Postgraduate

By John Mohr| Originally published in the Vol. 7 no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2013/14) issue.

Head east on Interstate 85 from Auburn towards Atlanta, and the farm-covered countryside quickly conjures up stereotypical images of an agrarian, sleepy South. However, within minutes, signs of something incongruous begin to appear. Hulking buildings, clad with odd Asian-sounding corporate names loom near the freeway, their forms, a sharp contrast to the rural surroundings and red dirt of the Alabama landscape. They grow increasingly numerous as one nears the Georgia border, a prelude to what lies ahead. Crossing into the Peach State, signs for the town of West Point appear almost immediately. Then, with little fanfare and almost no warning, a gargantuan factory complex rises from the Georgia clay. Smokestacks and bright lights dominate the scene and acres of shiny new cars testify to the proud productive energy of this region. This is Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia, and it is one of the newest and most technologically advanced symbols of the resurgence of Southern manufacturing. And not a single one of its employees is unionized.

The Kia factory in West Point is merely the latest addition to a broad pattern of auto manufacturing across the South and Midwest. Volkswagen in Chattanooga and Nissan in Smyrna, Tennessee have no unionized employees. BMW’s facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina is the same way. So is Mercedes-Benz in Tuscaloosa and Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama. There are many more, too numerous to list here. All of these so-called “transplant” factories have been built since 1978, when Volkswagen established the first of these facilities in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. With the exception of the VW plant, none of these facilities were ever successfully unionized. Westmoreland closed in 1988 after years of losses and Chattanooga has thus far rebuffed organizers. An ongoing debate about labor relations in the new American auto industry is one product of this trend against unionization.

Journalists, bloggers, and pundits have long debated the reasons behind this colossal shift in an industry known as the cradle of modern American labor unionism. The 2009 collapse of the new-car market and subsequent federal “bailout” of General Motors and Chrysler raised the profile of this issue considerably. Conservatives especially made political capital of the decline of the Detroit Big Three, shifting the blame onto those companies’ unionized workforces. They cited the success of the new, non-unionized plants as evidence of this, and characterized the “bailouts” as little more than pro-union cronyism.[1] In light of this debate, it is perhaps worth re-examining the ways in which serious scholars have characterized the nature of labor relations in the transplants, particularly in the South.

There is a surprising amount of agreement among historians, sociologists, industrial specialists, and business management experts about labor relations in the Southern auto industry. This consensus forms around one key point: that labor relations in Southern auto plants consist of a form of benevolent paternalism, one that is satisfying to employees and discouraging to unionization. Scholars cite a variety of arguments to back this assertion, some more meritorious than others. However, underneath all of these is a discomforting tendency to characterize Southern laborers as docile. This does not mesh well with the new Southern labor historiography, which emphasizes the militant nature of Southern labor. This essay presents an overview of some of this literature, in the hopes of creating a general understanding of the scholarly perspectives surrounding this topic. The easiest course of action is to start at the beginning. In this case, the early formation of the American auto industry provides important clues to later developments in Southern manufacturing.

From nearly the beginning, poor labor relations characterized the American auto industry, with violent tactics often used to suppress unionists. When the United Auto Workers finally achieved recognition across the industry in the 1940s, unionists carried the bitter memories of their early years in the industry. The postwar era saw labor leaders and corporate executives achieve an accord of sorts, as prosperity smoothed over previous rancor. However, the shop floor culture did not change; relations between labor and management remained as acrimonious as ever.[2] As foreign marques with high-quality products became important players in the American market, this relationship proved to be a major weakness for the Detroit manufacturers. In order to increase quality, manufacturers needed first to improve the relationship between management and assembly-line workers. The Japanese achieved a high degree of success in this process, but the Detroit Three struggled.[3] Through one way or another, the foreign automakers determined to avoid the combative form of labor relations in their plants when they decided to create American factories. The location of these new plants became a key part of their strategy.

James M. Rubenstein has put together a comprehensive overview of the geographic distribution of automotive manufacturing in the United States.[4] In his study, Rubenstein charts the development of the industry, from its origins in the Northeast at the beginning of the twentieth century, to its concentration in the Midwest and coastal areas in the 1920s, and finally, to its migration to the Southeast, Southwest, and other areas of the country in the years after World War II. He considers labor climate to be a key factor behind this spread. Rubenstein argues that an exceptional Southern attitude towards unionization (one of distrust and anti-union sentiment) attracted manufacturers to this region in the late 20^th century.

