Volkswagen's Lasting Lesson for Labor

In all the comment on the vote against the United Automobile Workers in Chattanooga, something has been missed. Rejecting the union needn’t mean rejecting the idea of effective worker representation. The decision is an opportunity for labor and management to show the auto industry in particular and corporate America in general that they can work more productively together.

By a vote of 712-626, workers at the Volkswagen plant said no to the UAW despite the automaker’s tacit support for the union campaign. The UAW complained of outside political interference, but the main problem was the union’s reputation as an adversary of management, implicated in the long decline of the U.S. auto industry. There are better models for industrial relations, tried and proved elsewhere, based on cooperation over confrontation. The vote may advance those prospects in the U.S.