IN AN election that ended last night, workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant decided against joining the United Auto Workers (UAW), a labour union. The result of the poll, which stretched over three days, was 712-626, despite years of courtship by the UAW. Conditions at the Chattanooga plant seemed favourable to the union: the UAW worked closely with IG Metall, which represents workers at VW's German plants. VW let the UAW campaign inside the plant, which rarely happens (anti-union activists, meanwhile, complained that VW extended no such courtesy to them). VW and the UAW had also both expressed strong support for a German-style works council, a committee of management, blue-collar and white-collar workers that determine factory policies (indeed, the Chattanooga facility is VW's only plant without one). In German and most European law such bodies differ from labour unions: they cannot call for strikes, and their membership is limited to employees at an individual plant. In America, however, the National Labour Relations Act forbids management from "assisting" labour unions; a German-style works council would likely be ruled illegal unless workers are represented by a union. Yet Frank Fischer, the head of VW Chattanooga, said in a statement after the results were announced that this was not a vote against a works council, and he still held out hope for developing one that accords with American labour law.

Bob King, the UAW's president, said after the election that he was "outraged by the outside interference." Tennessee, like the rest of the American south, is a "right-to-work" state, meaning it bans "closed shops" that compel workers to join a union at their workplace. The UAW is a left-wing union; Tennessee is a conservative state, and its politicians were vocal in their opposition. Bob Corker, Tennessee's junior senator and a former mayor of Chattanooga, said he was "assured that should the workers vote against the UAW, Volkswagen will announce in the coming weeks that it will manufacture its new mid-size SUV here in Chattanooga," instead of at its Mexican plant. Mr Corker did not reveal the source of his assurance, and his statement runs contrary to VW's public statements. Bo Watson, a state senator, warned shortly before the election that should the workers vote to unionise, "any additional incentives...for expansion or otherwise will have a very tough time passing the Tennessee Senate." The chair of the Tennessee Senate's labour committee worried that "a vote for organised labour would impede our daily efforts to benefit Tennessee families as we compete nationally in job growth." Mr King said he thought such comments swung the election against the UAW, and said he would "look at our legal options over the next few days."

The once-mighty union seems to have hit the bottom after a steep and steady decline: in 1979 its membership topped 1.5m; when Mr King was elected president in 2010, it had 376,612 members—20,000 more than it had the year before. It has picked up members well outside its traditional stamping grounds; today it represents card-dealers at casinos, graduate students and researchers at universities and a variety of health-care workers.

But the UAW has so far failed to organise a foreign-owned carmaker in the American south. Despite its defeat in Tennessee it is likely to press on with efforts at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, and a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. But Alabama and Mississippi are also conservative, right-to-work states, and neither Mercedes nor Nissan appears to be rolling out the welcome mat for the UAW as VW did. And the UAW's failure in Chattanooga may hurt not just its efforts to organise plants in the south, but its leverage in Detroit, where it wants to narrow the gap between what veteran and new auto workers are paid.

(Photo credit: VW Group of America)