Mix: Of 'scab lists' and UAW double-talk

View our Volkswagen/UAW special page with timeline, slideshow, local and national coverage and opinions

As they continue a long-running campaign with the goal of securing monopoly-bargaining power over Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, United Auto Workers union officials shroud their true intentions with assurances that they will respect employees' rights under Tennessee's popular right to work law.

In fact, early this year, Gary Casteel, then a UAW regional director and now secretary-treasurer, went on record as to why he, as Washington Post reporter Lydia DePillis puts it, "prefers right-to-work environments" for organizing. Casteel claimed that right to work laws help the union pitch a so-called "voluntary" union to workers reluctant to associate with a union that has lost 75 percent of its members since 1980 while crippling Detroit's auto industry.

It's one thing for a UAW union official during an organizing drive to take advantage of the reassurance right to work laws give employees to abstain from bankrolling an unwanted union, and it's another thing completely for him to respect workers' freedom not to join once a union is installed.

You see, while UAW union officials continue to pitch a so-called "voluntary" union to VW workers, the reality is UAW union officials have made it clear that they will seek exclusive representation over every worker in the plant once they have a majority of the facility as UAW "members."

And VW workers should seriously consider the ramifications of letting the UAW in through the back door by signing union cards, even while they still have right to work protections.

As the Washington Free Beacon reported last week, UAW bosses at the GM Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., (which closed when the union boss-dominated company went broke in 2009, but reopened after the company re-emerged from bankruptcy) are resorting to intimidation tactics to extract dues from employees who don't think union officials have earned them.

UAW Local 1853 union president Tim Stannard recently published a so-called "Scab Report" which was posted at high-traffic entrances at the plant, listing the names and work stations of dozens of workers at the GM facility who have exercised their rights to refrain union membership and dues payments under the state's right to work law.

One GM worker, who requested anonymity for fear of union retaliation, told the Free Beacon, "They put our names out there so people will pressure us ... One guy called me a scab outright. I don't appreciate that. I was disgusted by it."

When challenged by independent-minded workers who oppose the UAW's effort to unionize the Chattanooga VW plant, union officials like Casteel may argue that their union is "voluntary," but the proof already shows that in unionized plants in right to work states like Tennessee, UAW operatives are intimidating reluctant workers into joining and bankrolling the union.

So much for a new union model in Chattanooga. Intimidation tactics against workers and backroom deals to bypass a secret ballot vote is the same old Detroit-based UAW.

Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses, its website states.

Upcoming Events