{"id":186362,"date":"2014-02-18T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/02\/18\/well-this-sucks-8\/"},"modified":"2014-02-18T20:45:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T01:45:00","slug":"well-this-sucks-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/02\/18\/well-this-sucks-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, This Sucks!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How the F%$# did the UAW manage to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/02\/volkswagen-workers-reject-uaw-103556.html?hp=l1\">lose a union election when Volkswagen was their biggest supporter<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., have rejected the United Auto Workers, shooting down the union\u2019s hopes of securing a foothold at a foreign-owned auto plant in the South.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The vote was 712 to 626, said the UAW, which blamed the loss on \u201cpoliticians and outside special interest groups.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The vote, announced late Friday night after three days of balloting, is a devastating loss for the UAW, whose membership has plummeted from a high of 1.5 million in 1979 to around 400,000 today. Outgoing UAW President Bob King had staked his legacy on organizing a Southern auto plant for the first time.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But the decision is a triumph for Tennessee Republicans like Sen. Bob Corker, who lured Volkswagen to Chattanooga as mayor in the early 2000s. Corker and other Republicans warned workers that the UAW\u2019s presence would irreparably harm the plant, and in recent days he claimed \u2014 with little evidence \u2014 that Volkswagen would choose not to expand the plant if workers unionized.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How the hell did they pull this off? <\/p>\n<p>This was like shooting fish in a barrel.&nbsp; VW wanted the union so that they could establish a &#8220;works council&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The UAW had advantages in organizing the Volkswagen plant it probably won\u2019t find elsewhere. For starters, Volkswagen \u2014 under pressure from the powerful German steelworkers\u2019 union, IG Metall, which holds seats on the company\u2019s board \u2014 decided not to resist unionization. The union\u2019s presence would have also allowed the company to set up a German-style \u201cworks council,\u201d in which representatives of both workers and middle management offer advice to executives on how to best run the plant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think this is a bellwether for future success for the UAW,\u201d said Donald Schroeder, a management-side labor lawyer at Mintz Levin, before the results were announced. \u201cThe UAW almost has had a free run at unionizing.\u201dThe UAW had advantages in organizing the Volkswagen plant it probably won\u2019t find elsewhere. For starters, Volkswagen \u2014 under pressure from the powerful German steelworkers\u2019 union, IG Metall, which holds seats on the company\u2019s board \u2014 decided not to resist unionization. The union\u2019s presence would have also allowed the company to set up a German-style \u201cworks council,\u201d in which representatives of both workers and middle management offer advice to executives on how to best run the plant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think this is a bellwether for future success for the UAW,\u201d said Donald Schroeder, a management-side labor lawyer at Mintz Levin, before the results were announced. \u201cThe UAW almost has had a free run at unionizing.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is an unmitigated disaster for the American worker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the F%$# did the UAW manage to lose a union election when Volkswagen was their biggest supporter? Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., have rejected the United Auto Workers, shooting down the union\u2019s hopes of securing a foothold at a foreign-owned auto plant in the South.The vote was 712 to 626, said the UAW, which &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1078,1000,1022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disaster","category-elections","category-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}