Following the energy crises of the early 1970s and a resulting decline in sales of mostly inefficient domestically produced cars, American firms moved away from the “branch plant” system that had characterized their operations up to that point.[5] Manufacturers concentrated their production capacity in the interior of the country, especially General Motors.[6] Elimination of coastal plants cut transportation costs for the domestic automakers and reduced their excess capacity; thus cost issues drove some of this new reorganization strategy. At the same time, GM launched what the UAW termed its “Southern Strategy.” A wave of labor unrest in “traditional” GM plants in the Midwest (such as at strike-prone Lordstown, Ohio) encouraged this move. GM built a total of fourteen assembly and supply plants in the South during the 1970s. GM claimed that these plants would be necessary to meet increased demand in the 1980s but the declining market share of the auto giant made this explanation seem unlikely. Management wanted to take advantage of the lower average wages compared to the rest of the country and to avoid unionization.[7] According to Rubenstein, only a series of threatened strikes and other maneuvers allowed the UAW to secure organizational rights in the majority of these new plants. The union also negotiated for the right to transfer workers from other plants to these new factories, thus strengthening its base of support.[8] Therefore, GM’s Southern Strategy failed, but only because the UAW could exert pressure on the rest of the company. They did this by showing Southern workers that their Northern counterparts received higher wages and benefits for equal work.[9] Rubenstein gives greater agency to the organizational skills of the national UAW than to individual Southern workers by relying on this explanation. When the Japanese decided to start opening assembly plants in the United States, the UAW did not have this leverage.

Japanese firms agreed to “voluntary” import restrictions in 1981 in an effort to avoid federally-mandated import quotas demanded by American manufacturers.[10] The Japanese meticulously studied possible locations for assembly plants. In choosing these sites, Rubenstein argues that finding locations with anti-union labor forces received top priority.[11] Rubenstein argues that the Japanese chose Southern plant locations because of a perceived historical apathy to unions. This may indeed have been the Japanese rationale but Rubenstein accepts it uncritically. He ignores the tradition of labor militancy in the South, one that has been broken many times only through the use of force. A highly intensive job application process designed to weed out workers with union sympathies is another tool used by the Japanese.[12] In addition to these processes, employers such as Nissan have used anti-union propaganda within their plants to great effect, especially right before union representation elections. Despite aggressive protests by union sympathizers at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tennessee plant groundbreaking in 1981, the UAW failed to gain much support from the workers. The union later lost a representation election by an overwhelming margin.[13]

Rubenstein discusses another important factor in the location of the transplants, that of government intervention. Especially with the coming of the transplants in the 1980s, states and local communities began to aggressively compete with one another for new auto plants.[14] Southern politicians, in particular, looked to recruit new industries for their communities. They held out a combination of low taxes, cheap labor, pro-management policies, and government subsidies for infrastructure and worker training to entice new businesses to the growing “Sunbelt.”[15] The reasons for this competition are fairly obvious. An auto plant is not only a major provider of new jobs. It also represents an enlargement of the local tax base, and it

provides a “multiplier effect” for the economy of the region.[16] Southern states and other non-traditional centers of auto manufacturing took the lead in competing for new plants. Kentucky lobbied Toyota aggressively. The company wanted to open a plant somewhere in the upper South, but had a difficult time deciding on a specific location. Eventually, Toyota announced in December of 1985 that it had chosen Georgetown, Kentucky, for its new plant. In return, Kentucky officials had promised Toyota an incentive package worth hundreds of millions of dollars.[17] Rubenstein contrasts this with the city of Framingham, Massachusetts, which maintained an adversarial relationship with General Motors. GM eventually closed its assembly plant there in 1988, after being denied a zoning variance that would have allowed it to expand the plant for a new product.[18] Rubenstein’s message is clear. With the death of the domestic oligopoly and the coming of new brands to the American market, auto production will move to wherever companies can find the most hospitable conditions.

