Grover Norquist
The right's campaign against unions never stops. After the UAW's narrow defeat in a union election at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant, a group that placed anti-union billboards around the area is
ready to move on to where it thinks the next fight might be:
The Center for Worker Freedom, which is linked to anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, plans to renew its battle against the UAW at plants in Alabama and Mississippi where the union wants to organize.
“Those are likely the next big ones for the UAW,” said Matt Patterson, executive director of the center. “We'll be there.” [...]
The center, created under the umbrella of Norquist's anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, used billboards and 30-second radio spots across the region to criticize the UAW effort and blame the union for the fiscal woes in Detroit, the struggling hub of the U.S. auto industry.
It's questionable whether the group's efforts in Chattanooga made the difference; threats to jobs from area politicians seem likely to have played a bigger role. But it's not really about any one organizing drive for these people. It's about spreading anti-union messaging everywhere, so that when an actual union campaign does come up, the Right's message is already embedded in people's brains. And when you have Norquist's endless money, why not just put up billboards everywhere there's an auto plant?