I'd also like to point out that even though ShaddamIV had toggled the state of the "Start automatically when VMware Fusion launches" check box nonetheless it apparently had not written to the powerOnAtStartup.cfg array in the com.vmware.fusion.plist file as it should have so there is definitely an issue and he is not the only one with that issue.  My suggestion of using defaults to write to the powerOnAtStartup.cfg array com.vmware.fusion.plist file was meant to see if that would make any difference having the value present and it didn't which furthers the reasonable assumption that there is a bug in VMware Fusion regarding this feature!