Foreign Investment

European Companies Behaving Badly

Many American workers are irate these days about the jobs that are supposedly being taken away from them by undocumented foreign laborers. A new report from Human Rights Watch shows that the real threat to our living standards may come not from Mexican farmworkers, chambermaids or carwashers but from another group of “illegal” immigrants: European transnational corporations investing in the United States.

These companies – which include the likes of T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, DHL Express parent Deutsche Post, French construction materials giant Saint-Gobain and Britain’s Wal-Mart rival Tesco – are illegal in the sense that they fail to comply with international labor norms when it comes to their U.S. operations.

Human Rights Watch, usually preoccupied with the mistreatment of dissidents and others in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Kyrgyzstan, has not hesitated to point out that when it comes to the workplace, the United States is far from a paradigm of respect for individual rights. In 2000 it published a report called Unfair Advantage, which showed how workers’ freedom of association is routinely violated by employers.

Its new report, titled A Strange Case, shows how this pattern of abuse is practiced not only by domestic companies used to a climate of lax labor enforcement, but also by European companies that have much friendlier relations with unions in their home countries and that claim to abide by the principles regarding labor rights included in the declarations and conventions of the International Labor Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other global bodies.

Noting that these companies “exploit the loopholes and shortcomings in U.S. labor law” to engage in union avoidance and unionbusting practices, the report states: “The European Dr. Jekyll becomes an American Mr. Hyde.” Another way of putting it is that these companies behave like proper Westerners who indulge in sex with children when traveling to Southeast Asia: they are willing to do things abroad that they would never consider at home.

The Human Rights Watch report documents intimidation tactics used, for example, by T-Mobile in response to an organizing drive led by the Communications Workers of America and by DHL Express in response to a drive launched by the American Postal Workers Union. It also shows how European companies have tried to remove unions already organized, such as the decertification effort by Saint-Gobain against the United Auto Workers at a plant in Massachusetts. Other case studies show how companies such as Norway’s Kongsberg Automotive use tactics such as the lockout of union workers during contract negotiations that, as the report puts it, are “unheard of in Europe.”

The report points out that these European companies exploiting the lax U.S. labor rights environment are invariably ones that profess to be practitioners of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and that claim to have policies of cooperating with worker organizations throughout their operations. This, along with the fact that environmental criminals such as BP can claim to be CSR advocates, shows that the organizations that rate firms on corporate responsibility have to do a lot more than take company statements at face value.

Although the Human Rights Watch report doesn’t address it, another factor in the ability of European companies to behave badly in the United States is the unwillingness of the unions in their home countries to take aggressive action on this issue. Some of those unions have spoken out forcefully in support of their beleaguered American cousins, but that has not been enough to stop the abuses.

Yet the central problem is not CSR hypocrisy or inadequate labor solidarity, but rather the dismal condition of labor law in the United States. It would be nice if European companies decided on their own accord to treat American workers as they do employees at home, but even better would be if the federal government compelled both foreign and domestic companies to respect the collective bargaining rights of all U.S. workers.

A “Poster Child for Corporate Malfeasance”

One of the cardinal criticisms of large corporations is that they put profits before people. That tendency has been on full display in the recent behavior of transnational mining giant Rio Tinto, which has shown little regard for the well-being not only of its unionized workers but also of a group of executives who found themselves on trial for their lives in China.

The China story began last July, when four company executives — including Stern Hu, a Chinese-born Australian citizen — were arrested and initially charged with bribery and stealing state secrets, the latter offense carrying a potential death penalty. The charges, which most Western observers saw as trumped up, were made during a time of increasing tension between Rio and the Chinese government, one of the company’s largest customers, especially for iron ore.

Earlier in the year, debt-ridden Rio had announced plans to sell an 18 percent stake in itself to Chinalco, the state-backed Chinese aluminum company, for about $20 billion. Faced with strong shareholder and political opposition, Rio abandoned the deal in June 2009. The arrests may have been retaliation by the Chinese for being denied easier access to Australia’s natural riches.

Although Rio claimed to be standing by its employees, the case did not curb the company’s appetite for doing business with the deep-pocketed Chinese. Rio continued to negotiate with Beijing on large-scale iron ore sales. It seems never to have occurred to the company to terminate those talks until its people were freed. In fact, only weeks after the arrests, Rio’s chief executive Tom Albanese was, as Canada’s Globe and Mail put it on August 21, “trying to repair his company’s troubled relationship with China.”

