In recent months, a majority of workers at the Volkswagen car assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., reportedly signed cards in favor of joining the United Auto Workers.

Yet in a vote last week, the workers rejected the union, 712 to 626. The post-mortem by the U.A.W. is sure to be both painful and painstaking.

What is already clear is that, in the end, the union could not overcome the surge in anti-union rhetoric and activity that preceded the vote. That opposition did not come from Volkswagen management, which had communicated the ways in which it believed the plant would benefit from unionization. It came instead from the state’s Republican establishment, including Senator Bob Corker, Gov. Bill Haslam, as well as state legislators and conservative activists, whose comments and tactics reinforced the traditional Southern opposition to unions.



It’s also clear that in rejecting the union, most of the workers at Volkswagen Chattanooga were endorsing that status quo in more ways than one, all of them disturbing.

Some workers said they voted no because they were satisfied with their jobs and pay, and therefore saw no need for a union. The problem with “I like my job as is” is that VW management wants to change how workers in Chattanooga do their jobs – and a unionized workforce is key to that change. Specifically, VW wants to run the Chattanooga plant the same way it runs most of its other 105 plants worldwide – with a works council that brings together managers and workers to set factory policies and procedures. A union is a legal prerequisite for a works council – which is why VW management in Chattanooga did not oppose the union.

The combination of a union and a works council would have been a promising development in labor/management relations in the United States. The union could have bargained collectively over pay, while leaving decisions over working conditions to the works council. With the no vote, there is neither a union nor a works council at the Chattanooga plant, only business as usual.

The “I am satisfied with my pay” rationale for voting no is also problematic. Why are VW workers in Chattanooga satisfied with making less than unionized Volkswagen workers in some other countries? Do they work less or contribute less to bottom line? Are they less skilled or less reliable?

By voting no, workers in Chattanooga very likely not only limited their own pay raises, but probably those of their relatives, friends and neighbors. That’s because the higher pay that generally results from collective bargaining at a major employer tends to influence the pay scales at nearby employers, even if those other workplaces are not unionized.

That is one of the reasons that Tennessee’s Republican leaders resisted the union. They were supporting the interests of those in Tennessee’s business community who don’t want to pay higher wages. Of course, they didn’t put it that way. They usually said that unionization at VW would make the state less inviting to new businesses. That’s a stretch, since other factors – like proximity to factories, workforce quality and even the weather – are far bigger determinants of business location.

Some workers who voted no said they believed that having a union would turn Chattanooga into Detroit. Senator Corker was an especially strong proponent of that idea.

The reasons for the decline of the American auto industry in the decades before the auto bailout are many and complex, prominent among them, management’s own blunders, including a failure to design and sell cars that Americans wanted and a failure to focus on its core car-making business.

Any role the U.A.W. had in the decline is not anywhere near as central as its role in the rise of Detroit, and of the middle class more broadly, in the decades when automakers were strong. The U.A.W. has also played an increasing role in the rebound of American automakers since the bailout, with several consecutive years of growing membership. And with its openness to the works council model in the VW Chattanooga union drive, it demonstrated its ability to adapt to changing business imperatives. The same can’t be said of Senator Corker and Tennessee’s other anti-union politicians.

The rejection of the union at VW Chattanooga is a setback for the U.A.W. But it is more than that. It is a setback for the majority of Americans whose pay has stagnated or declined along with the decline of unions and for whom new unions are crucial in the effort to change workplace norms, lift wages and raise living standards.