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(Reuters) - The United Auto Workers, surprising even its supporters, on Monday abruptly withdrew its legal challenge to a union organizing vote that it lost at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee in February. Just an hour before the start of a National Labor Relations Board hearing on the challenge, the union dropped its case, casting a cloud over its long and still unsuccessful push to organize foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. South.VW workers due to testify in the NLRB hearing were already at the courthouse in downtown Chattanooga when they heard the news, which left lawyers in...

Thus marks the end of the United Auto Workers’ foray into unionizing Southern auto manufacturing. Despite cooperative management at Volkswagen, the UAW failed to convince workers in its Chattanooga facility to unionize. The union alleged interference and demanded a hearing at the National Labor Relations Board to force a revote, but unexpectedly withdrew just before the hearing was scheduled to start:

The United Auto Workers announced Monday it is withdrawing an appeal of the outcome of a union vote at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Tennessee. In a statement released one hour before the scheduled start of a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Chattanooga, Tenn., UAW President Bob King said the union decided to put the “tainted election in the rearview mirror” because the challenge could have taken months or even years to come to a conclusion. …

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The UAW announced today it is withdrawing objections filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regarding February's vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, effectively terminating the NLRB review process. UAW President Bob King said the decision was made in the best interests of Volkswagen employees, the automaker, and economic development in Chattanooga. King said the UAW based its decision on the belief that the NLRB’s historically dysfunctional and complex process potentially could drag on for months or even years. Additionally, the UAW cited refusals by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker to...

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Democrats in the U.S. House on Wednesday opened an "inquiry" into whether Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam's administration might have violated federal labor law by attempting to tie state incentives for expansion of the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant to the outcome of an election over representation by the United Auto Workers union. The probe is yet another chapter in the ongoing debate over whether Republican officials, including Haslam and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, may have interfered in the February election in which workers voted 712-626 to reject the UAW, which was attem

Controversial housing finance reform legislation making its way through the Senate Banking Committee was co-written by a former mortgage trader for Countrywide Financial and Wachovia, two of the subprime mortgage behemoths at the center of the housing market crash in 2007.Michael Bright, the senior financial adviser to Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), worked as a trader and member of the loan-pricing desk at Countrywide Financial from 2002 to 2006, and as a senior trader for Wachovia from 2006 to 2008.Bright joined Corker’s office in 2010, and has been a key figure in crafting the Corker-Warner housing reform bill and the...

Bernd Osterloh, who is the Volkswagen AG General and Group Works Council chairman, said that future investments in the South might be hurt if workers will not unionize, according to Reuters. The comments come days after Volkswagen Chattanooga workers voted against representation by the United Auto Workers Union. After years of quiet work by union leaders and a contentious campaigning period, officials announced Friday night that Volkswagen employees opted against UAW representation with a 712-626 vote. But at that announcement, Volkswagen Chattanooga President Frank Fischer said the vote wasn't against the works council and that there is still support for...

Labor: Union bosses have contended for some time that a secret ballot isn't needed to unionize a workplace. All that's needed, they said, was employees' signatures on cards. But Chattanooga proved them wrong. For months the United Auto Workers have said a majority of workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee had signed cards expressing their interest in unionizing. Why bother with a secret ballot when the workers had already spoken through the "card check" approval process? Before a much-anticipated and widely followed union-representation vote held last week, the AP reported that Gary Casteel, Tennessee-based regional director for the UAW,...

In a huge defeat for the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, workers in Tennessee voted 712 to 626 against union representation at a Volkswagen plant. This event may be remembered in the future as one of the final nails in the union coffin. We can only hope so but this news is fantastic, and even better as the UAW had a lot of advantages going into the vote. First, Volkswagen was in favor of unionization and had already been conducting talks with the UAW. Normally, businesses are hostile to unions as they are a cancerous parasite that will slowly sap...

You won’t hear much about this week’s defeat for the United Auto Workers. The thugs were trying to unionize Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant workers. This was no ordinary defeat. It is best described as a death knell for the UAW’s efforts to unionize the South and forcibly use the increase in union dues to finance further destruction of America by their pals in the Democrat Party. That’s over now. There were a few important reasons for the kick in the teeth the union took, but one you certainly won’t hear mentioned is that “Jonah” Obama who brings defeat to Democrats wherever...