Before long, Rio was negotiating with Chinalco about participating in a copper and gold mining project in Mongolia. One thing apparently led to another. In March 2010 — after its still-imprisoned employees had been officially indicted and were about to go on trial — Rio announced that it and Chinalco would jointly develop an iron ore project in the West African country of Guinea.

When that trial began a couple of weeks later, the Rio managers admitted guilt, but not to the more serious charge of stealing trade secrets. Instead, they said they had engaged in bribery — but as recipients rather than payers. While the four defendants may have been guilty of some impropriety, it is likely that the admissions were a calculated move to gain a lighter sentence in a proceeding whose outcome was predetermined. And that was the case in large part because their employer decided that its business dealings were more important than demanding justice for its employees.

Rio is no more interested in justice when it comes to its operations outside China. It has been accused of human rights violations in countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. And it has a track record of exploiting mineworkers in poor countries such as Namibia and South Africa while busting unions in places such as Australia. Recently, Rio showed its anti-union colors again in the United States.

On January 31 its U.S. Borax subsidiary locked out more than 500 workers at its borate mine in Kern County, California. The workers, members of Local 30 of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union had the audacity of voting against company demands for extensive contract concessions. The company wasted no time busing in replacement workers.

In a press release blaming the union for the lockout, U.S. Borax complained that ILWU members earned much more than workers at the company’s main competitor Eti Maden. The release conveniently fails to mention that Eti Maden’s operations are in Turkey.

Also missing from the company’s statement is the fact that the biggest driver of demand for boron – a material used in products ranging from glass wool to LCD screens – is the Chinese market. If U.S. Borax busts the ILWU in a way that keeps down boron prices, then the ultimate beneficiary may be Rio Tinto’s friends in China.

It is no surprise that mining industry critic Danny Kennedy once wrote that Rio Tinto “could be a poster child for corporate malfeasance.”

The Risk of Green Offshoring

The United States may be indirectly subsidizing the movement of renewable-energy equipment production to low-wage havens such as China and India. That’s the finding of a new report just released by the Apollo Alliance and Good Jobs First. I co-authored the report in my capacity as the research director of Good Jobs First.

My responsibility was to analyze the recipients of Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits, a component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The program, also known as 48C because of its place in the Internal Revenue Code, provides a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the value of investments in new, expanded or re-equipped facilities in the United States that produce materials used in renewable energy generation or carbon capture.

In January the Obama Administration released of list of 183 projects in 43 states that had been approved for the initial $2.3 billion round of credits. Obama’s new budget calls for expanding the program by $5 billion.

I focused on the 116 projects involving wind and solar, the two forms of renewable energy that have the most growth potential. Those projects received $1.6 billion, or 68 percent, of the total 48C credits. There are 90 unique parent companies involved (some firms have more than one project).

While the 48C projects themselves are all located in the U.S., many of the companies are also investing in wind and solar manufacturing facilities in other countries. This is not surprising, given that 25 of the 90 firms are based outside the United States, mostly in Europe and Scandinavia. They have operations in their home countries as well as other in developed economies.

What I examined, instead, was the extent to which both the U.S. and foreign 48C recipients are also expanding output in the low-wage countries we typically refer to in discussing offshoring. It turns out that a quarter of them are doing so.

Most of these are companies from places such as Germany and Spain that are leaders in the global clean-energy manufacturing market—the likes of Gamesa, Nordex, Siemens and Winergy. Thirteen foreign 48C recipients produce in China, three in India and two in Mexico. There are also six U.S.-based 48C recipients with operations in China, Mexico, Malaysia and the Philippines.

In total, the U.S. has awarded $458 million in advanced energy tax credits to 23 companies that are also investing money and creating jobs in low-wage nations.

One might argue that companies have to produce abroad in order to supply foreign markets, especially in a booming economy such as China. Yet I found that some of the 48C recipients have adopted a business model that relies heavily on low-wage production for serving global markets. Here are three examples:

Advanced Energy Industries Inc. (based in Colorado; received $1.2 million in 48C credits). In its most recent 10-K annual report, the company states: “The majority of our manufacturing is performed in Shenzhen, China, where we produce our high-volume products. The remainder of our manufacturing locations, in Fort Collins, Colorado; Hachioji, Japan; and Vancouver, Washington, perform low-volume manufacturing, service and support.”