So what does this mean for organized labor? States with so-called “right to work” legislation have drawn favor from foreign manufacturers. Rubenstein acknowledges the difficulties of creating an effective union in a state where a “closed shop” is not permitted. But he prefers to fall back on the supposed anti-union hostility of Southern workers as the true explanation for why these new plants have gone unorganized.[19] Ultimately, he gives equal importance to labor issues and structural changes in the American auto market to explain the concentration of auto production in the population center of the country. A friendly labor environment and the need to minimize transportation costs has led to manufacturing clustered along the I-65 and I-75 corridors, including the new Southern plants.[20] Rubenstein’s theories have appeared in the work of other scholars, particularly those who have studied Japanese industry in America.

Choong Soon Kim’s Japanese Industry in the American South addresses many of the issues discussed by Rubenstein in greater detail. Kim begins by discussing how the South has attracted foreign capital investment in the years after World War II. He borrows heavily from James C. Cobb, who also discussed “the selling of the South” in similar terms.[21] He recounts the determination with which Tennessee’s Governor Lamar Alexander courted Nissan, eventually succeeding in getting the company to locate in his state.[22] As a corollary to this, Kim applies the idea of the “privilege of backwardness” to foreign investment in the American South. Essentially, the underdevelopment of the South compared to other areas of the United States is a competitive advantage when it comes to attracting capital investment. This is because of cheaper labor costs, as well as greater growth potential for markets.[23] He argues that the Japanese place just as much emphasis on available infrastructure as the local labor supply when choosing new plant sites, meaning that communities willing to make significant capital investments are favored.[24] The Japanese also developed positive attitudes towards Southern workers, whom they considered to be polite, trainable, and willing to work for a “reasonable” wage.[25] Like Rubenstein, Kim makes a case for the importance of state “right to work” legislation as influential on site selection.[26] However, he also falls back on the supposed anti-union attitudes of Southerners to partly explain why organizing campaigns have not succeeded.

Kim lays out his reasoning for the “success” of the Japanese labor relations model in the South in detail. Once established, the Japanese seek to use their management practices, while at the same time, adopting American values that they consider to be strengths. This is especially true of American egalitarianism. All employees use first names exclusively in these firms, with the Japanese adopting American monikers to aid in pronunciation.[27] This egalitarianism also includes usage of a single company uniform for all employees, as well as not having reserved parking places for management.[28] In many other areas, Kim reports that Japanese firms have adopted industrial-relations models that are similar to those used by American companies.[29] Due to American laws, cultural norms, and economic opportunities, the traditional Japanese model of labor relations known as the “divine treasures” has been mostly abandoned by Japanese firms conducting business in the United States. Some aspects of this model, such as “enterprise” or company unions, are illegal under U.S. law.[30] Others, such as guaranteed lifetime employment, are impractical and not useful to the goals of Japanese firms in the South. Still, Kim notes that the Japanese have a good reputation amongst their workforce for not terminating capable employees in times of crisis. He contrasts this with the domestic manufacturers, who would not hesitate to lay off workers in the face of decreased profitability.[31] By Kim’s reasoning, the Japanese transplants have cultivated a culture of loyalty amongst their employees that is quite dissimilar from relations at the domestic automakers, one that does not bode well for union organizers. It is an interesting argument, but without a quantifiable way to measure employee satisfaction, it rings hollow. Southern labor history does not support the assertion that the absence of a union is a guarantor of worker satisfaction.[32]

Kim also argues that besides the humane treatment of employees by the Japanese, the UAW has done itself no favors in its attempts to organize the transplants. As Rubenstein noted, protesters attended the groundbreaking for Nissan’s Smyrna plant in 1981 and disrupted the ceremony. Kim explains that many of these protesters belonged to the local building trades union and that Nissan’s decision to use non-union labor to build the plant upset them. The protest quickly degenerated, with members booing and shouting racial slurs at visiting Japanese executives. An anti-union backlash resulted that hurt the UAW’s organizing efforts: “The UAW’s defeat in Smyrna had a long-lasting negative impact on any labor movement in Japanese industries in Tennessee.”[33] Despite this, Kim does not accept that Southern workers have anti-union feelings generally. He cites historian Robert H. Zieger, who asserted that Southerners should not be considered especially anti-union relevant to the rest of the country.[34] When Kim asked workers at a Nissan supplier about the extent of their anti-union feelings, the results were interesting. Most employees indicated that they were not especially anti-union but that they saw no particular practical value in unionization.[35] Even so, Kim seems unwilling to probe for discontent amongst the workforce. He is content to believe that the absence of unions in the Japanese plants indicates worker satisfaction.

