UAW Strongarms Transplants To Help Illegal Aliens
The UAW and other unions are on the case of Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler again. They threaten to picket dealers of the carmakers, and to disrupt their stockholders meetings. (Good luck doing this in Japan, Korea and Germany.) What did Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler do now? They did nothing, and the unions say it’s an outrage.
A coalition of 15 civil rights organizations and labor unions is trying to overturn a controversial new immigration law in Alabama. That law requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detain, if they think that person is in the country illegally. The Obama administration says Alabama is messing with the federal government’s exclusive authority over immigration policy, and challenges the law in court.
What does that have to do with Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler? Nothing. Except that Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler have plants in Alabama, and the unions would like to have Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler on their side. The companies could bring their leverage in the state to bear. The companies don’t want to get involved. Now the unions attempt to strong-arm them.
I can imagine that the foreign carmakers, being guests in the country, don’t want to be found on either side of this corrosive issue. Why do the unions attempt to force them on their side? Aren’t companies that were the target of an abortive UAW organize-the-transplants drive odd allies anyway? What’s wrong with the unions? My take: The unions simply want to discredit Honda, Hyundai, and Daimler with the Latino community.
Automotive News [sub] notes that Asian brands dominate new vehicle purchases among Hispanic buyers in the United States, with especially Honda accounting for 13.9 percent of the Hispanic market. The UAW could be trying to change this. “Nice demographic you have here. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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"The UAW pushes for a libertarian immigration policy, and all of the supposed libertarians sh*t their pants. That looks a lot like pure contrarianism from people with 8 year old minds" As someone who is **totally okay** with fully porous national borders and unrestricted emigration, this made me smile. Nicely done. Why is it that only the rich can leverage globalization? Why can't the (relatively) poor walk through borders? Similarly, if the wealthy can create fictional people (corporations) to protect themselves from liability, why can't the less-wealthy create fictional people to collectively bargain? Good for the goose, good for the gander, etc. So how about this: how about we scrap free trade while we're busting the balls of immigration? Or if we're hell-bent on breaking unions, why don't we do away with corporations at the same time---after all, they're both collectivist fictions enabled by government. I mean, fair's fair. (for that matter, what about abortion and capital punishment?)
Open minds open borders open markets. A house is property. According to someone with free market beliefs citizenship is not. Next you will be claiming that a job is a property right. Making exceptions to pure libertarianism is a slippery slope. It leads to arguments that the government can provide roads or healthcare more efficiently than the free market. I believe that citizenship is a property right, but that is the nationalist socialist in me, not free marketeer in me. Yes, there was a really bad nationalist socialist in history, but that was an extreme. And he was also someone that screamed about the threat of terrorism a lot – which should make you wonder about anyone that screams about the threat of terrorism. Modern Japan, South Korea and Germany are still strongly nationalist socialist countries. All of the people above that claim they are going to boycott “American” auto companies because of the UAW should get a clue about the world. I have no particular love for “American” automakers, but what do these people think, Japan, South Korean and Germany are, Ayn Rand’s libertarian utopias? Wrong. All three are socialist countries with strong unions. Unions in South Korean burn down the factory.