In a defeat for organized labor in the South, employees at the Volkswagen plant here voted 712 to 626 against joining the United Automobile Workers.
The loss is an especially stinging blow for U.A.W. because Volkswagen did not even oppose the unionization drive. The union’s defeat — in what was one of the most closely watched unionization votes in decades — is expected to slow, perhaps stymie, the union’s long-term plans to organize other auto plants in the South.
Or end those plans. That's what happens when state and federal politicians make open threats against the livelihoods of workers in this economy: the workers say "Wait a minute, I want to keep my job. If I vote for the union, I become a target, my family becomes a target. I don't want that."
A retired local judge, Samuel H. Payne, announced the vote results inside VW’s sprawling plant after officials from the National Labor Relations Board had counted the ballots. In the hours before the votes were tallied, after three days of voting at the assembly plant, both sides were predicting victory.
The vote this week came in a region that is traditionally anti-union, and as a result many said the U.A.W. faced an uphill battle. The union saw the campaign as a vital first step toward expanding in the South, while Republicans and many companies in Tennessee feared that a U.A.W. triumph would hurt the state’s welcoming image for business.
What Red State Republicans mean by "welcoming image for business" is "how many tens of millions of tax dollars will it take to buy your thousands of jobs?" Sure, that means we don't have the tax base to afford working schools, roads, infrastructure and safety, but at least we didn't lose the plant to Mexico. Would have been a shame if you had unionized, and we drove VW out of business as a result.
Plus we kept them damn Yankees out of the state. Next stop from our friends at the GOP: the quiet pride and dignity of a $4 an hour job.
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Times like this are when I stare into the depths of my submarine and ask, when is Team Goodguys going to start playing hardball?
The 1% have all the money because they are ruthless in exercising their control over the chokepoints in the economy. Don't like it, what are you going to do about it?
Those punk ass pretend radicals are doing it wrong in Portland and Seattle, smashing windows in the shops of inoffensive storekeepers. We need to start smashing servers and burning semis. Don't like it, what are you going to do about it? Only when the source of the wealth is threatened will the 1% even deign no notice our existence.
I believe that one would have to be an idiot to pay for television in America, and I hold that the facts on the ground bear me out on this one.
Interestingly, nobody has pointed out that the Republicans used the power of government to interfere with how VW wanted to run its business. Funny that regulations to prevent toxics from being spilled into the waterways are unwarranted interference in the marketplace, while government threatening punitive actions against a business if they allow (gasp) unions to help run the plant more efficiently with workers counsels (standard practice in Germany) is defense of freedom. Probably linked to Benghazi somehow...
The 1% have noticed - that's why all the pushback. What we need to do is keep up the pressure. Start with billboards saying "Billionaires are good at creating jobs - in China" - put them up in Kansas.
Agreed. If anything exemplifies government interference with the rights of businesses to run their companies the way they choose, it would be actual government officials actually interfering with an actual business actually trying to run actual company the way it actually chooses.
But you are correct, that sort of interference is not actually interference interference so shut up you dirty pot smoking hippie liberal leftist union goon.
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