Following the United Auto Workers’ (UAW) election loss at Volkswagen’s (VW) automobile plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka declared, “That was just round one” in organized labor’s southern strategy. From my perspective that is nothing more than “making lemonade out of lemons.” 
Transplant automobile manufacturers have been locating plants throughout the United States—and principally in the South—since the early 1980s. For anyone counting, that’s 30 years ago. From the start, with Nissan in Smyrna, Tennessee, American workers at these foreign companies have exercised their protected right to say no to unionization. If we were counting rounds, we would have to ask ourselves which round the 1980s Nissan effort was, or the Toyota effort in Georgetown, Kentucky, which lasted five years—and on and on and on.
It’s much more accurate to say the UAW is in the later rounds of this fight, and it has been knocked down time and time again. In fact, I predict labor’s fight to organize the automotive transplants is close to over and so, too, may be the union movement as it existed in the 20th century. Even UAW President Bob King said before the VW loss, “If [the UAW doesn’t] organize the transplants, [our] future as a large automotive union is in jeopardy.”
What’s so significant about the Chattanooga defeat is that VW agreed to remain neutral on the issue of unionization. According to an article in the February 21 issue of the Wall Street Journal, “The company assumed what it considered a legally unbiased stance, one expressed in a [15-]page ‘neutrality contract’ with the union. But it was a stance with a decidedly pro-union tilt. It gave union organizers unusual in-plant access to the workers and placed considerable constraints on anti-union campaigners, generating clear signals to its workforce.” Even so the union lost the election.
According to a February 16 article in the New York Times, the UAW’s King declared, “We are outraged the people in the political arena decided they were going to threaten workers and that they were going to threaten the company.” Yes, the Tennessee governor and a U.S. senator from Tennessee expressed their opinions that unionization would not be good for Tennessee workers. And yes, outside groups warned VW workers that the UAW’s track record was marred by a loss of hundreds of thousands of automobile workers’ jobs. Yet the expression of those facts—and yes, they are facts—is nothing more than free speech. During almost every union organizing campaign in which there isn’t a neutrality agreement, workers are going to hear the facts about unionization, including the data about union workers’ job losses through plant closings and layoffs.
What organized labor fails to recognize is that workers in the United States now prefer to be nonunion. A cultural norm that unionization is bad, not good, has developed in America. What is becoming apparent is that the UAW, and unions in general, don’t fit most workers’ perspective about what the American workforce ought to look like. Most would agree that there was a time when unions were good for workers. But for the last three decades, American workers have been much more inclined to remain union-free.
In other words, organized labor’s time has come and gone. Unions may be able to organize employees in certain service sectors such as home healthcare and janitorial services, but America’s middle class, epitomized by automobile workers, has spoken loudly and clearly. Their decisions are not the decisions of some politicians, but the decisions of the people who are working the jobs that the UAW had hoped to organize. At $19 an hour with good benefits packages, those workers have concluded, as they have the legally protected right to do, that they don’t need or want union representation.
As I mentioned, what is so incredibly significant about the VW election is that the employer didn’t resist unionization or even speak negatively about the union. At the very least, VW remained neutral, and some might say it encouraged unionization. Even still, the UAW couldn’t prevail. The power is in the workers’ vote, and VW workers spoke their collective mind, not the politicians’, to which the UAW so vehemently objects.
The UAW has challenged the election result, complaining the politicians scared the workers so much that they couldn’t think straight. And the union may convince the Obama-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that it ought to conduct another election. But I predict that if the VW workers are asked to vote again, they will reject the union again. And if February’s vote wasn’t the knockout punch, another rejection of the UAW will sound the death knell for organized labor as it has been known since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935.
A Chattanooga loss for the UAW will be devastating for organized labor all over the country, including right here in Indiana.
John Neighbors is a partner in the Indianapolis office of Faegre Baker Daniels, representing employers in all areas of employment law, and especially in their efforts to remain union-free. He may be reached at john.neighbours@faegrebd.com.
great article
On the other hand, we must figure out how to arrest the declining earning power of the middle class if our economy is to retain the post WWII growth it has enjoyed. Given Washington’s disfunction it looks like government leadership will be a long time coming – if ever!
You are right, Keith–but that is an entirely different issue!
The unions in general, and the leadership in particular, have become as greedy as they say the corporations are, and shall we mention the way they punish members for daring to think independently? They have lined their pockets, but what have they really done for anyone lately? They need their ever-increasing cut to maintain their power, after all. They don’t understand–or care–where the money comes from, nor the ramifications of their demands.
We have monetary trouble because of the monetary policies of the last century (at least), and taxing everything that moves. Isn’t it fabulous that there is a commercial, touting tax-free zones in the State of New York to encourage businesses to relocate there? No business taxes for ten years! Does that not let the cat out of the bag concerning the way tax policies influence growth?
The way to have the post WWII growth is to repeat what created it! Taxes were lowered, spending was cut, regulations were eased, and the people of the country were set free to set their own courses. Hard-working people, responsible for themselves, worked their way out of poverty and into the middle class and beyond–the only limits were what you set on yourself. (Check the historical records for the actual facts.) Naturally, there was opposition from those who were losing their power grip on other people.
Now, arm yourself with those ACTUAL facts, and press your elected representatives to restore fiscal sanity (most of them are guilty as sin)! A country’s finances work just like your own household finances, and don’t let anyone try to tell you that you are too ignorant to understand high finance. And do not succumb to name-calling, either. Socrates once observed that when a debate is lost, the tool of the loser is ridicule–and he was one smart cookie!