On Friday afternoon, a reporter friend of mine emailed me to ask what I thought would happen that night when the votes were counted at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. Would the UAW finally break through and organize a  “transplant,” an auto plant owned by a foreign company?

I wrote: “Hoping I’m wrong, I think the workers vote no by 53-47 margin.”

I nailed it exactly, the result of a combination of twenty-three years working in the labor movement and years more studying it, my own skeptical temperament — which, when others shout “¡Si se puede!” makes me think, “Hey, this is tougher than you think” — and, mostly, dumb luck.