UAW Drops Revote Bid in Chattanooga for Fear of Another Humiliating Defeat

Via Sean Higgins at the Washington Examiner comes the
news that the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and
Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW — yes, that’s its
full name) has come to its senses.  

UAW had petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a
revote at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen
plant where workers, 712-626, rejected its bid for
unionization. But before the board could rule, it withdrew its
petition.

Its official reason,
per Higgins, is that Republicans such as Sen. Bob Corker, whom
UAW was accusing of having influenced the outcome, refused to
testify before the board. Corker and other state Republicans had
threatened to withdraw a $1 billion incentive package to keep the
facility in Chattanooga if workers voted for unionization.

The real reason, Higgins reports, is that UAW bosses feared an
even more humiliating defeat the second time around.

All of this is a severe—possibly fatal—setback for the
UAW.  That’s because, as I noted in Time
after the initial vote, the union regarded winning the Volkswagen
vote as a crucial first step in a broader effort to reverse decades
of decline. Since 1979, its membership has plummeted from 1.5
million to about 380,000 and it has managed to unionize not a
single foreign automaker to offset these losses. What’s more:

This particular plant in Chattanooga was supposed to be easy
pickings because, thanks to pressure from IG Metall, the German
workers union, Volkswagen had signed a neutrality agreement with
the UAW. In Germany, unions can veto management decisions that
don’t serve worker interest. And IG Metall had threatened to bar
the company from manufacturing a new line of SUVs in Chattanooga,
the only Volkswagen facility worldwide that is not unionized,
unless it remained “neutral” by forfeiting its right to campaign
against the UAW. The company went even further: It not only allowed
the UAW to set up a vote drive office inside the plant, but denied
unionization opponents similar space.

But voting for unionization would have been suicidal for VW
workers, given that Tennessee has become the South’s auto hub by
actively marketing itself as a union-free zone. Three foreign
automakers are located there. Not just in Tennessee, I noted, but
in the South as a whole, workers tend to be strongly protective of
their anti-union heritage. The UAW has tried various degrees of

organizing drives at Nissan, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota and
Mercedes-Benz without success. Indeed, at a Nissan plant in Canton,
Mississippi, which might be the UAW’s next target, anti-union
workers have taken to wearing
T-shirts saying, “If you want a union, move to Detroit.”

Ouch!