In the end, Kim takes a nuanced view about what has kept unions from gaining traction at the Japanese transplants and what has brought these factories to the South in the first place. However, Kim’s willing acceptance of management’s position that all workers are happy is frustrating. He falls easily into discredited tropes about the docility of Southern labor to explain the inability of unions to gain ground. But what if the failure to organize Southern plants is reflective more of the UAW’s internal culture than the apathy of transplant workers or antagonisms of management? That is to say, is there something in the UAW’s past that reflects its weakness in the present? For that, one must turn to another account for answers.

From the UAW’s foundation in 1935 until his untimely death in 1970, the outsize personality of one man dominated the union: Walter Reuther. The importance of Reuther to the UAW’s development is chronicled by John Barnard in American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers During the Reuther Years, 1935-1970. Instrumental to the early organizing successes of the union, Reuther became president of the national UAW in 1946 and remained in that office until his death in an airplane crash in 1970.[36] Throughout his tenure, the UAW maintained a highly combative stance towards the automakers. Constant attempts by corporate management to cut labor costs and benefits forced UAW members to be aggressive if they wished to maintain their high standard of living.[37] However, in the long run, it created a toxic work environment that could not adapt to changes in technology and the marketplace. When the Japanese began to target the American market with high-quality, fuel-efficient imports in the 1970s, the domestic automakers and the UAW found themselves in a precarious position.

 

After Reuther died in 1970, Leonard Woodcock succeeded him, followed later by Douglas Fraser. Barnard considers both men to have been capable leaders, whose union came upon hard times that they could not control.[38] Although the UAW certainly cannot be held responsible for the 1973 energy crisis and poor engineering designs, it cannot escape all of the blame for the decline of the domestic automakers in the 1970s and 80s. Barnard provides several examples of how the union made it difficult for the domestic automakers to compete with the imports in the 1970s. This is not to say that the automakers made no mistakes. The notorious Pinto and Vega, Ford and GM’s responses to the import onslaught, suffered safety and quality scandals that had little to do with organized labor.[39] However, the UAW contributed to the domestic automakers’ cost control problems by holding out for greater wages and entitlements, at the same time market share for these companies shrank. In particular, new kinds of unemployment benefits made it extremely costly and difficult to lay off workers and close plants in response to changes in demand.[40] Barnard addresses the failure of GM’s “Southern Strategy” to avoid unionization. He attributes the unionization of Southern plants to the aggressive tactics of plant managers, which backfired. Such stunts included circulating a phony KKK membership card with a UAW organizer’s forged signature amongst black employees.[41]

Barnard also takes interest in the UAW’s advocacy of shop-floor programs known collectively as QWL, or “quality of worklife.” QWL programs mirrored those used in Japanese plants, where management sought worker input on aspects of assembly and design in order to improve product quality. In particular, these programs focused on eliminating manufacturing defects. The Big Three had become notorious for poor build quality, while the Japanese had won plaudits for careful attention to design and assembly. Although some managers and UAW members greeted these programs enthusiastically, many treated them with indifference or outright hostility.[42] Union members also resisted the implementation of Japanese-style “lean production” methods, which produced higher quality cars more quickly and with fewer employees.[43]

