A recent story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on a pro-union rally in the Tennessee community, an event at which union supporters claimed: “Outside interest groups are targeting Chattanooga to try to scare or manipulate Volkswagen workers from seeking United Auto Workers representation.”
With the so-called threat of these outside groups, union supporters are under the impression that the UAW involvement in Chattanooga is only of their concern, and not the general public.
Matt Patterson, Executive Director of the Center for Worker Freedom at ATR, disagrees. In a column published today in the Chattanoogan, Mr. Patterson notes that due to the union’s political involvement in national politics, the union's business is the business of every taxpayer. Patterson writes:
The UAW is a deeply political entity, a font of manpower, money and support for countless left-wing causes, candidates, and policies, both locally and nationally, including the most economically ruinous idea to come out of Washington in a generation: Obamacare.
With the UAW’s money and endorsement helping to enact this legislation into the law, the union’s campaign to recruit new members should be at the fore front of everyone’s concern, especially TN consumers hit hard by the healthcare law. Patterson quotes a Tennessee physician who noted with the median household income of $38, 000, families in Tennessee cannot afford these drastic rise in insurance premiums driven by Obamacare.
The union and its supporters are afraid that the extent and nature of its political activity will alienate many community members and auto workers who do not have their left-wing ideology.
And rightly so