The consent of the governed.

[Econoline]

That seems like a pretty simplistic explanation for what happened, and that the influence here is being grossly exaggerated...

We live in a country where less than half the adult citizens can even name one of their US Senators let alone know or care what they're saying; I think who ever wrote that is projecting their own interest in politics on to others in an inappropriate way. (And of course being led to their conclusion by their biases; they don't want to believe that a majority of the workers could honestly have concluded that this wasn't in their best interests on the merits; they prefer to find some external reason to blame.)

I don't think so. Pretty much every Republican in Tennessee was on board and on message, and the message was closely tageting the workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga assembly plant. And as rubato points out, they only had to sway a very few workers: if only 44 (out of 1338--that's 3%) of them had voted the other way, the UAW would have won.

The Republicans in general and Sen. Corker in particular were making the sort of threats which, if made by the company, would have been clearly illegal under U.S. labor laws. In other words, they very loudly--with as much publicity as possible--made the threats they wished VW would make...at whatever cost to the state's economy. Was it credible that the Tennessee state government could have followed up and forced VW to cut back on (and/or move to other states) any expansion of their U.S. production? I don't know. You tell me. But it's certainly credible to me that at least a few dozen VW employees might have thought the threat was credible.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Maybe they looked at Detroit. Maybe they were happy with the pay rate and beni's they were getting. Maybe the union didn't offer much more than they had already?

I was never in a union, I always wanted to rewarded (or not) for my own performance, not some arbitrary step. But when I worked for motorola they had a PAC that I refused to "donate" to. I always wonder if that factored in to my being layed off.

Union can be good, and unions can be bad. These people have been working for more than a few years without a union and they seem to be satisfied with their lot in life.

[Econoline]

Maybe they looked at Detroit. Maybe they were happy with the pay rate and beni's they were getting. Maybe the union didn't offer much more than they had already?

Well, yeah...of course those are possible reasons for some (or maybe even most) of the "NO" votes. But it was a very close election, and it's also entirely possible (or even probable) that there were enough of the workers swayed by the politicians' (loud, public, repeated and constant) threats to punish VW if the plant unionized so that that also was a likely reason for some of the "NO" votes--enough votes to change the results. (As I pointed out before, only 44 votes were needed to change the vote from "YES" to "NO" or vice versa.)

My point was just that it was a matter between the company and the workers, and since it didn't affect them personally the way it affected the workers involved, the (Republican) politicians should have just stayed the hell away from something that was none of their business.

(edited for punctuation and to remove a redundant word)

[rubato]

Well it is a pity that the Republicans reverted to their usual Hate-Union, Hate-workers form. The works councils represent a beneficial change to our system and an experiment which deserved to be tried.


yrs,
rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

The works councils represent a beneficial change to our system and an experiment which deserved to be tried.

Did they get a chance to vote on a "work council" or was this a straight up union vote? Seems work councils may be a compromise that all could be OK with.

[rubato]

The "works council" was part of the package. go read the articles.

No, they were threatened and bullied instead.

By the party who thought threatening to hurt the entire country by shutting it down to get what they wanted was an appropriate use of political power.


yrs,
rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

I did read them but I missed this part

the details of the arrangement would be ironed out after the election,

Maybe those details should be done before the vote, this way those affected could have more data to make more informed decision.
There are "kneejerk" reactions to the words "forming a union" on both sides. People look to what has happened in the past and see either the good or bad of unionization.
Maybe VW should have presented a more detailed plan regarding what would happen if a union vote came out posititve. Seems they were for the union and the work councils that would have been setup.

[oldr_n_wsr]

From here:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... gn_id=yhoo

Volkswagen's Lasting Lesson for Labor
In all the comment on the vote against the United Automobile Workers in Chattanooga, something has been missed. Rejecting the union needn’t mean rejecting the idea of effective worker representation. The decision is an opportunity for labor and management to show the auto industry in particular and corporate America in general that they can work more productively together.

