ABSTRACT
In the midst of a long but increasingly successful organizing campaign at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a political firestorm was unleashed. Breaking with precedent, the Tennessee state government interfered in the union certification election. Elected officials threatened to withdraw government support and subsidies from the plant if the workers voted to unionize. This act, one that put state jobs at risk and served as an unwarranted third party intervention in private labor relations, was credited with the narrow union defeat at Volkswagen. When the union challenged the election, Volkswagen management, to the surprise of observers, supported the union’s legal challenge. Management’s support for the UAW’s organizing campaign defied popular expectations that union growth necessarily results in capital flight. Political opposition to unionization clarified for many observers that private employers sometimes offered a less significant obstacle to labor organization than the hostility of anti-union politicians. 1
