November EC Meeting 2019

EU corporate leaders worsening conditions for workers in the US South

GFTU leader DOUG NICHOLLS looks at European corporate attacks on unions and workers in America’s southern states THE European Union’s corporate leaders havn’t just reserved their deregulating, anti-trade union, anti-workers’ rights agenda for their own member states on home turf. They have been keen to extend this policy on the already fertile ground of the southern states of the US. They’ve exploited some of the weakest labour laws and strongest pro-business environments in the world. We are often told that the regulated models of the EU compare favourably with the deregulated models of the US. In reality, leading EU corporations are on the prowl, particularly in the former slave states, and displaying their fangs off the leash globally. This has all been exposed in a recent joint report by the American Federation of Labour-Central Industrial Organisation (AFL-CIO) and the European TUC (ETUC) called The Double Standard at Work: European Corporate Investment and Workers’ Rights in the American South. The dominant economic, social and political model in the US South has forced it into the bottom tier among US states under every measure of people’s well-being — living standards, employment security and legislation, health, education, environmental protection, democratic participation and more. This is being ruthlessly exploited by European corporations. Good old-fashioned union-busting is back with a vengeance. In the light of increased European corporate investment over the last 25 years, some companies have “interfered with freedom of association, launched aggressive campaigns against employees’ organizing attempts and failed to bargain in good faith when workers choose union representation.” Eleven Southern states are in the lowest 20; six of them are in the bottom eight states. North Carolina and South Carolina are numbers 49 and 50, at 4 per cent and 3.6 per cent union density. Average union representation for the former confederate states is 6 per cent. In contrast, average union representation for the 12 highest-density states is 17.3 per cent, with New York state highest at 24 per cent of its workers represented by unions. While it does not directly affect private-sector multinational firms investing in the US South, every Southern state has adopted laws that prohibit collective bargaining by public-sector workers and this exemplifies the conducive environment that state leaders flaunt to attract corporate investment. In the process they are showing just why they want to deregulate so much at home. US Southern states are clustered at the bottom of all states for levels of trade union representation.