I'm neither pro-union nor anti-union. I don't know enough about it to have an opinion. However, watching this movie last night, I realized that a union was a good thing for these particular workers. So at the end when they were tallying up the votes, why would 300 (and some) people vote against it??
share300+ voted against it. Why??
Remember that this mill had been around for a long time, in abject conditions; yet the people never unionized after all those years. The area is also filled with uneducated, insular, conservative folks.
Basically, the people were resistant to change and / or ignorant of what a union does. That's why so many of them still voted against the union. It was just the setting and the people