Large majority of car manufacturing now in right-to-work states

First I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. Mods please feel free to move. The American Welding Society had a link to this article from the Washington Examiner.

Even before Michigan passed a right-to-work law in 2012, U.S. car manufacturing was drifting south to places like Tennessee that had long had the law. A study shows just how far the shift has happened: An estimated 70 percent of domestic car and car parts manufacturing is now located in right-to-work states. That is the finding of a National Institute for Labor Relations Research analysis released Monday. Right-to-work laws prevent unions and businesses from negotiating contracts that require all of the business' employees to either belong to the union or at least pay it a fee. Currently 24 states have versions of the law.

considering just the 22 states that had adopted right to work prior to 2012, their share of auto manufacturing had grown from 36 percent in 2002 to 52 percent a decade later. In those same 22 states, real manufacturing GDP grew by 87 percent over the same 2002 to 2012 period. Meanwhile, it fell by a modest 2 percent in states that allowed "closed shop" union rules, excluding Michigan and Indiana.

Large majority of car manufacturing now in right-to-work states


The majority of these right to work states are in the south. Is this a southern revival? Is this good for the south or bad for workers in general? Are liberal policies to blame or are corporations being courted to take advantage of lower operating expenses like labor, taxes, environmental regulations and the pro business environment? Will there be an exodus of northern or western workers to follow?

This actually makes sense. Might as well put the jobs in an area where a union is weaker. They still pay pretty decent in those states.

This just means that the corporation puts more money in their pockets instead of sharing it with the employee.

Sorry folks but the non union companies still charge as much as the union companies, they just put more money in their pocket.

I work with union employees that do bidding. The non union shops try to make bids only a fraction, a couple of percent lower, than the union shops to take the work. Their employee makes one or two thirds less money, which in turn means the company pockets more money.

If people want to make more money they should unionize. But it seems that almost everybody wants to demonize unions, make less, all the while the company makes killer profits.

I am really dumbfounded how people don't see this. Instead they blame the unions and not the companies.

I noticed the article didn't mention wages for the blue collar workers.

I hope everyone enjoys less.

Why should forklift driver make $70/hour by the time you add in benefits? Is the ability to drive a forklift such a difficult skill that the labor is really worth that much? I've never heard that forklift driving is skilled labor or labor that requires specialized education that only a few people in the world can understand because that's more than many people in highly skilled, highly specialized management white collar, non-union positions make.

What a company ultimately makes is irrelevant to what the value of labor is worth. If you're paying the forklift drive $70/hour what are you paying the guy who manages him? What are you paying the guys who manage him and what must you be paying the CEO in order to create a payscale because the forklift driver is near the bottom.

It's no wonder two of the big three went under with a payscale that starts that high up.

a reply to: ketsuko

It's no wonder two of the big three went under with a payscale that starts that high up.

So, are the auto makers offering vehicles cheaper, now that their labor is cheaper?

a reply to: liejunkie01
Your user name fits you great.

What would be interesting to look into would be things like incidents of accident and death in relation to unionized industries and non-unionized. This would be a big issue for me. I know the unions initial calling was to advocate for the safety of workers in dangerous occupations like coal mining.

I am all for more manufacturing jobs though and the more places putting people to work the better. Many foreign companies have been producing cars in the south for 20 years or so and are some of the highly sought after jobs however it differs from state to state. Nissan in Mississippi has a high turnover and low pay but they can not find skilled employees. Mercedes in Alabama however has seemed to be a match made in heaven. Meanwhile Volkswagen has had issues with trying to open a plant in Tennessee I believe due to a union issue. All of this to say that the foreign investors have known for years where the cheapest labor is to be found in the US and it has seemed to work well for the most part for all parties.

a reply to: NihilistSanta

It has been my experience that non-union plants in the south generally pay higher wages with better benefits than union shops. I am not talking huge differences in compensation, but rather just enough that employees would rather not sacrifice it to go union.

General statement, but I am familiar with a number of non-union plants operating across the south. It has been the policy of the companies involved to match or exceed union plant yearly increases.

This is a huge reason for the existence of so many non-union manufacturing plants in the region. Union attempts to move into these plants generally are filled with ... umm... un truths. In the south, that in and of itself is enough to generate distrust on the part of the employees. Specially when the Union Rep is not a local.

Oh, and the non-unionized plants have various modern safety programs in effect. They tend to measure time between lost time accidents in the millions of man hours. You see, an unsafe plant will not only draw the attention of OSHA and others, but will result in higher insurance premiums. For example: Workman's comp costs. An unsafe plant does, believe it or not, result in heads rolling.

