill wants to do—prohibit Georgia businesses receiving state economic subsidies from voluntarily recognizing a union in their workplace—is federally illegal,” the Georgia AFL-CIO said in a statement. “When workers are asking for basic rights and are supported by the employer, the state government stepping in to ban that recognition simultaneously harms workers and takes away individual freedoms from business owners.”

Southern states have fared well so far in the scramble to move the auto industry from gas-powered vehicles to electric ones. They’ve used tax incentives to attract plants to build EVs and batteries, often courting foreign manufacturers that need to produce components in the U.S. to qualify for federal tax credits. The surge in EV projects follows two decades of Southern states pursuing manufacturing jobs, particularly in industries like aerospace and auto manufacturing where organized labor has thrived.

The region, though, has long been resistant to unions. Every state in the South is a “right to work” state, where employees cannot be forced to join a union or pay a fee for union representation even if the workplace has been unionized. Southern states have some of the lowest rates of union workers in the country.

Labor unions in the South also have struggled to gain recognition to represent workers in contract negotiations, which makes last week’s vote by workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga to join the United Auto Workers particularly significant. Nearly three quarters of the workers there supported the unionization effort.

The union victory comes just months after UAW secured big raises for workers at Ford, GM and Stellantis after simultaneous strikes against the Detroit automakers. UAW President Shawn Fain has said he wants to increase the union’s reach to factories in the South, starting with a vote at Mercedes plants in Alabama May 13 to 17. A Hyundai factory in Alabama and a Toyota facility in Missouri could be among the next to vote.

Kemp and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey were among six GOP governors that put out a statement last week warning about the impact that unionizing Southern factories could have on the region’s economy. They blamed the UAW for “misinformation and scare tactics.”

“Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy—in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs,” the governors wrote.

“In America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch. No one wants to hear this, but it’s the ugly reality. We’ve seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation. And we are seeing it in the fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs. Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do,” they added.

Governors Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee and Greg Abbott of Texas also signed the letter. All are Republicans.

The joint statement comes after several of the governors individually blasted organized labor in recent months.

“We will not let our state’s economy suffer or become collateral damage as labor unions seek to consume new jobs and conscript new dues-paying members,” McMaster said in his February state of the state speech. “We will fight all the way to the gates of hell, and we will win.”

This week, Ivey called the UAW “corrupt, shifty and a dangerous leech.” She shared an opinion piece from House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter blasting the union and supporting the legislation to require secret ballots for union votes.

“The UAW business model is simple: Weaponize the workforce, drive up costs, destroy quality and send the state’s auto industry up in smoke,” Ledbetter wrote. “The UAW’s trail of destruction is well documented. Now that they’ve sucked all the blood out of cities like Detroit, they have southern states like Alabama in their crosshairs.”

But President Joe Biden, who appeared on the picket line with striking UAW members and secured the union’s endorsement in this year’s election, took issue with the Republican governors for opposing unionization efforts.

“Six Republican governors wrote a letter attempting to influence workers’ votes by falsely claiming that a successful vote would jeopardize jobs in their states,” the president said in a statement.

“Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose,” he said. “In fact, the growing strength of unions over the last year has gone hand-in-hand with record small business and jobs growth alongside the longest stretch of low unemployment in more than 50 years.”

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News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

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WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

“Trans movements and trans leaders are winning, and I think that this is the equivalent of a temper tantrum.”

Z Williams, co-director of the Denver nonprofit Bread and Roses Legal Center that offers legal services in support of LGBTQ communities about a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado.  The complaint was filed by two residents who intentionally misgendered transgender people in their testimony against a bill that would allow people to change their names to conform with their gender identity under certain circumstances. The two are suing the legislators who cut them off and asked them to stop misgendering and deadnaming transgender people. The plaintiffs claim their First Amendment rights were violated when their testimony was stopped and that the legislators wrongfully discriminated against them when enforcing rules of decorum based on their views against the bill and transgender rights. They argue that making a witness acknowledge someone as transgender is compelled speech. A hearing has yet to be scheduled in the case.