In a stunning defeat that could accelerate the decades-long decline of the United Auto Workers, employees voted against union representation at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which had been regarded as organised labour’s best chance of expanding in the US south.  An official overseeing the vote, retired Tennessee circuit court judge Sam Payne, said a majority had voted against UAW representation by 712 to 626. About 89% of workers voted, he said.  The plant’s workers voted by a paper ballot over three days, with individual votes hand-counted after the election closed at 8:30pm on Friday.  The loss could further dent the prestige of the UAW, membership of which had plummeted 75% since 1979 and now stood at less than 400,000.  It was also likely to reinforce the widely held notion that the UAW could not make significant inroads in a region that historically had been steadfastly against organised labour and where all foreign-owned assembly plants employed non-union workers.  The vote faced fierce resistance from local Republican politicians and national conservative groups, who warned a UAW victory could hurt economic growth in Tennessee.  While voting was under way on Wednesday, Republican senator Bob Corker said VW would make new investments in the plant if the UAW lost the ballot.  “We think it’s unfortunate that there was some outside influence exerted into this process,” said the regional director of the UAW Gary Casteel after the results were announced, adding that the influence needed to be “evaluated”.  Legal experts earlier in the day said they saw difficulties in challenging the vote against unionisation, based on Corker’s comments, given the broad free speech protection for senators.  President Barack Obama waded into the discussion on Friday, accusing Republican politicians who opposed unionisation of being more concerned about German shareholders than US workers.  For VW, the stakes also were high. The German car-maker invested $US1bn ($900m) in the Chattanooga plant, which began building Passat mid-size sedans in April 2011, after being awarded more than $US577 million in state and local incentives.  VW executives said a seven-passenger crossover vehicle, due in 2016 and known internally as CrossBlue, could be built at either the Chattanooga plant or in Mexico.  An announcement on where the vehicle would be made could come as early as next week, VW sources said.
Ballot is a crushing blow to hopes of United Auto Workers to expand into the South and reverse years of falling membership