This last point is particularly ironic, given that the UAW’s early advocacy of Japanese capital investment. The UAW leadership hoped that by introducing competition into the auto market, GM, Ford, and Chrysler would be forced to build better cars, and the UAW would grow stronger by diversifying its client base. UAW leaders confidently predicted that the transplant factories would unionize quickly but this proved to be incorrect. Only Volkswagen in Pennsylvania accepted UAW representation. All of the Japanese plants that were not joint ventures with American automakers, as well as later ventures by Daimler-Benz and BMW, rejected union representation.[44] Like Kim, Barnard resorts to generic tropes about Southern laborers that do not mesh well with historical realities. Barnard states that once established, the transplants “drew on a Japanese workplace culture that emphasized the common interests of workers and managers and portrayed the company as a caring family, a culture that merged easily with the historic paternalistic industrial ethos of the American South.”[45] It is an uncritical interpretation that does not hold up well to scrutiny. Barnard cites the usage of “slanted” hiring practices and anti-union propaganda, particularly at Nissan, to further explain the rejection of unionization. Overall, however, he relies on the docility of Southern labor more than anything else to explain why the transplant factories remained non-unionized. Instead of gaining new members, the UAW lost them. As the 1980s wore on, UAW membership declined from a peak of about 1.5 million to 750,000. Imports and transplants did not create all of these losses. The expanded automation of production and the growth of independent parts suppliers also hurt the UAW.[46] The near collapse of Chrysler in 1979-80 drove further concessions out of union members and broke the principal that all contracts at all three major manufacturers should be the same. Even after the company returned to profitability, salaries did not return to parity with the other automakers until 1985.[47] The union lost a further 120,000 members when virtually all the Canadian locals seceded in 1984.[48] All of these developments cut the power of the union.

When Barnard published American Vanguard in 2004, the UAW had yet to face its two greatest crises ever: the near-bankruptcies and bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, which occurred in 2009. Although the UAW survived the bailouts, organizing the transplants became even more impossible than before. The UAW received much criticism, especially from conservative commentators, that it had been a driving force behind the bankruptcies. Saturn, the revolutionary GM division envisioned as a competitor to the company’s Asian rivals, shut down in 2009 during a general restructuring of operations. Saturn, with its original plant situated in Spring Hill, Tennessee, had a UAW-organized workforce. It also managed to build some of GM’s highest quality products, including small cars that matched or beat the company’s Asian competition in many areas. As one of the few successful unionized plants in the South, Saturn and Spring Hill deserve a closer look. What differences let Saturn succeed in an area that had rebuffed so many unionization attempts?

In “A Different Kind of Car Company: The Rise and Fall of the Saturn Corporation, 1985-2009,” Timothy Minchin offers some theories about the successes and failures of the Saturn brand.[49] Included are some surprising facts about unionization at Spring Hill and the struggles of the UAW (and GM) to be competitive in a new, globalized auto market. Guided by the vision of CEO Roger Smith, GM established Saturn in 1985. From the beginning, Saturn differed greatly from GM’s other divisions. Saturn received its own board of directors and a level of autonomy that granted a greater degree of independence to the division. Eliminating labor-management strife emerged as a top priority and UAW members accepted a pay cut to show their commitment to the Saturn concept.[50] By involving union members from the get-go, GM hoped to build a strong culture of workplace loyalty.

GM chose Spring Hill, Tennessee as the location of the new factory for Saturn vehicles to minimize delivery costs to the Midwest and the east coast (drawing strong parallels with the theories of Rubenstein).[51] Unlike Nissan, which chose Smyrna, Tennessee as part of its union-avoidance strategy, GM planned from the start to include organized laborers. Most of Spring Hill’s first employees comprised laid-off workers from other GM locations in the Midwest.[52] Although this provided GM with a pool of experienced workers for the new plant, it invited unwanted political issues. From the beginning, Tennessee state political leaders did not support the creation of a large unionized auto plant. Spring Hill residents saw UAW members as outsiders, unhappy at being denied opportunities to seek jobs at the new plant. Despite these issues, Saturn had harmonious labor relations in its early years. Both the UAW and GM appeared committed to reforming their relationship.

The initial labor agreement under which Saturn operated reflected a cultural sea change. Known as the “Memorandum of Understanding,” this contract had radical differences from the UAW’s other agreements with manufacturers. It massively reduced the number of “job classifications,” or contractually defined roles for workers, to just a few from more than two hundred. This increased the flexibility of the workforce, by allowing workers to do many different kinds of jobs rather than one narrowly defined role. It also reformed the fixed-pension system for retirees to a more modern profit-sharing plan and contained guarantees that GM would avoid layoffs and concentrate on worker training programs. Taken together, these reforms, especially the reduction of job classifications, allowed Saturn to utilize a “lean production” concept that closely resembled the Japanese model. Saturn utilized a “team labor” system that went beyond even the Japanese model in integrating worker participation in the production process.[53]

This new company got off to an excellent start. Launched in the 1991 model year, Saturn products won accolades from many reviewers for quality and desirability. Sales took off and customer satisfaction with Saturn quickly became the industry’s highest.[54] Crucially, “conquests” of former import buyers comprised many of these sales and GM’s youngest and most educated customers bought Saturns.[55] By all accounts, Saturn seemed to be a roaring success for GM. Better labor relations, high quality products, and enthusiastic customers and dealers should have led Saturn to dominate the small-car segment. So what happened?

