So it looks like the joke's on Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) and the workers at the Volkswagon plant that
voted down a measure to join the UAW last week.
Germany has a co-determination model that mandates workers councils, which are similar to unions in that they represent worker interests.
The head of Volkswagon's "Works Council" told a German newspaper that Volkswagon would now be hesitant to expand in the South as a result of the union vote.
"I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the South again," said works council leader Bernd Osterloh.
"If co-determination isn't guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor" of building another plant in the right-to-work South, Osterloh added.
The vote was
influenced by Corker and others who misled workers by telling them that if they voted down the union, Volkswagon would add new production at the plant, a claim that Volkswagon vehemently has denied.
Corker's interference is against the law and gives the National Labor Relations Board every reason to void the vote. However, it's not likely that the NLRB will do that because it's afraid of incurring the wrath of Congressional Republicans as they have gone after the NLRB in the past and have attempted to defund it and shut it down.
But the vote was definitely influenced illegally despite the fact that Volkswagon, the company, was IN FAVOR of unionization.
Hopefully with Corker's help the South has just fucked itself and we start to see a backlash and a migration of manufacturing jobs back up to the unionized North.