By a vote of 712-626, workers at the Volkswagen (VOW:GR) plant said no to the UAW despite the automaker’s tacit support for the union campaign. The UAW complained of outside political interference, but the main problem was the union’s reputation as an adversary of management, implicated in the long decline of the U.S. auto industry. There are better models for industrial relations, tried and proved elsewhere, based on cooperation over confrontation. The vote may advance those prospects in the U.S.

In Germany, works councils take a more collaborative view of a company’s future, and VW is well-suited to export this approach to the U.S. Its deputy chairman is the former head of IG Metall, Germany’s equivalent of the UAW, and labor representatives make up half its supervisory board. The company says it will propose a council for the Chattanooga plant.

Works councils based on the German model cooperate with management over safety standards, scheduling matters, dispute resolution, improvements of production line efficiency, and other shop floor conditions. Separately, IG Metall negotiates over wages and benefits. In Chattanooga, workers could continue to negotiate individually over pay and benefits, and the works council could handle plantwide issues such as training employees on new equipment.

Some labor law experts say VW can’t form a works council without a union first gaining recognition. They say the National Labor Relations Act deems such a committee a “labor organization” that must be put to a worker vote. Actually, the law isn’t clear on the point. But if the courts rule that it does forbid councils without a union’s involvement, the law should be changed.

It can’t be right for U.S. labor law to prevent managers and workers from collaborating to make a production line more efficient. Or to resolve disputes without strikes. Or to keep an assembly line running around the clock. More flexibility and less confrontation, with workers’ views being heard and respected, would help companies succeed in the global marketplace—and their workers could then seek higher wages without putting their jobs at risk.

This hasn’t been the UAW’s approach. In Detroit it negotiated hourly wages, benefits, and everlasting job security that priced the Big Three automakers out of the market. Far from seeking higher productivity, the union resisted it. A generation of managers grew reluctant to push big ideas or make labor-saving changes for fear of provoking the UAW.

[rubato]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... attanooga/

Could the United Auto Workers get a do-over in Chattanooga?

By Lydia DePillis
February 24 at 8:33 am

United Auto Workers (UAW) President Bob King answers questions during a press conference at the Chattanooga Electrical Apprenticeship and Training Center after the announcement that UAW lost its bid to represent the 1,550 blue-collar workers at Volkswagen AG's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee February 14, 2014. In a stinging defeat that could accelerate the decades-long decline of the UAW, employees voted against union representation at the Chattanooga plant, which had been seen as organized labor's best chance to expand in the U.S. South.


After employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. narrowly voted against joining the United Auto Workers a couple weeks ago, union officials vowed the fight wasn't over: Outside groups had muddled the results with "threats and intimidation," they said, and the election shouldn't stand. On Friday, they lodged a formal objection with the National Labor Relations Board, asking it to hold the whole thing over again.

It's one of the most important union battles of this young century, given how much the UAW has staked on organizing Volkswagen for its strategy to take back the South, which has lured dozens of foreign automakers over the years by promising freedom from pesky labor unions. And it's one the UAW should have won: In an extremely rare circumstance, Volkswagen actually supported organization as a means to create the kind of collaborative management structure that exists in the rest of its factories. It even jointly filed the objection with the UAW.

So do Volkswagen and the union have a chance? Well, maybe -- but it's going to be a pretty high bar to clear, because politicians typically have wide latitude to say what they want about whether or not a company should go union. ... The UAW, though, is aiming to prove something different: Not simply that politicians made statements about the union drive either way, but that they actively threatened to cause trouble for the company if its employees went union, and had the authority to back it up. That's the substance of the Tennessee GOP's prediction that tax incentives for further expansion at Volkswagen would be jeopardized if the UAW successfully organized it. In addition, the UAW claims, Sen. Bob Corker's (R) "assurance" that Volkswagen would make its new line of SUVs in Chattanooga if the union were rejected created a situation in which voting for the union put future growth at the plant -- and, to a certain degree, a worker's job security -- at risk. ... "

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

So you believe that it would have been better to have the UAW representing the workers at VW?

Based on their glowing track record?

Jesus.