Theories of Power

Howard Jacobson | Insourcing Brings Foreign Laws, Not Just Jobs | Factoids | Elsewhere | Elsewhen

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Quote of the Moment

We do our humanity a great wrong when we let theories of power rule our politics and politics rule our hearts.

| Howard Jacobson, Is this the end of Israel?

I am using this quote not about the crisis in Israel and Gaza, but with regard to unionizing in the U.S. South (see below).

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Insourcing Brings Foreign Laws, Not Just Jobs

A new form of leverage is emerging in the UAW’s efforts to unionize car manufacturing plants in the U.S. South, long a bastion of ‘right-to-work’ laws. (‘Right-to-work’ is a shorthand for anti-union regulations that hamper efforts to unionize. For example, proponents of such laws argue that workers at unionized plants who don’t want to join the union can opt-out and avoid paying dues, acting as freeloaders on the union's efforts.)

Non-unionized car makers employ nearly 150,000 workers in these states, and the UAW wants to unionize them all:

In addition to Tesla, the targets of the drive are two other electric vehicle start-ups, Lucid and Rivian, and 10 foreign-owned automakers: Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda and Volvo.

The new wrinkle is international, specifically our relationship with Germany.

German car makers in the ‘90s and '00s created plants in U.S. ‘right-to-work’ states to sidestep entanglements and avoid higher unionized labor wages. This outsourcing has grown significantly.

Notably, lower costs in the U.S. relative to Europe have led companies like Mercedes and BMW to export a lot of cars from the U.S. elsewhere:

The luxury vehicles Mercedes builds in Alabama are sent to 135 countries, while 70 percent of BMWs built in South Carolina are shipped overseas.

I don’t know about you, but I had thought those car factories by European manufacturers were making cars for the U.S. market. However, we’ve become a nation where they are outsourcing production because of the political-economic-labor imbalance between the EU and the U.S.

German unions were quite aware of these goings-on and the plans of German carmakers to outsource a great deal of production to the un-unionized regions of the U.S., so they took action, as Harold Mayerson details:

In 2021, the German Social Democrats, then the minority partner in government with the Christian Democrats, pushed a new law through the Bundestag. Germany was home to all manner of corporations—Siemens, Volkswagen, Daimler, Bayer—that had factories and contractors strewn across the planet, and German unions feared such companies could undercut their members by offshoring work to low-wage climes, even as environmental and human rights organizations feared the low standards that such offshoring could enable. The new law, the Supply Chain Act, which took effect in 2023, was designed to allay such fears. It empowered a German federal agency (the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, or BAFA) to monitor the foreign-located factories and supply chain operations of German businesses with at least 1,000 employees to see if those facilities were violating any of 11 stipulated human rights standards, including the use of child labor, the violation of worker health and safety standards, and the right to form trade unions.

The UAW has filed a complaint with the German authorities against Mercedes-Benz, a target of union organizing, for firing workers active in that unionization drive. They have also lodged complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. Still, that agency is limited in its penalties: they can only get the fired workers reinstated, restore back pay, and communicate what they’d done to remedy their misdeeds. But the German Agency — BAFA — has real teeth:

That [the U.S. actions] falls somewhat short of having to cough up 2 percent of annual revenues (roughly 3 billion euros in this case) and being blocked from government contracts.

3 billion euros gets your attention, I bet, and Mercedes-Benz’s, too.

A very strange turn of events, where the German unions’ partnership with their Social Democrats led to a law that might become the most powerful inducement for Mercedes-Benz (and other German carmakers) to accept unionization across the U.S.

Of course, it begs the question: Why doesn’t the U.S. have similar laws? If Biden is the ‘most pro-union president in history,’ why aren’t the Democrats pushing for similar legislation? We’re pushing hard to get China to level the playing field in various green industries, but we are unwilling to push for more job security, better pay, and better benefits—that come from unionization—for workers in those U.S. plants.

And if this lever manages to get Mercedes-Benz to capitulate, we’ll owe it to German unions, not the U.S. National Labor Relations Board.

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Also note; I recently wrote about the disparity between U.S. and German employees of Bayer, who is going through a global reorganization. A case might be made that the U.S. workers being laid off this summer could sue in Germany based on wage discrimination (one of the 11 human rights infractions in the Supply Chain Act) since German workers won’t be laid off until 2026.

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Factoids

Job-Market Optimism

Job-market optimism among entry-level workers is at an eight-year low. Just 46% had a positive six-month outlook in Glassdoor’s latest Employee Confidence Index, the smallest share since the employer-review platform began tracking the statistic in 2016. Glassdoor noted that the negative sentiment is influenced by slowed hiring and lower quit rates, making it more difficult for younger workers to advance in their organizations. On the upside, nearly two-thirds of employers in a new Robert Half survey said they plan to hire for entry-level roles this year.

| Charter

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EV Tires

With their heavy weight and quick acceleration, EVs tend to burn through tires about 20% faster than internal combustion vehicles do, according to consultancy firm AlixPartners. And the tires cost about 50% more.

| Dense Discovery

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Where was the pandemic worst?

When you control for demographic differences, the pandemic was bleakest not in the rich failed states of the Anglosphere or indifferent middle-income ones in Eastern Europe but in the poorest countries of the world, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa, just as one might have predicted in early 2020.

The worst hit was Uganda, which registered a demography-adjusted mortality rate seven times that of the United States. The next-hardest-hit country in the Economist table is Zambia, then Chad, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Two more African countries follow — Ethiopia and Malawi — before the first non-African countries, Bahrain and Afghanistan.

| David Wallace-Wells

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The Right To Disconnect

A new California bill would guarantee workers a “right to disconnect.” The bill, if passed, would require all California employers to delineate working and non-working hours and create policies to protect people from unwanted communications during non-working hours. The California Labor Commissioner would be empowered to fine employers that repeatedly violate the law, with exceptions for emergencies, scheduling conversations, and provisions outlined in worker contracts or collective bargaining agreements.

| Charter

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Elsewhere

Inbox Fuckit

The inestimable Warren Ellis recently wrote about Inbox Fuckit:

See, Inbox Zero is just another job to do. It’s using up a bunch of decision cycles that can be more usefully put to actual creative work. We treat it as informational hygiene or a thing to actually achieve so we can pat ourselves on the back for not having ignored the cat turd on the kitchen floor. I’ve come to treat it as a false achievement. My inbox is currently 95 notes to self, newsletters and notifications, work stuff I need to keep handy, and emails I want to reply to only when I have the time and mindspace to write a proper letter in return. Important stuff and receipts get handled first thing and across the day during breaks. Everything that isn’t red-hot? That can wait a bit. Fuckit. Inbox Zero is fake productivity.

Inbox Fuckit is getting shit done in the real world. Relax. Embrace Fuckit. Give it a try and see if anyone notices.

PS Oliver Burkeman's River, not a Bucket idea is relevant here, as well, when you think of email as part of your ‘read pile’ [emphasis mine]: