Flaws in U.S. labor law and practice are even more acute in the American South than in other regions. Some European companies appear to relish their newfound opportunities to attack trade unions in ways they cannot undertake in Europe, especially in Southern states where they have made substantial investments in recent years.
A second possible explanation for European firms’ double standard is that top company leaders accept the role of trade unions and collective bargaining at home, but they wash their hands and let American managers deal with workers’ organizing and the intricacies of U.S. labor law. This is a failure of due diligence for which firms should be held accountable. In either case, companies are violating international human rights and labor standards to which they have publicly committed themselves.
European companies’ campaigns against workers’ freedom of association in the Southern United States have wider implications and effects beyond whether employees succeed in forming trade unions. When they apply harsh anti-union strategies and tactics, European firms often argue that they simply are following advice from local business leaders and elected officials to adapt to the corporate customs and culture of the American South—a “When in Rome, do as the Romans” ethos. But in so doing, they also are reinforcing and validating a dominant economic, social and political model that has locked the South into the bottom tier among American states under every measure of people’s well-being—living standards, employment security, health, education, environmental protection, democratic participation and more.
European firms’ respecting workers’ freedom of association could be a driving force for far-reaching change in the American South. It could demonstrate to Southern workers that job growth, economic development and unions are not part of a zero-sum game, as they often are portrayed, but have a symbiotic relationship. Making workforce development and high-road labor policies the rule, rather than the exception, can break the historical cycle of low wages, low labor standards, low social standards and other stains on the South.
European workers and trade unions have a stake in the American South, too. Southern state government officials stress low wages, low taxes and low levels of union representation in their appeals to Europe-based multinational firms to invest in the South. This creates a temptation to relocate jobs to the U.S. South to escape European social standards.
A longer-range interest comes into play, too. As European companies become accustomed to Southern U.S.-style anti-unionism, the temptation grows to apply the same blanket strategies and tactics in Southern and Eastern Europe, or even in the heart of the European Union. Such a turn by European firms would make it even easier for U.S.-based companies in Europe to export American management-style violations of workers’ organizing and collective bargaining rights.
Workers’ and trade unions’ interests in Europe and the United States also converge in negotiations now taking place for a trans-Atlantic trade and investment pact, sometimes called TTIP. The United States likely will pressure Europe to accept a trade arrangement promoting weak labor laws, antiunionism, decentralized collective bargaining, low wages, low taxes, privatization, deregulation of health and environmental rules, reduced public services and other features of the U.S. model that are most prominent in the American South.
Unless they are held accountable for their conduct and rectify their behavior, European companies might tell their governments “we like the U.S. system and the way we have profited from these policies, especially in the American South.” European and American workers and their allies must mobilize now to prevent American Southern-style labor practices from taking root in Europe.
https://aflcio.org/reports/double-standard-work-european-corporate-investment-and-workers-rights-american-south