Watching how the newly announced bid plays out for a second United Auto Workers union election at Volkswagen should prove interesting.
UAW lost the first vote on Valentine's Day 2014 by a 712 to 626 vote after the state's Republican politicians piled on with scare tactics insinuating that VW's new SUV would not be built here and the plant would not expand if the union won. The politicians were able to do that because they controlled the pay stream for VW incentives.
Now that particular threat - and extortion opportunity - is past.
This time the election will involve only the 164 full and part-time maintenance and skilled-trades employees, a group which UAW's Local 42 here feels sure are on board. Under a filing with the National Labor Relations Board, the UAW is seeking to hold a two-day election next week.
A rival group, the home-grown American Council of Employees, is seeking to become VW's U.S. version of the automaker's Global Group Works Council - something in place in almost all of VW's 60-plus plants around the world. A works council is not a standard union; it's something the Germans term "co-determination," which places workers and management together in a team. But it would only be legal in the United States with a labor union involvement.
David Reed, ACE's president, claims UAW's new election bid is trying to take advantage of the "great stress and uncertainty" for VW-Chattanooga employees and the Volkswagen organization as a whole as the automaker struggles under VW's ongoing emissions cheating scandal.
The UAW has said Local 42 has signed up 816 members, or 55 percent of the blue collar workforce at the plant. ACE has said in federal filings that it has signed up 381 members among hourly and salaried workers.
It's a fair bet that UAW officials view using this small-group election as a nearly certain way of getting a foot in the door at VW. And it's also a fair bet that UAW views working with VW's "works council" as opening the door for a new kind union membership in America. Perhaps a newfangled, kinder, gentler union that the South - maybe even Republicans - could wrap their heads around.
In the past three decades, the percentage of union workers in metro Chattanooga has fallen from a high of 22.7 percent to 6 percent, and nationwide from 18 percent to 11.1 percent, according to union stats.com.
At the same time, the American dream has been slipping. Middle-class incomes shrank nearly 10 percent since 2000. In metro Chattanooga, the 1989 median family income rose by more than $20,000 a year, though in today's dollars, we actually have 5.6 percent less buying power, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, average middle-class debt has doubled.
As union membership declined, income inequality grew and middle America's buying power dropped.
Interesting correlation.