The South's Economic Model Is 'Under Attack'. That's a Good Thing | Opinion

When Alabama autoworkers at Mercedes-Benz's largest U.S. plant recently assembled to announce a majority of their 6,000 co-workers had signed UAW union cards, they also had a prediction to share: "We know what the company, what the politicians, and what their multi-millionaire buddies will say."

As corporations use billions in federal and state subsidies to expand operations and transition to electric vehicle (EV) and clean energy production, workers across the South—like the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen workers who last week announced filing for a union election—are taking steps to unionize. And some state politicians do indeed have a lot to say.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey says her state's economic model "is under attack." South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster says he'll fight "to the gates of hell" to keep South Carolina "safe" from "union infiltration." He later described the Westinghouse Corporation's alleged flouting of federal labor law with threats, coercion, and intimidation to block South Carolina nuclear power plant workers from unionizing as a "major victory."

Meanwhile Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is fast-tracking state legislation to bar any company that voluntarily recognizes a union from receiving state economic development funds. Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a similar measure into law last year, months after championing an amendment to enshrine his state's long-standing anti-union "right-to-work" law in the state constitution.

These uses of state power to try to suppress Southern workers' wages by blocking the path to a union contract are nothing new.

Southern Republicans have for decades claimed that "business-friendly" policies—including laws that constrain workers' rights—would lead to an abundance of jobs and prosperity. The data show a grim reality. In most Southern states:

• The share of prime-age workers (ages 25–54) who have a job is below the national average.
• Median earnings are among the lowest in the nation, even after adjusting for the local cost of living.
• Poverty rates are above the national average.

These outcomes reflect an anti-worker package of state policies including low (or no) state minimum wages, few regulations on businesses, minimal workplace protections, a weak and underfunded safety net, and vicious opposition to unions. It's an economic model that's long been rooted in racism, where to maintain power and access to cheap labor, business interests and the wealthy have stoked racial divisions—at the expense of all working people and their families.

Southern Republican governors are right about one thing: workers taking matters into their own hands to unionize and improve their jobs do pose a direct threat to state "economic models" designed to entrench racism, division, poverty, and unequal power.

Unions are the primary counterweight to businesses seeking to maximize profits by keeping wages too low to live on. The labor movement in the U.S. today is one of the foremost institutions promoting cross-racial solidarity. And unions are a key driver of greater equity at work and civic participation (including voting) outside of work.

For all these reasons, support for unions is at historic highs, especially among young workers. Millions of workers want to join a union, despite weak labor laws and obstacles put up by employers.

It's worth remembering that auto manufacturing jobs aren't inherently better than jobs in other industries. In fact, they used to be terrible. Unions turned some auto jobs into good, safe, living-wage jobs in the last century. Meanwhile, anti-worker policies in Southern states motivated a growing share of U.S. manufacturing to locate there—and industry wages and job quality predictably declined. Real wages of Alabama autoworkers, for example, have fallen 11 percent in 20 years.

Likewise, Southern states aren't inherently "non-union" or low-wage states. Indeed, a long history of multiracial Southern labor organizing —and state leaders colluding with employers to suppress it—reminds us that choices workers and policymakers are making right now will shape the jobs of the future.

Today Southern autoworkers are pointing out that without union coverage, new EV jobs may simply mean more of the low-wage, high-hazard, often temporary jobs that the auto industry has become known for in their states.

UAW members striking "Big 3" automakers last year were waging a generational struggle to claim a fair share of record profits—while setting up a just transition to clean energy jobs. Pay gains secured by the strike, plus ripple effects at other auto manufacturers, demonstrate the potential for unions to balance power in the economy and to ensure that future EV jobs benefiting from federal investment can also become good jobs.

With stakes this high, Southern workers signing union cards deserve the nation's full attention and our solidarity. They'll need it in the months ahead as they stand up to anticipated anti-union hostility—much of which will be easy for workers to continue to predict. Lucky for all of us, Southern workers don't have to let any Republican governor have the final word on their economic futures.

Jennifer Sherer is Director of the Economic Policy Institute's State Worker Power Initiative.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.