Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has screwed up her state by letting her politically motivated pro-union stance wreck the economy, and now she’s trying to get Germany to help her spread the damage.
In a June 25 letter to Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Cem Özdemir, Whitmer used the fact that Mercedes-Benz still maintains an R&D presence in Michigan to claim the right to lecture the German government. She demanded that German officials force Mercedes to drop its opposition to UAW organizing at the company’s Alabama plant—where workers had already rejected the union in 2024. The National Labor Relations Board, an agency long known for its strong pro-union bias, reviewed the UAW’s complaints of intimidation and unlawful terminations and closed the case, finding no merit. That tells you how baseless the charges were from the start. Yet Whitmer’s letter treats those rejected allegations as proven fact. She solemnly warns of “worker intimidation, interfering with union organizing efforts, and unlawful terminations” and insists Mercedes must “uphold the standards it has committed to” and “comply fully with United States labor law.” These are distortions and lies. Mercedes denied any wrongdoing, and the pro-union NLRB itself confirmed there was none. What Whitmer really wants is for Mercedes to unionize all of its US operations to the detriment of its US profitability and competitiveness.
This is the core of the hypocrisy. The UAW’s grip on Michigan has been so damaging that manufacturers have been leaving for years; the state has lost 36,200 manufacturing jobs since Whitmer repealed right-to-work in 2023 and now suffers the nation’s fourth-highest unemployment rate. With only the remaining R&D foothold left, she is trying to use it as leverage to unionize Mercedes operations in Alabama. The obvious hope is that if the UAW can lock down plants everywhere, Michigan will stop hemorrhaging the manufacturing business it already drove away. She even dangles Michigan’s “incredible resources”—taxpayer subsidies and political favors—as the implied reward if Mercedes plays along. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey is right: her workers will not fall for the UAW’s tricks the way Michigan has. When a governor traffics in lies to strip free workers of choice and free companies of their rights, the result is always fewer jobs and less prosperity.
Governors are elected to protect their own citizens’ prosperity, not to act as unpaid lobbyists for a private union that seeks to strip other states of the competitive advantages Michigan foolishly discarded. Property rights and voluntary association are not optional; when politicians traffic in lies and treat them as bargaining chips, the result is always fewer jobs, higher costs, and less freedom.
Amen