Column: UAW failed to make case in Tennessee

• VW workers rejected union by a vote of 712-636
• Tennessee%27s top Republicans criticized union and Detroit
• Union to review legal options regarding possible complaint about outside interference

What could be scarier than a blighted Detroit?

The monster that ate Detroit, of course. And that would be the UAW.

These were the messages blaring from billboards in Chattanooga, Tenn., in the weeks before the UAW lost its bid to represent workers at the Volkswagen auto assembly plant there, by a vote of 712-636 as tallied on Friday.

The lesson here is that the UAW, and American labor unions in general, are doomed unless they can make a more compelling case for the value proposition of union membership. Show how workers' lives will improve, how unions will help communities grow jobs — or become extinct.

The absence of that compelling case, as with any campaign decided at a ballot box, left a message vacuum filled by negative dispatches from powerful UAW foes.

Were those billboard ads about Detroit, with photos of the old Packard plant ruins, ludicrously simplistic and misleading?

Of course.

Were the anti-UAW slams from Tennessee's top Republican officeholders, Sen. Bob Corker and Gov. Bill Haslam, pure political fear-mongering, given that VW management was neutral and welcomed the idea of a works council, including the union?

Obviously.

None of that matters now, though, because the UAW failed to convince a majority of Chattanooga VW workers that their lives would be better with UAW than without it.

Could the UAW deliver better wages and benefits to VW workers, in return for the dues members would have to pay?

Clearly the union didn't make that case — didn't even try, really. VW line workers already make a base wage as good as new hires at Detroit Three plants.

What about workers having a voice in how the plant operates?

VW workers say they often get inquiries from plant management about their job satisfaction and ideas for improvements — and that management acts on them. A happy bunch, apparently.

Absent festering complaints or grievances among the rank-and-file, many workers were on the fence about the vote — and therefore, vulnerable to negative headlines about the bankruptcy of Detroit, the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors and arguments by opponents about UAW complicity in Detroit's decline.

UAW President Bob King, in an interview Sunday, said the union would review its legal options this week regarding a possible National Labor Relations Board complaint about outside interference. The union says the public anti-UAW statements by Corker and Haslam could be illegal intimidation under labor law.

Corker said the UAW was in a "death spiral" and suggested last week that Volkswagen would move future work to other plants instead of Chattanooga if the union prevailed. King said Sunday he thought Corker's comments violated "the spirit of the NLRB," but he wasn't sure Corker had crossed a legal line since he didn't speak on behalf VW.

Last year, UAW membership was about 382,000, or about 25% of its 1979 peak. Across all industries, union membership has dropped from about 20% three decades ago to 11.3%.

Halting or reversing that slide will be difficult, because just as with highly effective negative political ads, a negative labor reputation for discord or militance is hard to shake.

Indeed, the UAW has been dogged by image issues ever since VW was deciding in 2008 where to locate its new U.S. plant.

When King became UAW president in 2010, he said the union had changed after the near-death travails of Detroit's automakers.

"This is a UAW that understands the importance of global competitiveness," he told the Detroit Free Press editorial board then. "It is a UAW that went through this horrendous period of contraction in the industry because both labor and management had it wrong. Now I think we have it right, and we have good companies to work with."

At a speech in mid-2011, he told a Michigan business audience, "I believe that we must reject all types of extremism and all types of polarization."

Obviously, the political leadership of Tennessee hasn't bought King's mantra of the UAW as partner rather than adversary, even if VW was willing to give it a try.

Don't expect the UAW's road to get any easier in other locales, either. If Corker and Haslam seem like anti-union hardliners, heaven help anyone who tries to organize workers at BMW in South Carolina while Nikki Haley is governor.

"I love that we are one of the least-unionized states in the country. It is an economic development tool unlike any other," Haley said in her 2012 state of the state speech.

"Unions thrive in the dark," she added. "Secrecy is their greatest ally ... and we'll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted, and not welcome in the state of South Carolina."

Call it what you will — a bad rap spread by smear tactics, or just a bad rep, self-inflicted — but either way, the UAW and other labor unions are stuck with a serious perception problem.

In a globalized world where communities are desperate to attract and grow jobs, organized labor will survive only by articulating a clear, positive plan to help make that happen — and then deliver.