http://www.detnews.com/article/20110113/MIVIEW/101130374/1467/opinion01/Payne--UAW-threatens-automakers-as--human-rights-violators-Henry Payne / The Michigan View.com
Last Updated: January 13. 2011 1:00AM
As Big Three automakers basked in improved profit numbers at the Detroit auto Show this week- in part due to competitive, reduced UAW wages - Big Labor drew a target on the back of their competition.
At the Automotive News World Congress held just down the street from the Cobo Hall exhibition space, UAW President Bob King threatened to expose non-union foreign transplants as "human rights violators" if they don't unionize.
"I would not want to be a company that was branded as a human rights violator," said the militant UAW boss "That would be a bad business decision."
But Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), whose right-to-work state is home to Nissan and VW non-union plants, begs to differ.
Corker told VW last November that letting the UAW into its new $1 billion Chattanooga assembly plant will produce the VW Passat unveiled in Detroit Monday, would be "highly detrimental" to its operations. The UAW "breeds an 'us versus they' relationship, and I just don't think it's healthy for a company to be set up in that regard," Corker said.
King told the Chattanooga Times Free Press at the time that Corker was "talking about the past and not the present or the future." But his inflammatory remarks in Detroit Wednesday clearly signaled noting has changed.
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