Mike Elk’s long piece on southern white masculinity and the defeat of the UAW in Chattanooga is well worth your time. There’s a long history in the South of working-class whites showing political deference to their social and financial superiors and it came to play again in Chattanooga. This deference is based on ideas of masculinity that promote individualism for yourself but loyalty to your superiors in rejecting invading forces.

The pro-union workers believe that statements by Jackson and the low-level supervisors were a major factor in turning the tide against the union.

“There is a reverence of the lower-level management,” says worker Feinauer. She attributes this attitude in part to a paternalistic culture at the plant that rewards loyalty over all else. “I … suspect the good ol’ boy system appeals to some of [the workers] because it may be the only strength they have to get themselves ahead,” she says. “If the playing field were more fair and level, they may have nothing to offer in skill, merit or education.”

Volkswagen worker Wayne Cliett agrees. “Yes, I see it daily. [Workers] are yes-men. They are ass-kissers. … All this, hoping to get ahead, and it works, because the supervisors eat it up.”

Experts and workers say this reverence for low-level supervisors may be strengthened by aspects of Southern culture. “There is this long tradition in the region of a (sometimes intense) personal identification with the company, especially among floor-level supervisors, [which] undermines solidarity and union organizing,” says Beth English, director of the Program on Women in the Global Community at Princeton University and author of A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/03/southern-masculinity-and-the-uaw-defeat-in-chattanooga