Union busting ramps up at Chattanooga, TN Volkswagen plant
Yesterday, In These Timess Mike Elk got his hands on a private document showing how DC-based political groups have moved to block the United Automobile Workers organizing effort at the Volkswagon plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Though workers at the plant, VW and the UAW seem largely in agreement about forming a workers council at the factory, prominent anti-union groups have swarmed Chattanooga to obstruct the deal. A consultant named Matt Patterson, formerly with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, authored the document, obtained by Elk, that spells out his efforts to mobilize Tea Party, libertarian, and local media attacks on the VW organizing drive.
In his proposal to donors, Patterson says his plan is to kill the momentum for unionization in the South, noting, significant impact can made be over the next year in Tennessee, Alabama, and throughout the South to keep the UAW from organizing the foreign-owned auto facilities.
Though much of Pattersons tactics have been concealed until now, he did author an op-ed in May that called on Southerners to regard the union-drive as a chance to reenact the bloodiest days of the entire Civil War.
Patterson wrote:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/177162/anti-uaw-consultant-defeat-invading-union-force-vw-plant-our-confederate-ancestors