With the Feds still investigating top UAW leaders, the UAW is making another attempt to unionize VW’s workers in Tennessee.
CHATTANOOGA, TN—Five years after its humiliating defeat, and amid a corruption scandal embroiling the union’s top leadership, the United Auto Workers is attempting to unionize Volkswagen’s workers in Chattanooga again.
On Tuesday, the UAW filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking the NLRB to hold an election for all of its production and maintenance workers.
The union is calling for the plant’s production and maintenance workers to vote on April 29 and April 30, according one press report.
Following the UAW’s plant-wide loss in 2014, the UAW was successful in winning an election amongst the VW’s skilled trades employees. However, VW refused to recognize the union, arguing that unionization should encompass both the production and maintenance employees.
Unlike its prior attempts at unionizing Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the UAW has not been as public about its efforts.
The UAW’s newest election attempt is “the latest effort for labor organizations to get a foothold in the South,” notes Bloomberg’s BNA. “It follows failed attempts to unionize a Nissan assembly plant in Canton, Miss., and at a Kumho Tire facility in Macon, Ga.”
According to NewsChannel 9, Volkswagen has not issued a formal statement about the UAW’s most-recent petition yet.
“We are reviewing the petition, so it is too soon for us to comment,” Amanda Plecas, a Volkwagen spokeswoman, stated.
Related:
- Despite company’s help, Volkswagen workers deliver ‘devastating defeat’ to UAW
- UAW May Have Spent Nearly $8,000 Per Vote At VW
- Foiled Again! UAW fails (for now) to strip VW employees of secret-ballot election
- After Volkswagen Loss, UAW Bosses Turn To Bovine Excrement Manufacturing
- Sweetheart Deals Hurt Labor
- Irony: As UAW Targets Volkswagen Plant, VW Dealer Techs Try To Decertify Union
- The UAW Ultimatum: Let us in or we’ll huff and we’ll puff and tear your house down…
Disclosure: In 2014, after having written about the UAW’s plot to infiltrate the South since 2010, a friend asked me whether I would be willing to help the Volkswagen employees who were opposed to unionization by the UAW.
Without hesitation, I said yes and, over the course of approximately three weeks (for which we were paid by a non-profit worker center—similar to those worker centers that unions use today), my friend and I were able to help a team of VW employees discover the truth behind the UAW’s deception that had been foisted on the Chattanooga workforce—simply by providing the employees with the NLRB’s own document, The Basic Guide to the National Labor Relations Act and helping to explain the law’s ramifications.
