PINEHURST – Two recent developments involving wages, benefits and the right to join or support a union demonstrate that these issues continue to be important for the South.

First, workers at the world's largest hog slaughterhouse — it processes 32,000 hogs a day — voted in favor of the union that had long sought to represent the plant's workers. Second, most Southern senators voted against considering the $14 billion bailout for Detroit automakers that has significant labor implications.

The vote by employees at the Smithfield Foods plant in Bladen County was noteworthy because the United Food and Commercial Workers Union had been trying to unionize the plant since it opened in 1992. This time the workers voted narrowly — 2,041 to 1,879 — for union representation.

The vote scored a huge victory for organized labor in the South, which has the country's lowest rate of trade union membership, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Union membership rates of many Southern states are less than 5 percent, and North Carolina has the nation's lowest, 3.3 percent.

The South overwhelmingly consists of right-to-work states that guarantee employees the right to decide whether to join or financially support a union (Kentucky is a major exception). As a result, the region has been quite successful in persuading foreign auto manufacturers to build plants here. (more…)