In a close vote, yet one that was widely expected to be favorable to the union, workers at the Tennessee Volkswagen plant rejected an offer by the United Auto Workers to unionize the Volkswagen operations in the state by a 712-626 vote against union. “Last week's vote at the plant - which was 53 percent to 47 percent against the UAW,” writes Reuters, “dealt a body blow to the union, which has been unable to expand into auto plants in the U.S. South, even as its ranks have declined elsewhere.” The election is seen as a major rebuff in the...

“The United Auto Workers union suffered a crushing defeat Friday, falling short in an election in which it seemed to have a clear path to organizing workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.,” the [1] Wall Street Journal [1] reported Saturday. “The setback is a bitter defeat because the union had the cooperation of Volkswagen management and the aid of Germany’s powerful IG Metall union, yet it failed to win a majority among the plants 1,550 hourly workers.”One cannot emphasize the magnitude of this loss. What it clearly spells out is the irrelevance of the old industrial unions in today’s...

The three Associated Press reports I've seen on the UAW's failure to win the right to represent hourly workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee — the first two were covered in NewsBusters posts here and here; the wire service's 3:52 p.m. report is here — all mention in one way or another what UAW President Bob King is now calling "unprecedented outside interference" in the runup to the election. (VW, which can only run the factory with the kind of "workers councils" it has at its other worldwide plants in the U.S. if its workers are represented by...

Workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee have voted against union representation in a devastating defeat for the United Auto Workers union's effort to make inroads in the South. The 712-626 vote released late Friday was surprising for many labor experts and union supporters who expected a UAW win because Volkswagen tacitly endorsed the union and even allowed organizers into the Chattanooga factory to make sales pitches. "This is like an alternate universe where everything is turned upside down," Cliff Hammond, a labor lawyer at in Detroit, told The Wall Street Journal, noting that companies usually fight union drives. "This...

In a stunning defeat that could accelerate the decades-long decline of the United Auto Workers, employees voted against union representation at Volkswagen AG's Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant, a factory seen as organized labor's best chance to expand in the U.S. South. An official overseeing the vote, retired judge Sam Payne, said that a majority had voted against UAW representation by 712 to 626. While voting was under way on Wednesday, Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker said VW would announce new investment in the plant if the UAW lost the secret ballot.

A key victory for the UAW is on the line. Friday is the last day of a union-organizing vote at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. At stake is whether the German automaker's sole plant in the U.S. will be represented by the United Auto Workers. But it's also much more than that: The battle being waged in Chattanooga is being billed as a seminal moment that will either pave the way for more labor unions in the South, or affirm the continuation of a "right to work" region that is UAW-free. Going into the three-day election, the vote was...

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee (Reuters) - In a stinging defeat that could accelerate the decades-long decline of the United Auto Workers, Volkswagen AG workers voted against union representation at a Chattanooga, Tennessee plant, which had been seen as organized labor's best chance to expand in the U.S. South. The loss, 712 to 626, capped a sprint finish to a long race and was particularly surprising for UAW supporters, because Volkswagen had allowed the union access to the factory and officially stayed neutral on the vote, while other manufacturers have been hostile to organized labor.

Workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee have voted against union representation, a devastating loss that derails the United Auto Workers union’s effort to organize Southern factories. The 712-626 vote released late Friday stunned many labor experts who expected a UAW win because Volkswagen tacitly endorsed the union and even allowed organizers into the Chattanooga factory to make sales pitches. The UAW for decades has tried without success to organize a foreign-owned plant in a region that’s wary of organized labor. The loss now makes it even harder for the union to recruit members at another Southern factory. “If they...

Big Labor has just suffered a blow in the South. Thanks in large part to efforts by Americans for Tax Reform to expose the left-wing United Auto Workers, employees at Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Volkswagen assembly plant have rejected the labor union’s representation in a vote of 712-626. The Detroit Free Press reports on the implications: The defeat, which came despite Volkswagen’s neutrality, tarnishes UAW President Bob King’s legacy and could make it next to impossible for the union to extend its reach beyond domestic automakers.