First Solar Inc. (based in Arizona; received $16.3 million in 48C credits). In December 2009 the company announced plans for the addition of eight production lines for its solar module manufacturing operation in Kalim, Malaysia. The Malaysian operation was already more than ten times the size (in square footage) of First Solar’s original plant in Perrysburg, Ohio.

SunPower Corporation (based in California; received $10.8 million in 48C credits). Although 90 percent of SunPower’s sales come from the United States and Europe, it has been doing almost all of its manufacturing in Asia. It produces solar cells at two facilities in the Philippines and is developing a third solar cell manufacturing facility in Malaysia. Almost all of its solar cells are combined into solar panels at the company’s solar panel assembly facility in the Philippines. Other solar panels are manufactured for the company by a third-party subcontractor in China.

Given their preoccupation with offshoring, there is a significant risk that such firms will follow in the footsteps of Evergreen Solar, which is not on the 48C list but which received some $44 million in state subsidies for its plant in Devens, Massachusetts. In November 2009 the company announced that it would transfer its solar-panel assembly operations from Devens to a plant in China.

Using programs such as the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit to try to encourage renewable-energy companies to invest in the United States is good policy. But does it make sense to include firms that have put their primary emphasis on offshoring and may be using their 48C projects as little more than fig leaves to obscure where they are putting the bulk of their money? Are U.S. taxpayers indirectly subsidizing those foreign operations?

At the very least, the Apollo Alliance/Good Jobs First report recommends, the federal government should employ a clawback mechanism so that any company that later shifts its 48C jobs offshore would have to reimburse the Treasury for the tax credit. We also need to explore other ways of making sure that workers in the United States and other developed countries are not denied a place in the clean-energy manufacturing sector of the future.

Haiti: Corporate Charity or Reparations?

After the New Orleans region was struck by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Wal-Mart scored a public relations coup by delivering emergency supplies quickly while government agencies stumbled. Ignoring the fact that the company’s vast distribution network made the feat relatively easy, awestruck journalists hailed the giant retailer as a “savior” for many of the storm’s victims.

The Behemoth of Bentonville has apparently not been performing any major logistics miracles for the people of Haiti in the wake of the recent devastating earthquake. The company is working mainly through the Red Cross, initially providing $500,000 in cash and food kits worth $100,000.

Although the company’s outlays have apparently increased a bit since its January 13 press release, the amount is still in the neighborhood of $1 million. To put that number in perspective, in 2008 Wal-Mart had profits of $22 billion, which works out to some $2.5 million an hour—every day of the year.

It is hard to be impressed at a commitment of 30 minutes worth of profits to help deal with a disaster of the magnitude facing Haiti. But this is not just an abstract issue of generosity.

Over the years, Wal-Mart has earned huge sums from the impoverished nation. Haiti is one of the low-wage countries where garment contractors have produced the goods that, despite Wal-Mart’s vaunted low prices, can be profitability sold in its network of Supercenters. It’s been going on for many years. A 1996 report on Haiti by the National Labor Committee noted that Wal-Mart was a major customer of sweatshops paying garment workers as little as 12 cents an hour.

In this time of dire need, Wal-Mart should feel pressure to make a commitment to the Haitian people of a magnitude comparable to the wealth it has extracted from the country over the years.

The question of the obligation of a company such as Wal-Mart to a situation such as Haiti is particularly relevant in light of the outrageous ruling by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. Thanks to the High Court’s corporate shills, Wal-Mart executives are probably already fantasizing about the unlimited slush funds they will have to sway elections and pressure incumbents to do their bidding.

Now is a good time to launch a movement to push corporations to do something with their money other than buying the political system. The outpouring of support for Haiti could be the springboard for a campaign that demands that Wal-Mart—and other major corporations that have benefited from the country’s cheap labor—provide not a bit of charity but rather a substantial amount in the form of reparations.

Perhaps the way to start is to call for disclosure of an estimate of how much value Wal-Mart has extracted from the Haitian people. Rather than letting the company brag about its pittance of a voluntary contribution, it would be much more satisfying to see it have to negotiate an amount that would make a real difference for the country.

Corporations and the Amazon

These days just about every large corporation would have us believe that it is in the vanguard of the fight to reverse global warming. Companies mount expensive ad campaigns to brag about raising their energy efficiency and shrinking their carbon footprint.