On August 1, 1990, Roger Smith retired from GM, the day after he drove the first production Saturn off the line in Spring Hill. Smith’s successors viewed Saturn as his “baby,” and they had little interest in continuing the Saturn experiment. GM had always been wracked by internal politics but the creation of Saturn led to outright war between the different divisions for increasingly scarce resources. They starved Saturn of product development funds and redirected money and talent to other areas.[56] In the late 1990’s, falling fuel prices made Saturn vehicles less important products for GM. Later cars would be “platform derivatives” indistinct from other GM offerings. As a result, Saturn lost brand identity and customer satisfaction declined. GM began building Saturn cars at other plants besides Spring Hill, further contributing to this erosion.[57] As a response to declining sales, GM revoked Saturn’s internal autonomy in 2004. The company became just another division, such as Buick or Chevrolet. Clearly, GM management made some decisions that led to Saturn’s decline. At the same time, Saturn’s vaunted factory labor system broke down, making the company less competitive.

In Spring Hill and at the national level, pressure came down on the innovative labor contract from UAW members. Dissatisfaction mounted as workers increasingly felt that GM reneged on its promises to them. Workers at other plants made more money, and despite Saturn’s successes, GM remained unwilling to give Spring Hill’s employees a raise. The contract also ignored seniority rights earned at other plants. In 1993, union members called an election on their contract. Workers voted to keep their contract but many remained skeptical. Steven Yokich, elected president of the UAW in 1994, wanted Saturn to follow the same contract as other GM divisions and supported the moving of Saturn production to other facilities.[58] In 2003, Spring Hill workers voted to discard their special agreement and join the national UAW contract with GM. When GM decided to produce Saturns in other plants and to lay off workers in Spring Hill, anger against the company mounted. By 2007, Spring Hill no longer built Saturns at all, but had to compete with other Chevrolet plants for work.[59] When the 2009 crisis struck, GM took the opportunity to rid itself of Saturn and Spring Hill once and for all.

As Minchin sees it, the failure of Saturn can be ascribed to poor decisions by both management and labor. GM managers made serious mistakes when they starved Saturn of product development money and watered down the brand’s identity. UAW members grew frustrated with the terms of their contract and GM’s waffling. They also resented the allocation of work at Saturn, which diverged significantly from a traditional American auto plant. Encouraged by their national leadership, UAW members rejected their atypical contract, which had helped make Saturn competitive with Asian brands. As long as Saturn continued to produce cars following the same “lean production” Japanese methodology described by Kim and Rubenstein, it had a shot at competing with those brands. However, the allocation of Saturn models to other assembly plants ultimately brought about the company’s downfall. The burst of initial enthusiasm that sustained cooperation between management and labor at Saturn simply did not last. Internal company wrangling and union politics helped kill Saturn by diluting the brand’s identity and purpose. It is also worth discussing the extent of the external political ill will that threatened Saturn’s survival. Fortunately, one author in particular has crafted a work that provides some insights into this question.

In Power Steering: Global Automakers and the Transformation of Rural Communities, Michele M. Hoyman analyzes the effect of four different auto plants on their surroundings.[60] Spring Hill is discussed in some detail, as is Honda at Marysville, Ohio, Nissan at Smyrna, Tennessee, and Toyota at Georgetown, Kentucky. What emerges from this analysis is a sharp contrast between Saturn’s staffing of its plant and that of the other three manufacturers. While Honda, Toyota, and Nissan all drew the majority of their new workers from the local labor pool, Saturn acted differently. As described by Minchin, Saturn agreed to hire laid-off workers from other GM plants for Spring Hill as part of its new contract with the UAW. This led to considerable bitterness amongst residents of Spring Hill and surrounding Maury County.[61] As Hoyman documents in her surveys of factory-town residents, locals complained about lack of direct economic benefit that would have come with the hiring of area workers. After all, local government helped pay for the incentives used to lure GM to the area.[62] Spring Hill is quite different from other areas, especially Smyrna. In Smyrna, residents expressed overwhelming support of the plant, which they saw as a valuable contributor to the local economy. Marysville and Georgetown gave similar responses, both agreeing that the plant had helped their communities to grow. However, Georgetown’s residents regretted the size of the incentive package awarded to Toyota.[63]