I am not trying to sell anything. These are my experiences with a number of manufacturing plants in the south/southeast.

a reply to: liejunkie01

I am dumbfounded on the narow focus you have on what has happened in automotive manufacturing. First look around and see who is doing the auto manufacturing in the South, and the expanding list of suppliers to those manufacturers.

Then...take a look around Michigan and inventory the former locations of the manufacturers and suppliers to the U.S automotive manufacturers, and cross-reference them to current manufacturing locations, and you have to go a quite bit further south to find them...and speak Spanish to communicate.

Unions single-handedly drove the U.S. automotive industry out of the rust belt, I think it's a good thing the asian and european auto manufacturers considered the south a good location for comparable labor with less regulatory overhead from union burdens on labor management. Now lower Michigan looks like a movie set for walking dead, but there are still people working south, because the big three and their suppliers left the rust belt, and the japanese and koreans didn't go there.

If unions get the type of stranglehold in the South they had in MI, more Japanese may learn Spanish and bypass the U.S altogether. Then that big win of the $70 forklift salary won't get that far.

(and frankly, if you aren't actually maintaining, operating, or programming something, then you aren't making that kind of money anywhere these days, robots done took dem cakewalk jobs, and workers gotta catch up)

a reply to: bbracken677

I would agree and state that is generally my experience as well. There is no 'second tier' of standards or treatment.

And there is the same layer of OHSA whether its union or not.

The only issues I find is in the facilities that have strict union regulation on assigned tasks, which may mean a machine operator that can readily identify a failed hydraulic solenoid cannot sinply call the maintenance engineer...they have to call the electrical maintenance engineer (it may be the coil, and it has to be disconnected) and the mechanical maintenance engineer (it could be a stuck spool, and the solenoid has to be removed) and the oiler (to remove the hydraulic oil that will be leaked replacing the solenoid). Union rules basically make it where these jobs cannot be combined into one maintenance engineer. Oh yeah, and flexibility for breaks. What a pain having to work around people that drop their tools and walk away the moment a clock strikes the double-00 (the worst being forklift drivers that leave complex and expensive machinery dangling on straps when that bell tolls - sweating bullets that his $70 cushy job didn't make him dumb to proper loading while his load dangles and he eats - when 10 seconds would have placed it on the ground!!! Oh..I can't get on the forklift...union rules you know). Oh yeah, and paperwork. Gotta make sure I'm not there doing a job a union person could do.

Wasn't like the U.S. auto industry had a painful decision whether to move work to cheaper labor markets. Unions made that decision easier for them. Some are moving manufacturing back, because they cannot find the skills they need in latin america, but those jobs may never go back north unless the market changes drastically...which if I am not mistaken...is, if not already has.

a reply to: NihilistSanta

It's corporate greed.

Just as soon as these car manufacturers can find another locale to boost their profit margins, they will. And why shouldn't they? Consumers don't seem to care, despite the ever rising costs of cars, government bailouts, shuttered manufacturing facilities and decimated local economies.

I am willing to bet that higher paid skilled workers benefit local economys more than 1 percent profit for a corporation. That 1 percent would just sit in some bank account with alot of commas and just acquire interest while the skilled worker would spend that money in the local economy.

I am a proud union electrician that graduated high school in '92 with very little financial means for college and a young newborn son.

The union took me in, educated me in the electrical field with the only requirement of 5 years of service after I became a journeyman electrician.

I can now go ANYWHERE and make money with these hands.

There has been a war against unions for almost a decade now, and I believe the reasoning behind it is they WANT us fighting each other for a nickel, at each others throats ready to climb over the back of your fellow worker to plant your victory flag.

Well I'll tell you this, I would rather stand shoulder to shoulder with a GROUP of people and be seen and heard than stand alone and not be.

Unions fought and lost the NAFTA war. Now Americans wonder what happened to the jobs.

Americans enjoy weekends 40 hour work weeks and overtime, you can thank unions for that.



Anyway just remember this...

The cheapest bidder usually is not the best choice.

You get what you pay for.

a reply to: liejunkie01

Geez, I've heard a lot of things...but more profit and Union just don't go together. Unions are slow, feet-dragging, inefficient, costly, and have been detrimental to the North and Northeast for years. At one point in time they served a purpose. Now that safety and labor laws have evolved they do nothing but bog companies down. Yes, it means companies can make more money! Money they can use to grow the company! Yes, the CEO makes more money! If you want that kind of grip go earn it yourself instead of whining! This is capitalism and Unions cans stand proud as we import more and more, better cars into the US while once great cities like Detroit rot...

a reply to: Zaanny

Unions are a relic of a time when they were necessary. Now, they get in the way of progress. We need efficiency and progressive ideals to compete in the world economy now. Not a brotherhood of the local nail drivers using leverage to ensure their job safety and inflated pay. You know what's really important in the work place? Performance! Me and three of my non-union commercial electricians would smoke the union guys daily. They would ask why we were working do hard? We'd tell them that we wanted to get the job done. They wouldn't even wear their tool belts, but go and grab one tool at a time....ridiculous!

a reply to: lambs to lions
I agree completely with what you are saying about unions, my dad worked for GM was in the union, got fired 11 times for drinking on the job and the union got him his job back every time. Unions are nothing but a drain on a company.

