It’s official: The United Auto Workers lost the representation vote at the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant. The cleverly named nooga.com has the story. The vote was close: 89 percent of workers voted, and they rejected the union by a 712-626 vote.

What’s remarkable about this is that the company and the union colluded in trying to get the workers to vote for union representation. The reason is that Volkswagen’s German union, IG Metall, which under German law has seats on the company’s board, wanted to install the UAW as the workers’ bargaining representatives. If you want to see evidence of this collusion, click on the link and look at the expressions on the faces of Volkswagen Chattanooga President Frank Fischer and UAW leader Gary Casteel. These are not happy campers. They still hold out of the prospect of some kind of workers’ council on which the union would represent the workers. But they seem to clearly understand that most of the plant’s employees don’t want UAW representation.