This difference helps explain why anti-union attitudes persisted in Spring Hill, despite the introduction of a unionized workforce. Hoyman writes that “the UAW was traditionally associated with Detroit, Michigan, an area of the country that was not regarded favorably by Tennesseans. Sprinkled throughout the interviews with both the elite and the general public were comments like “We do not want to be a little Detroit.”[64] Hoyman ignores the fact that many Tennesseans had migrated north, in the past, to work in Detroit plants. The industrial attitudes of the Japanese are seen as more accommodating to Southern values by local elites than the pro-union philosophy of Northerners.[65] This fits well with Kim’s assessment of the fundamentally paternalistic nature of Southern labor relations, but it ignores inconvenient historical realities. Hoyman’s portrayal of unions as fundamentally “alien” to Southern working-class culture does not agree with the work of other labor scholars.[66]

The UAW in Spring Hill came to be perceived as a foreign entity that deprived native Tennesseans of jobs. As Minchin wrote, the strength of this sentiment meant that Tennessee’s state government did not defend General Motors when it requested federal funding in 2009, although this might have succeeded in keeping the Spring Hill plant open. Instead, Spring Hill closed, taking the UAW out with it. It seems more logical to conclude that the particular circumstances of Saturn’s establishment created anti-union sentiment amongst Spring Hill residents, rather than some kind of pre-existing bias.

At the end of this journey, it is easy to see that the arguments of scholars on this topic vary widely in quality. Rubenstein argued that foreign owners established many of these “transplants” in areas with weak or nonexistent union traditions. But he ignores the legacy of Southern labor militancy to draw this conclusion. Once established, these companies “screened” their new hires for pro-union sentiments and some made extensive use of anti-union propaganda campaigns. The UAW also had some important missteps in the early years of these factories, such as its protest against the opening of the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee. Kim agreed that employers have used negative reinforcement (discriminatory hiring and propaganda) to discourage unionization of employees. He also argued that the Japanese have sought to avoid a combative model of industrial relations in their factories, and to treat employees well enough that they do not feel the need for union representation. His support for this second conclusion is weak. Kim’s assertion that Japanese paternalism meshes well with the industrial culture of the South is ahistorical. Like Rubenstein, he has brushed aside the occasionally violent labor struggles that have characterized the Southern industrial past.

Barnard chronicles the early history of the UAW as one marred by strife and conflict. The UAW thrived in an environment where employers treated laborers as disposable, and the company ignored the role of the worker in the industrial process. However, when competition from outside sources began to threaten the auto industry in the 1970s, the regular UAW membership remained mostly inflexible in its hostile stance towards management. The rise of Saturn, as chronicled by Minchin, offered an opportunity for GM and the UAW to make amends and reform their relations. Saturn proved that an American company could build desirable, high-quality cars, but only on the back of an extraordinary labor agreement. GM reneged on its promises with Saturn, and a series of highly politicized corporate moves stripped the company of its unique identity. By the time of GM’s bankruptcy in 2009, Saturn’s promise had long since vanished. Hoyman writes that the UAW had an opportunity to make inroads in the South with Saturn but this did not come to pass. The importation of “foreign” workers to Spring Hill caused great bitterness among local residents and the state government. In the end, the UAW could not overcome the prevailing anti-union sentiment it had created in Tennessee, and Spring Hill closed. The UAW’s failure to organize the South makes it an attractive place for foreign companies to build auto factories for the foreseeable future. The question now is, will the UAW succeed in organizing the new factories or will it slowly decline? Assumptions about the anti-union attitudes of Southerners are merely that, assumptions. If the circumstances are right, the union movement may rise again on the newest frontier of the American auto industry.