Yet a bold article in the latest issue of business-friendly Bloomberg Markets magazine documents how some large U.S.-based transnationals are complicit in a process that does more to exacerbate the climate crisis than anything else: the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

While deforestation is usually blamed on local ranchers and loggers, Bloomberg points the finger at companies such as Alcoa and Cargill, which the magazine charges have used their power to get authorities in Brazil to approve large projects that violate the spirit of the country’s environmental regulations.

Alcoa is constructing a huge bauxite mine that will chew up more than 25,000 acres of virgin jungle in an area, the magazine says, “is supposed to be preserved unharmed forever for local residents.” Bloomberg cites Brazilian prosecutors who have been waging a four-year legal battle against an Alcoa subsidiary that is said to have circumvented the country’s national policies by obtaining a state rather than a federal permit for the project.

Bloomberg also focuses on the widely criticized grain port that Cargill built on the Amazon River. Cargill claims to be discouraging deforestation by the farmers supplying the soybeans that pass through the port, but the Brazilian prosecutors interviewed by Bloomberg expressed skepticism that the effort was having much effect.

Apart from the big on-site projects, Bloomberg looks at major corporations that it says purchase beef and leather from Amazonian ranchers who engage in illegal deforestation. Citing Brazilian export records, the magazine identifies Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Kraft Foods and Carrefour as purchasers of the beef and General Motors, Ford and Mercedes-Benz as purchasers of leather.

The impact of the Amazon cattle ranchers was also the focus of a Greenpeace report published in June. That report put heat on major shoe companies that are using leather produced by those ranchers.

Nike and Timberland responded to the study by pledging to end their use of leather hides from deforested areas in the Amazon basin. Greenpeace is trying to get other shoe companies to follow suit.

Think of the Amazon the next time a company such as Wal-Mart tells us what wonderful things it is doing to address the climate crisis.

Ruling by Fiat

marchionne The outpouring of angst about the bankruptcy and downsizing of General Motors is overshadowing what is perhaps an even more dramatic transformation at Chrysler. The smallest of what we used to call the Big Three has been delivered on a silver platter to a foreign company with outsized ambitions. It is now clear that the federal government is in the business of picking winners and losers, in certain industries at least. The question is why the Obama Administration has been so eager to make Fiat one of those favored few, given that it apparently aspires to challenge GM, the presumptive flagship U.S. automaker in which the feds are investing some $50 billion.

Only a few years ago, Fiat (profiled here) was accorded the same basket-case status that came to be applied to Chrysler and GM. In fact, in 2000 the Italian automaker was forced to turn to GM for help as its market share began tumbling both at home and in the rest of Europe. GM purchased a 20 percent stake in Fiat as part of a strategic cooperation deal between the two companies. In 2004, as Fiat’s condition grew worse, it invoked a provision of the cooperation agreement that would have compelled GM to buy the company. GM had no interest in taking on Fiat’s huge debt load, so it paid $2 billion to get the Italians to go away.

Fiat’s chief executive Sergio Marchionne (photo) decided that the company’s only path to survival was to combine with other car companies. He saw an opening earlier this year when the federal government agreed to provide emergency loans to Chrysler but pressured the company to restructure and find a partner. Fiat agreed to be that partner without investing any cash.

When Chrysler went back to the government for more aid, the Obama Administration took an even harder line, explicitly requiring the company to join with Fiat. The feds later pushed Chrysler into a bankruptcy filing designed to bring about the emergence of a reorganized company run by Fiat.

Marchionne took full advantage of his privileged position to intensify the pressure on Chrysler’s unions to make major contract concessions. He took a tough stance both with the United Auto Workers and the Canadian Auto Workers, threatening to scuttle the deal unless they capitulated. Canada’s National Post headlined its story FIAT PUTS GUN TO CHRYSLER UNION HEADS. Both unions gave in to the pressure and signed new contracts with major givebacks.

Fiat is no stranger to hard-line labor relations. Its relationship with unions has been tumultuous throughout the company’s history. The 2002 announcement of a 20 percent cut in the Fiat’s Italian workforce opened a new period of unrest in its domestic operations. In recent months, as Marchionne has pursued his grand plans for the creation of a new auto giant, Italian metalworkers have grown worried that they may lose out. Last month they held a national protest near the company’s headquarters in Turin. Frequent work stoppages and blockades have been taking place at various Fiat plants.