To add, before the company would take him back they gave him a paid vacation for him to go to rehab. GM paid for the rehab as well as his wages during the time he was at rehab.

a reply to: bbracken677

Unless you substantiate that claim with evidence I'm calling bullcrap.

Unions may be a relic of times past and no longer considered necessary, but once we get rid of them completely we will be back in a position where they look like a good idea again, unfortunately the businesses and corporations will invest the money to have lawyers write legislation and pay lobbyists to get their toxic # passed into law to make sure they never come back in any form.

Over a century of worker rights battles, safety issues and labor laws go out the window right along with collective bargaining rights.Just because people don't remember why these things came to be does not mean they didn't come to be for a good reason.

This country is going straight backwards in a race to the bottom, and anyone who doesn't really have any real idea how it once became great, which most don't, are part of the problem. Unions don't need to be abolished because they became corrupt, somewhat ineffective and a drain, they need to be reformed and controlled more effectively.

Ask your grandparents about what their parents had to go through to get by before all of these unions and administrations and such, which came to be to control tyrannical employers which were so incredibly abusive of powerless employees in the past, take seriously what they say instead of passing it off as BS, because it used to be bad.

The U.S. is going backwards, I have been working here my whole life and have seen the changes with my own eyes.

The U.S. is going backwards because there are so many ignorant people who just accept what the ignorant business owners justify themselves doing, I have worked for non-profits, have been self employed, worked for big and small manufacturing companies and see the same old # year after year getting worse all the time.

Unions are numbers of people uniting and collectively bargaining with businesses for fair treatment, businesses don't want to be that considerate, most business owners are tyrants.

OK, now bring on those self aggrandizing, pigs wallowing in their own supposed success business owners claiming "I'm not a tyrant!!", yeah you frickin are because the way things work today make it absolutely necessary that you be a tyrant just like those who make you jump through hoops to get anything done every day of the week.


# rolls downhill, the people that are at the bottom are always the ones who have to literally swim in it, live in it, eat it....

...

Contrary to what has been said earlier in the thread, it's the absolute worst in the south as far as employment, slavery is alive and well here.
I have more, but I don't really want to get banned from here.

a reply to: lambs to lions

Working in a right to work state is like shopping at the flea market.

Everybody is lying to themselves and everyone they do business with because everything they're selling was dug out of the trash along the road on garbage day, cleaned up a little bit and sold as new or slightly used. Or new stuff which was liquidated because the lot was defective.......

You got it, they want to turn everyone into ghouls just like themselves......

Tyrants, needing forgiveness every sunday to ease their guilty consciences.

a reply to: Zaanny

a reply to: onequestion

You are within your rights to "call bullcrap", but I am willing to bet you have very limited experience in the South regarding non-union manufacturing and have nothing more than an opinion.

Which particular claim are you referring to, specifically?

Here is a general Hr statement regarding non-union relations: Non-Union

Obviously, you call bull crap without any knowledge, nor without any research on the subject and certainly no experience with the subject.

The goal of this website is to eliminate ignorance, and yet I find people here daily telling me that what I have experienced in my 60 year old life either bullcrap, lies, or misinformation.

I worked in a plant in New Orleans one summer while in college. LA was a closed shop at the time (not sure what they are now) and I was told to join the union or be fired. I have visited a bag plant (makes paper bags like those in grocery stores as well as fancier ones) during a strike. I have worked in 2 non-union plants in the south, and have visited no less than 5 other non-union plants for various business related reasons.

It's funny but I can walk into a shop and can tell if it is union or non-union within minutes just by the attitudes of those who work there. At least in the south non-union employees are happier (in general), more talkative and more positive. The atmosphere in the union plants I have been in or worked in is heavy and oppressive in comparison. Much more negativity from the average employee.

These are my experiences. In the 2 non-union plants I have worked in, both experienced an attempt to unionize. In both cases management's response was simple and easy. They brought in the union contracts from every union plant in the industry from 100s of miles around and gave them to the employees and asked them if that is how they wanted to work...their choice. The union, meanwhile, lied about key concepts and specifics which in the long run cost them votes. In both cases the employees voted down the union by huge margins.

Funny, but management's ability to talk to employees about the union issue is highly constrained, but the union reps can say whatever they want to, including outright lies. Management cannot tell it's employees even basic truths of what will happen if the union is approved no matter how factual, or truthful.