 

Notes

• [1] Bertel Schmitt, “Paper: Auto Bailout Was A UAW Bailout,” The Truth About Cars, 14/6/2012 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/06/paper-auto-bailout-was-a-uaw-bailout/ [accessed 6/22/2013].
• [2] Richard Feldman and Michael Betzold, eds., End of the Line: Autoworkers and the American Dream (New York, NY: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988): 6-8.
• [3] David Halberstam, The Reckoning (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1986): 314-320.
• [4] James M. Rubenstein, The Changing US Auto Industry: A Geographic Analysis (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992).
• [5] “Branch plants” are local assembly plants designed to reduce the cost of shipping by assembling cars from completed kits on location. For more information, see Rubenstein, 153-154.
• [6] Ibid., 159.
• [7] Ibid., 238-239.
• [8] Ibid., 240-241.
• [9] Ibid., 241.
• [10] Rubenstein, 162.
• [11] Ibid., 251.
• [12] Ibid., 258-259.
• [13] Ibid., 255-256.
• [14] Ibid., 212.
• [15] James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1990, 2^nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993): 179-181.
• [16] This “multiplier effect” is an economic term meaning the total number of new jobs created in addition to the tertiary new jobs added at the plant itself. Economists are divided on the actual efficacy of the “multiplier effect.” Some plants, such as Toyota at Georgetown in Kentucky, have generated controversy when the estimated “multiplier effect” failed to materialize in the forecasted way. For more information, see Rubenstein, 229-230.
• [17] Ibid., 229.
• [18] Ibid., 231.
• [19] “Right to work” legislation forbids union membership as a condition of employment; effectively, it keeps unions from demanding a “closed shop” for employees and thus greatly diminishes their power. For more information see: Choong Soon Kim, Japanese Industry in the American South (New York, NY: Routledge, 1995):54.
• [20] Rubenstein, 288-289.
• [21] Cobb, 1-4.
• [22] Kim, 46-47.
• [23] Ibid., 37-39.
• [24] Ibid., 54.
• [25] Kim, 51.
• [26] Ibid., 54.
• [27] Ibid., 78-79.
• [28] Ibid., 77.
• [29] Ibid., 105.
• [30] Ibid., 114-115.
• [31] Kim, 107.
• [32] The work of Robert Korstad discusses the union-busting tactics of Southern politicians and industrial barons at length. For more information, see Robert Rodgers Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth Century South (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
• [33] Kim, 117-118.
• [34] Kim, 119.
• [35] Kim, 119.
• [36] Barnard, 225.
• [37] Ibid., 474-475.
• [38] Barnard, 477.
• [39] Ibid., 478.
• [40] Ibid., 482.
• [41] Ibid., 483.
• [42] Barnard, 483-484.
• [43] Ibid., 484.
• [44]Such joint ventures include New United Motor Manufacturing in Fremont, California (Toyota and GM) and DiamondStar Motors in Bloomington, Illinois (Mitsubishi and Chrysler). For more information see: Ibid., 479-480.
• [45] Ibid., 479.
• [46] Barnard, 480-481.
• [47] Ibid., 485-486.
• [48] Ibid., 487.
• [49] Timothy J. Minchin, “A Different Kind of Car Company: The Rise and Fall of the Saturn Corporation, 1985-2009,” Australasian Journal of American Studies 31 no. 1 (July 2012): 1-24.
• [50] Ibid., 3.
• [51] Ibid., 4.
• [52] Ibid., 5.
• [53] Minchin, 4.
• [54] Ibid., 6.
• [55] Ibid., 7.
• [56] Minchin, 11.
• [57] Ibid., 12.
• [58] Ibid., 14.
• [59] Minchin, 14-15.
• [60] Michele M. Hoyman, Power Steering: Global Automakers and the Transformation of Rural Communities (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997).
• [61] Hoyman, 52.
• [62] Ibid., 151.
• [63] Ibid., 151.
• [64] Ibid., 197.
• [65] Ibid., 197.
• [66] The work of Hall et al. in particular clashes with Hoyman’s assumptions about Southern attitudes towards organized labor. For more information, see Jacquelyn Dowd Hall et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).

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