United Auto Workers Union Rejected By Volkswagen Workers At Tennessee Plant

[DainBramaged]

Workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee have rejected the United Auto Workers union.

The 712 to 626 vote is a devastating blow to the union and its efforts to organize other Southern plants run by foreign automakers.

About 1,500 workers were eligible to vote during three days of balloting that ended Friday night.

Experts say it was the best chance for the union to gain a foothold in the South, where it's been shunned by other workers.

Volkswagen tacitly endorsed the union and even allowed organizers into the plant to make their sales pitch.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/14/united-auto-workers-union_n_4792424.html

[Vox Moi]

1. Welcome to Mexico

VW was less frightened the prospect of a union shop than did the local politicians, who seem to think that collective bargaining is what happens between Republicans and corporations. The bargain is cheap labor.
VW has options no matter what the vote, including dangling jobs before the people of Alabama and Mexico. The workers in Tennessee have a choice, too. They can go to Mexico or simply make Tennessee as much like Mexico as possible.

[loli phabay]

2. why do you think it failed, i seem to remember you work for one of the US automakers,

can you at a personal level give insight on why you believe they did not want to join your union.

[Fawke Em]

3. I'm not in a union, but I live in Tennessee.

I cannot EVER understand why unions are so hated in this state. In fact, that the vote was THAT close should scare TPTB. Stand by to see our fucking idiot politicians coal-rake unions and workers after a vote that close.

I'm ready to move out of this shit hole state. Until our cities are as big as Pennsylvania's, we're not getting rid of these Teahadists anytime soon. Sad part is that I'm a female in my 40s. Not sure I could find a job up North.

[DinahMoeHum]

4. If you want to know why this vote to unionize in the South failed. . .

. . .a little history is in order. Chiquola Mill, Honea Path, South Carolina 1934

http://www.salon.com/2010/09/07/southern_labor_history/

(snip)
After 1934, the labor movement would try every few years to organize Southern textiles. The rise of the CIO unions starting in 1935, left the cotton mills as the biggest industry without a major union presence. An attempt in 1937 failed when organizers tried to convince bosses that the union and the manager could be friends. The mill-hands were disgusted. A more serious campaign in 1946, dubbed “Operation Dixie,” showed little ability to uproot or challenge the now-institutionalized and intensifying stretchout. Seeing no reason to go out on a limb again, the workers held onto their skepticism; little else had ever worked for them. The union, explained mill-hand Ila Dodson, is “nothing but trouble.”

The basic tenets of 20th-century progressive politics in America — unionism, the welfare state, public-safety regulations — all failed the mill-hands, the largest class of industrial workers in the South. And the failure was spectacular, a once-in-a-generation trauma. The inability of New Deal liberalism to bring on board the Southern white working class was, it seems in retrospect, its ultimate undoing. Who was it that voted for Wallace, then Nixon, then Reagan? The depressing question points to the politically weak people for whom racism was the only bullet left in the chamber. We can’t excuse their racism this way. But we can start to understand it.
(snip)

http://www.salon.com/2010/09/07/southern_labor_history/

Ever since then, there has been this sense of "learned helplessness" that has affected too many Southern workers.