An outside intruder
On May 13, Gov. Kay Ivey announced to a meeting of the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce that she had signed SB231. The new law punishes businesses that choose to voluntarily recognize unions by forbidding them from receiving any grants, loans, or tax credits from state and local governments.
Must not accept unions voluntarily. Must resist, kicking and screaming, until the bitter end. Those with more money and power must always be on top.
In her speech, Ivey also made it clear that she views the United Auto Workers as an outside intruder threatening one of Alabama’s “crown jewels” — the auto industry.
“Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, they’re not Detroit,” she said, referring to the ongoing union election at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa County.
Meaning they’re not pro-union, not pro-worker, not [whisper] where all the N-words went the minute they could get away.
Mercedes employee Jeremy Kimbrell has repeatedly said that the ongoing unionization drive is led by Mercedes employees, an assertion which has been supported by recent coverage of the campaign. In an interview with labor journalist Alex Press, he joked that “Mercedes is our best organizer,” not any out-of-state UAW staff members.
Oh those pesky out-of-state organizers. They’re probably all Jews ya know.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Bren Riley, the president of the Alabama chapter of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, said: “It’s funny to me that Governor Ivey and the sponsors of this bill try to paint unions as the outsider.”
Riley pointed out how the “cookie-cutter” bill was promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national conservative organization that is based in Virginia. Almost identical bills were passed in both Georgia and Tennessee before Ivey signed SB235.
Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama…what do they all have in common, I wonder. Could it possibly be a history of not paying workers anything at all?
H/t Sackbut
I would have thought the State punishing a company for exercising its right to freely associate with a union was a breach of the first amendment? I guess only an affected company would have a right to sue and most companies are quite happy to support the law.
Rob, it might be, now that SCOTUS has declared corporations people. What it is definitely is a Republican acting to restrict the rights of business. Just like the party of law and order is full of lawless goons, the party of nothing restricting business is more than happy to restrict business when they do things conservatives don’t like.
Of course, as we all know, both of these parties are the same party.
I’m just a simple little Aussie who doesn’t understand America, so Explain It Like I’m 5:
Why are workers from America, albeit a different state, “Outsiders” whereas a company from Germany, is a “crown jewel”?
Could it be the shared history of using forced labour?
https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/company-history/1933-1945.html
Although, granted Merceded-Benz has acknowledged and made amends for that whilst the good white folks of Alabam are intent on returning to slavery.
Rev, it’s a mystery to me too. The best I can come up with was many years ago asking a US company if the exported, and their reply was yes, they sent product to California, Texas and a couple of other states. It’s a big complex country with the divisions of State and county all overlaid by social, cultural, religious, racial, political divisions running across those.
Trying to understand where they’re coming from, even though their perspective falls apart under the tiniest amount of scrutiny:
The auto industry has built a bunch of plants in Alabama, which the conservative government can hold up as successes because they brought in a lot of jobs.
People outside the South are always “outsiders” with “different values”. (All states in the South are “right to work” states, which means they prohibit unionized workplaces from requiring union membership.) Alabama has been dropping membership in any kind of national organization, from Common Core to the American Library Association to ERIC, at a rapid pace. The fact that northern states or liberal states do something is reason enough not to do that thing.
These are the the rationales they push, and they don’t pass the smell test, but it’s what they tell people.
The American Library Association.
Good grief.
From the above, I guess the US really does need another Civil War to split the intelligent and wealth creating states from the ill educated mendicant South.
Rev, the problem with that is that it abandons many good and decent people opposed to such policies who live in the south to their fates. To say nothing of the poor and vulnerable who more than likely are also decent and good people.
Rev, its not that difficult to understand for Americans. We get it very clearly. A corporation or organization (or individual) is an “outsider” if they (1) come from outside the state (it doesn’t even have to be a full state; in Nebraska, you can be an “outsider” if you come from Omaha and are doing something somewhere else in the state) and (2) do things in a way the stereotypical Southerner dislikes. Thus, FFRF is from “outside” while the Alliance Defending Freedom (from Arizona) is accepted without noting it is somewhere else.
An organization is NOT an outsider if (1) they are located in the state and/or (2) they are doing things in a way the stereotypical Southerner likes.
Easy algorithm; just plug in #2; if #2 falls in the unacceptable category, they are “outsiders”. If the group is actually inside the state, then they are influenced by outsiders.
Oh those pesky out-of-state organizers. They’re probably all Jews
In this context I think the last word is supposed to be spelled ‘Jooos’
Heh. What I wanted to do there was add a photo of Ron Feldman from “Norma Rae” but after looking for some I decided it might be too cryptic.