Intense Anti-Union Campaign Sinks UAW Effort At Tenn. VW Plant

Workers as a Chattanooga, Tenn. Volkswagen plant have narrowly voted down a proposal to join the United Auto Workers Union, amid suggestions by the state’s lawmakers that a vote to join the union could end important incentives for the plant or keep the plant from being awarded major projects. UAW’s $5 million, two-year campaign was not challenged by VW, a German company. In the wake of the vote, some said UAW would have to reconsider how it goes about attempting to organize foreign-owned factories in the U.S., and some suggested the union’s long-term plan to organize auto workers in the South may have been dealt a fatal blow with the closely-watched vote.