Did last week’s United Auto Workers (UAW) vote fail because autoworkers in Tennessee didn’t want their communities to end up bankrupt like Detroit? Nope. Did the UAW vote fail because autoworkers were happy with their pay and benefits? Nope.
According to MSNBC writer Timothy Noah, the vote failed because people who don’t want to join unions are racist:
TIMOTHY NOAH: “The South has always been hostile territory for union organizing. Y’know, as Harold said, the culture war in the South trumps the class war. You already have in a number of Southern states right to work laws, which means that even if they had unionized the plants, those who benefited from the presence of that union wouldn’t have had to pay union dues if they didn’t feel like it. So you’re in an overwhelmingly hostile climate.
And the opposition I gather, through, portrayed this as a kind of northern invasion, a re-fighting of the Civil War. Apparently there are not a lot of, uh, black employees in this particular plant. And so, that kind of, uh, uh, uh, waving of the Confederate flag was an effective strategy.”
Uh, uh, uh, brilliant deduction there, Mr. Noah. And they would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddling pundits.
