The United Auto Workers (UAW) suffered a historic defeat in a union election at Nissan’s sprawling assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi in early August. Much has been written about the company’s overwhelming opposition to the union drive as well as some of the missteps the UAW took in its campaign.

Given the labor movement’s overall falling density across the United States since the 1950s, the abysmal success rate in NLRB-sponsored union elections, and some of the more high profile recent defeats, it’s clear that what has become the normal way of going about winning union representation isn’t working.

The labor movement should see this moment as a wake up call, and launch a frank discussion about what works and what doesn’t, and what kind of strategies unions should adopt if they ever hope to regrow their strength, let alone expand into regions beyond the traditional bastions of union strength. Given the crushing defeat of the Machinists at Boeing and the UAW at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN in the past few years, there’s urgency to the discussion — particularly to organizing the solidly anti-union South.