When Alabama autoworkers at Mercedes-Benz's largest U.S. plant recently assembled to announce a majority of their 6,000 co-workers had signed UAW union cards, they also had a prediction to share: 'We know what the company, what the politicians, and what their multi-millionaire buddies will say.
Southern Republican governors are right about one thing: workers taking matters into their own hands to unionize and improve their jobs do pose a direct threat to state 'economic models' designed to entrench racism, division, poverty, and unequal power.Unions are the primary counterweight to businesses seeking to maximize profits by keeping wages too low to live on. The labor movement in the U.S. today is one of the foremost institutions promoting cross-racial solidarity.