Chrysler’s workers may soon find themselves resorting to similar tactics. Even though 55 percent of the company will initially be controlled by the UAW’s Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, it is likely that Fiat’s executives will be the ones really calling the shots. The VEBA will have its hands full meeting its obligations to workers. In fact, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger has said the union would probably sell its Chrysler holdings as soon as it is financially feasible.

The party that has the most to gain from Chrysler’s restructuring is Fiat. Even though Marchionne was thwarted in his attempt to go from the Chrysler coup to the purchase of GM’s European operations, he still has grand dreams and is seeking other industry partners. In the meantime, the Chrysler deal will enable Fiat to expand sales of its small cars in the North American market, creating more competition for the new GM. How nice of the Obama Administration to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to make this happen.

Taking Our Money and Running Overseas

It was only about week ago that the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC rushed to put together an emergency rescue package for Citigroup consisting of a $20 billion capital infusion and protection against up to $306 billion in losses on the financial giant’s portfolio of mortgage-backed securities. This was in addition to an earlier $25 billion investment in Citi as part of the effort to prop up the country’s largest banks.

Now comes the news that an arm of Citigroup agreed to pay $10 billion to buy a Spanish toll road operator called Itinere Infraestructuras SA. Funny, I don’t recall Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson mentioning that the taxpayers were bailing out Citi so that it could speculate in the foreign infrastructure privatization market.

This caused me to wonder what else major financial institutions have been doing with their federal infusions other than expanding credit for U.S. consumers and businesses. We already know about the way in which some banks have used their money from Uncle Sam to buy competitors and the tendency of AIG executives to treat themselves to lavish retreats at public expense, but is Citi the only recipient that is sending some of its money overseas?

To answer this question I started with the tally of bailout recipients maintained by ProPublica and searched for recent announcements by those companies. I found, for example:

* Bank of America ($25 billion received) gave notice of its plan to exercise the remainder of its option to purchase shares in China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) from China SAFE Investments Limited (Huijin). The purchase will increase B of A’s holdings in CCB from 10.8 percent to 19.1 percent. The cost was not reported.

* JP Morgan Chase ($25 billion) announced an enhancement of its cash management and trade services in India, which represented part of a $1 billion plan to expand the bank’s worldwide cash management and treasury business.

* Bank of New York Mellon ($3 billion) announced that it had received a license to initiate banking operations in Mexico.

Under normal circumstances, such announcements would merit no comment. But at a time when these institutions are receiving massive amounts of taxpayer funds, they take on a new significance. While the infusions of federal money were designed to expand the flow of credit in the United States, banks are using some of the funds to expand their foreign operations and investments. They are taking our money and running overseas.

And all this is happening while an anonymous U.S. Senator has placed a hold on the nomination of Neil Barofsky to serve as the special inspector general for the bailout. Apparently, some parties don’t want any close scrutiny of how hundreds of billions of dollars of public money are being bestowed on the financial sector by a federal government acting like an overindulgent parent at Christmastime.

The Ugly Chinese?

When we hear about poor third world workers being exploited by a rapacious foreign corporation, we tend to assume the company is based in the United States, Europe or Japan. An article in the new issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine is the latest indication that we probably need to add China to that mental list.

Young Workers, Deadly Mines is a remarkable exposé by Simon Clark, Michael Smith and Franz Wild about child workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa. The DRC, formerly Zaire, is a mineral-rich country that suffered for more than a quarter-century under the kleptocratic Mobutu regime and then endured years of civil war that involved several neighboring countries. Some foreign companies enabled the violence by continuing to purchase gold and diamonds from militia groups.

Clark, Smith and Wild show that foreign business interests are once again profiting from the misery of the people of the DRC. The problem is concentrated in the Katanga region, which contains large deposits of copper and cobalt, two substance very much in demand on the international market. There, “freelance” miners, including young children, work crude, hand-dug mines to extract ore that is sold to middlemen, who in turn sell to nearby smelters run by Chinese companies such as Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Nickel Materials Co. (logo). The cobalt is shipped to China and is ultimately sold to companies such as Sony and Samsung for use in making cellphone batteries. The child workers, toiling in hazardous and unsanitary conditions, earn the equivalent of about $3 a day.

