Volkswagen workers in Tennessee: Hey, thanks but no thanks, UAW!

Given the trail of destruction left in its wake in recent years, why would anyone want to join the United Auto Workers? If the choice made on Friday by Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga is any indication, they wouldn't.

The leaders of the United Auto Workers have quite the heroic view of themselves. You can hear it in their rhetoric. You can sense it in their organizing strategies. They are absolutely convinced - as are many of their media allies - that they are the only thing standing between workers and sweat shop squalor. They are also convinced that no union demand is ever too much, and no union overreach is ever possible. When they are forced to accept what union types call "givebacks" (which to the rest of us means they convinced the stone to give blood only to discover the stone has no blood), they do so only with the most sanctimonious posture and a promise that they will soon be back to reclaim what they still think is rightfully theirs.

---

That is the legend of the UAW. It is the only salvation of the workers. It never demands too much. It never causes a problem for an employer. It never detracts from quality. If only everyone would just go along with the UAW's agenda, everything would be fine. This has been the UAW's self-concept since the day it began, and the pivotal role it played in nearly driving the entire domestic auto industry to ruin just five years ago has changed this not in the slightest. It is as it was in the beginning, is now and forever shall be, world without end, amen. For Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga, however, there was the little matter of the UAW's actual track record to take into account when they gathered on Friday to vote on letting the UAW organize their plant:

Some opponents of the union said the near collapse of Detroit's Big Three automakers in 2008 played a key role in convincing many not to support the UAW. Others pointed to the two-tier contracts at U.S. auto plants and noted that some VW workers make more than new workers at U.S. plants.

Volkswagen employees are not stupid. They understand that letting the UAW come in and take over the process of negotiating wages, benefits and work rules does not necessarily ensure a brighter future for them at all. For one thing, it offers no guarantee that they will make even as much as they would have made just dealing with Volkswagen directly. What it does is take the process largely out of the workers' hands. Join the union and you are left to rely on the union to negotiate your entire employment package. You don't even get a say as an individual was to whether the deals they bring back are approved or not. You get a vote, but you are only one of many. And the Volkswagen employees clearly could see that the UAW's economic delusion over the years helped lead to the bloated labor costs that caused such a competitive imbalance between the Detroit Three and their southern transplant counterparts, and forced General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy. If you've got a good job working for Volkswagen in Chattanooga, why take the risk of getting in bed with the people who brought on that fiasco? And yet Bob King and the rest of his leadership can see none of this. Their response to the disaster of 2008? Go organize the foreign transplants! Because surely, after what happened in Detroit, they will want to experience the same awesomeness, yes? If you view the UAW according to the legend, as far too many in Michigan still do, you just might believe this is plausible. If you view the UAW according to its actual track record, you will do exactly what they did in Chattanooga yesterday, which is to run, as fast and as far as possible, from any danger of being chained to the sinking ship that is the UAW. The folks at Volkswagen live to work another day. As for the UAW? The legend lives on.