UAW President Bob King speaks with the media inside the Chattanooga Electrical Apprenticeship and Training Center after the vote was announced in this file photo.Volkswagen workers cut off the march south for the United Auto Workers union last week.
UAW President Bob King called the union defeat “a temporary setback” and vowed to continue organizing efforts in the traditionally non-union South. King also said the union’s legal staff “is reviewing all of our options,” including a possible challenge to the election results based on what he said were “threats and intimidation” by Tennessee Republican leaders.
“One great thing about the UAW and one thing great about workers is that we don’t quit,” he said after workers rejected representation by the Detroit-based union. “We get back up when we get knocked down and we’ll fight another day.”
But after a two-year organizing campaign in Chattanooga, the defeat may have cost the union its best chance to get a toehold among the foreign-owned car companies that have located across the South over the past three decades. Unlike other auto makers, Volkswagen did not resist the UAW and allowed its representatives to publicly campaign last week in the plant.
“This was UAW’s best shot in the South so these results are a big blow for the union,” Stephen Silvia, an associate professor of economics and a labor expert at American University, said Saturday. “I think their future does depend on organizing foreign transplants and Volkswagen was the only one of these companies to sign a neutrality agreement and not resist the UAW.”