When the United Auto Workers surprisingly withdrew their National Labor Relations Board objections over their devastating loss at Volkswagen, UAW Region 8 boss Gary Casteel sent a letter to VW employees stating that the “UAW is here to stay.”
In response to Casteel’s letter, Volkswagen employees opposed to unionization by the UAW penned an open letter to Casteel on their NO2UAW.com website.
In their letter, VW employees point out the UAW’s hypocrisy when, in 2009, the UAW opposed the Volkswagen plant from being built, as well as called into question the hypocrisy of the UAW now declaring its intent to help push for the Volkswagen plant’s expansion after implying for more than a year that the plant needed to be unionized in order to get the VW expansion.
Mr. Casteel,
We recently received a letter from you (addressed to our homes) stating that you have asked Volkswagen to award us the planned SUV and that your “goal has not changed”. (click to see letter)
However, in August 2009 the UAW submitted a letter to the Foreign Trade Zone Board opposing our jobs in Chattanooga. In the letter the UAW expressed its desire to stop “any potential increase in income and employment in Chattanooga…”(page 2). (click to see FTZ letter)
For the past year the UAW has also implied that we wouldn’t get expansion in Chattanooga without the UAW and a Works Council. Bob King even said, “If I was a worker….and I wanted to have the best chance of getting new investment and new product, I would want a voice on the World Employee Council” (Automotive News, June 24th, 2013).
Mr. Casteel, how can you say your goal has not changed?
Citing the NLRB’s own publication as evidence, the VW employees question Casteel on how the UAW would establish a Works Council when, as the “exclusive bargaining representative” it would be illegal for the UAW delegate its authority–and for VW to “bargain with individual employees, with a group of employees, or with another employee representative.”
In referencing the UAW’s devastating defeat in February the Volkswagen employees conclude their letter by bluntly asking Casteel, “What is it about the word “NO” that you don’t understand?”
Read the Volkswagen employees’ letter to Casteel here.
