Booman recently made a short post titled Casual Observation.
Here’s what he said.
I’m especially discouraged because I allowed myself to become optimistic about the United Auto Workers’ chances of unionizing the Volkswagon plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I’m feeling downhearted.
Poor Booman!!!
“Casual observation,” indeed. The general anti-south commentary that follows is fairly lockstep.
“All southerners are stupid, so where’s the surprise when they vote against their own self-interest?” This of course is a racist stereotype. Left pretty much unsaid is the idea that it’s the “redneck white faction” that’s doing all of the stupid voting.
However…large corporate factories in the south are thoroughly integrated. Thoroughly. You remember…the Civil Rights act and alla that? So who’s doing this voting? Well, let’s assume that the racial distribution in this VW plant is pretty much the same as the racial distribution in Chattanooga, TN.
Other pics look about the same, demographically.
Read on for more.
Here is the racial breakdown of the Chattanooga area according to Wikipedia:
As of the census[4] of 2010, there were 167,674 people, 70,749 households, and 40,384 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,222.5 people per square mile (472.5/km²). There were 79,607 housing units at an average density of 588.8 per square mile (226.0/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 58% White, 34.9% Black, 0.4% American Indian, 2% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 1.9% from other races, and 1.3% from two or more races. 5.5% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Non-Hispanic Whites were 55.9% of the population in 2010, down from 67.3% in 1980
The only surprise to me here is that Hispanics were way underrepresented. Dunno why. In 2010 the total percentage of Hispanic Americans living in the U.S., was more like 16%. That doesn’t of course include the Hispanics who felt threatened by the census because they had immigration problems, but my guess is that this holds true for quoted the “5.5%” Hispanic population of Chattanooga as well. However I also guess that so-called “illegals” would have a hard time getting a gig at that plant as well, so I’ll go with these numbers.
Now unless you think that the racial groups in this vote acted in unison…something I highly doubt because their livelihoods and the survival of their families are at stake here…or the vote was somehow skewed by the people who did the counting, then the results are a fairly accurate picture of how the voters saw the question at hand.
To wit: “Considering the current terrible employment conditions in the U.S., is it worth the risk of unionizing to possibly get better pay and working conditions?” And the answer was 712 to 626 against. A 53% majority considered it too risky even though the owners of the plant were apparently for the move.
Hmmmm…
I wonder what caused that vote to happen?
Could it be…
SATAN!!!???
Or could it be what occurred in Detroit after the bipartisan Bush I/Clinton I/Bush II selling off of American industry to the lowest wage bidders?
?
Maybe some of them remember the prediction that the original non-personed presidential candidate made (Ross Perot, way before Ron Paul…the template for media non-personing, actually.) back in 1992:
To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young — let’s assume you’ve been in business for a long time and you’ve got a mature work force — pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care — that’s the most expensive single element in making a car — have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
So we — if the people send me to Washington the first thing I’ll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it’s a two-way street. One last part here — I decided I was dumb and didn’t understand it so I called the Who’s Who of the folks who’ve been around it and I said, “Why won’t everybody go South?” They say, “It’d be disruptive.” I said, “For how long?” I finally got them up from 12 to 15 years. And I said, “well, how does it stop being disruptive?” And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it’s leveled again. But in the meantime, you’ve wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. We’ve got to cut it out.
Ross Perot, 3-way debate w/Clinton and Bush, 1992
These people in Chattanooga fear a “giant sucking sound” not just going south of the border but from anywhere else in the country that is offering the kind of cheap labor that resulted almost exactly 15 years from Perot’s prophecy.
“…when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it’s leveled again. But in the meantime, you’ve wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.”
Money will talk, and they fear…no matter the protestations of their German owners…that it will also walk. Away from them. To Buttfuck, Georgia or Boil Lance North Dakota. Wherever. Meanwhile, they have their mortgages and their other debts and…a lucky few in the U.S. today…they are actually managing to pay them off.
Remember the “Job One” Ford hype campaign from the ’80s? Well…now it’s “Job Done,” and many of the workers in Chattanooga apparently know it. They are playing the hand that the financial overlords of this country have dealt them. They are not stupid…no stupider than any other clearsighted American workers, anyway…and at least 53% of them have no faith in the UAW whatsoever.
Sorry, leftinesses…it’s a done deal. The only way it will change is if U.S. voters elect a radically new government, and as long as the media is owned by the very people who have made huge fortunes from that “giant whoosh”…a whoosh that has now come home, just as Perot predicted…as long as we exist under a corporate-owned government and its controller media complex (See the whole Comcast/Time-Warner fiasco for more on that.) it ain’t gonna change.
So go ahead and support Bush III…errr, ahhh, I mean Barack Obama…and Clinton II. And…watch out if you belong to a union. They’ve been outplayed by the corporatists for almost 50 years now.
Bet on it.
“WHOOSH!!!”
The sound of Malcolm X’s…and Ross Perot’s as well… chickens coming home to roost.
Sorry, but there it is.
Deal wid it.
Station WTFU once again signing off.
Get real.
AG
