Word: auto
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...hypocrites really are. "When the textile industry went down in the South and we were accused of being behind the times, we didn't ask for a bailout - we just had to reinvent ourselves," says John Jeter, a South Carolina author whose family owns a small chain of auto parts stores and whose new novel, The Plunder Room, examines the modern southern character. "So southerners feel it takes some audacity for northern businessmen who make millions to come holding out beggar's bowls for billions...
...that southern sages like Black approve of an industrial civil war. "We're all in this recession together," says Black, who like many others is quick to note that Detroit's collapse isn't exactly good for the South, especially given the large number of auto parts production jobs that rely in part on the Big Three...
...fade away in last month's presidential election - they hail the idea that the South is rising again in the 21st century. "The sense of confidence is palpable," says Jim Cashman, a management professor at the University of Alabama and a Chicago native who has worked in the auto industry. "Companies like Mercedes have legitimized the efforts of the New South...
...True, those Asian and European firms flocked to the South to avoid Detroit's high-cost culture. But while southern auto employees extol the union-free, right-to-work rules of their states, the truth is that they might still be earning the basement-level wages of a Mississippi textile worker today if the UAW hadn't leaned on the likes of Mercedes in Washington. "Mercedes wanted a much lower pay scale when it arrived here," says Cashman, who notes that veteran southern autoworkers now earn "only fractionally less" than the average $27 an hour for Detroit workers (and often...
...assemble them, as they're needed rather than stockpiling too much inventory or flooding the market with, say, gas-guzzlers no one wants to buy anymore. "Southern communities understand you can't tie organizations down with restrictions," says manufacturing management expert David Miller of the Alabama Productivity Center. "Successful auto companies in the South provide all the positives you'd find in a union shop...