The article reports that more than 60 of Katanga’s 75 mineral processing plants are owned by Chinese companies and some 90 percent of the region’s mineral output is sent to China, whose fast-growing economy has an insatiable appetite for raw materials. The Bloomberg Markets article notes that Chinese extractive companies are operating in a number of other African countries aside from the DRC, such as Zambia, Niger, Sudan, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

The latest Fortune Global 500 list contains 29 corporations based in China, including three with revenues in excess of $100 billion. We need to know a lot more about companies such as these and how they are behaving abroad as well as at home.

Mubadala Brings Good Things to Light?

Mubadala Development Company, an investment fund controlled by the government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (photo), announced Tuesday that it was forming an extensive partnership with U.S.-based industrial powerhouse General Electric. The fund, which said it intends to become one of GE’s top ten institutional investors, will collaborate with the company in areas such as commercial finance, development of clean-energy technology, aviation maintenance and oilfield services. The finance joint venture alone will involve a combined investment of $8 billion.

We’ve gotten used to wobbly U.S. financial institutions such as Citigroup and Merrill Lynch turning to sovereign wealth funds for infusions of capital. Are we now going to see major U.S. industrials do the same? GE, which is not ailing like the financials, will no doubt insist that it is not being propped up by Mubadala but is simply exploiting common areas of interest with the fund.

Even if the arrangement is not an indication of financial weakness, it is another sign that GE is abandoning its status as a U.S. company. The process has been underway for quite some time. Twenty years ago, then-CEO Jack Welch was describing GE as “boundaryless,” and he used the company’s global reach, among other things, to weaken labor unions. Welch—known as Neutron Jack because, like a neutron bomb, he eliminated workers while allowing buildings to remain standing—was also notorious for his statement that factories would ideally be built on barges so they could be readily transported to wherever labor costs were lowest.

Over the past decade, GE has made massive investments abroad, opening not only production facilities but also research & development centers in countries such as India and China. Meanwhile, it is dumping major U.S. operations such as its century-old home appliance business.

The results can be seen in the company’s financial statements. A decade ago, GE bragged in its annual report (p.39) that it “made a positive 1997 contribution of approximately $6.3 billion to the U.S. balance of trade.” The company’s 2007 report does not even mention how much it exported from the United States, while disclosing (p.99) that only 35 percent of its property, plant and equipment is now located on American soil.

So, while GE dazzles us with its “eco-imagination” ads touting its commitment to renewable energy, the company is hooking up with a tiny Middle Eastern country that is awash with petrodollars. American workers and communities, meanwhile, are left to pick up the pieces.

Volkswagen Test Drives New American Worker

It took 20 years but Volkswagen is finally going to try making cars in the United States again. Today the German automaker announced plans to invest $1 billion on a production facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee that will turn out vehicles for the North American market. The move is seen as the only way the company can, given the strong euro, hope to increase its meager U.S. market share.

The initial coverage of the announcement I saw did not mention the circumstances under which VW abandoned its previous U.S. manufacturing initiative. In April 1978 the company opened an assembly plant in Pennsylvania to produce its Rabbit model. A few months later, the workers, represented by a newly formed local of the United Auto Workers, shocked the company—as well as their parent union—by staging a wildcat strike to protest the fact that they were being paid less than their counterparts at the plants owned by the Big Three. Stopping production of the Rabbit, the workers chanted “No Money, No Bunny.”

The workers eventually returned to work, but labor relations at the plant remained tense as the UAW, compelled by members of the local, pressured the company to narrow the wage gap. VW was also confronted with a lawsuit charging that it discriminated against black employees. Finally, in 1988, VW gave up and closed the plant.

It appears that VW is being more cautious this time. It has followed in the footsteps of other foreign automakers that have located their U.S. plants in Southern right-to-work states or other areas with low union density. Thus is Toyota in states such as Kentucky, Alabama and Mississippi; Nissan in Tennessee and Mississippi; BMW in South Carolina; Mercedes in Alabama; Kia in Georgia; and Hyundai in Alabama. The scarcity of unions may be the real commonality that Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen had in mind when he said today that VW chose his state because of “shared values.”

The Southern states have rewarded foreign car companies not only with non-union labor but also with lavish economic development subsidies—in many cases more than $100 million per plant. Volkswagen’s package from Tennessee is still being negotiated. Gov. Bredesen today said only that the deal is “complicated,” which should probably be taken as code for “extravagant.”

Government giveaways and docile labor: Volkswagen may not have had it so good since the era when the People’s Car was born.