Workers at the new VW plant in Tennessee may get another chance to vote for a union, if the UAW's appeal of the recent election results is successful.
When UAW President Bob King said the union had no plans to leave Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., he apparently meant it as it filed an appeal today contesting the recent election with the National Labor Relations Board.
After weeks of bitter back and forth about the potential impact of the UAW on the plant, workers and the region, the workers voted against UAW representation 712 to 626. The union is claiming politicians and special interest groups interfered with its efforts to organize the plant. The NLRB is investigating the complaint, an official told TheDetroitBureau.com.
“It’s an outrage that politically motivated third parties threatened the economic future of this facility and the opportunity for workers to create a successful operating model that that would grow jobs in Tennessee,” King said in a statement.
“It is extraordinary interference in the private decision of workers to have a U.S. senator, a governor and leaders of the state legislature threaten the company with the denial of economic incentives and workers with a loss of product.”
King is referencing the statements from U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who claimed just days before the election that he had spoken with representatives from Volkwagen AG and was told that the plant would get additional work if the employees voted down union representation.
Volkswagen officials immediately denied making the statements. Corker, a staunch anti-union politician, has backed away from the statements. All of Volkswagen’s plants worldwide have some form of union representation, except Chattanooga.
“Senator Corker’s conduct was shameful and undertaken with utter disregard for the rights of the citizens of Tennessee and surrounding states that work at Volkswagen,” the filing states. “The clear message of the campaign was that voting for the union would result in stagnation for the Chattanooga plant, with no new product, no job security, and withholding of state support for its expansion.”
(Honda kicks off Fit production in Mexico. For more, Click Here.)
The objection, as its formally titled, also cited Governor William Haslam, State House Speaker Beth Harwell, State House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, Senate Speaker Pro Tem Bo Watson, Chairman of the State Senate Commerce and Labor Committee Jack Johnson, and Vice-Chairman of the State Senate Commerce and Labor Committee Mark Green, as playing key roles in a “coordinated and widely-publicized coercive campaign, in concert with their staffs and others, to deprive VWGOA workers of their federally-protected right, through the Election, to support and select the UAW as their exclusive representative under Section 9(a) of the National Labor.”
(Click Here to check out how the UAW recalibrated at the VW defeat.)
Watson was widely quoted as saying VW would be unlikely to get any state incentives for future expansion of the plant. The union also cites instances in which those threats were repeated by anti-union organizations directly to plant employees.
The UAW loss by less than 90 votes, 712 to 626, was seen as a victory for anti-union activists and the conservative politicians in the southeast. In fact, several said they would begin campaigns at other non-union plants in the southeastern U.S. to keep the UAW out.
(To see the war of words each side engaged in during the UAW vote, Click Here.)
Politicians were quick to jump on the bandwagon. Earlier this week, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley told the Greenville News that it is her job to “keep kicking (unions) out.” She added that she would tell any company with a unionized workforce considering a move to South Carolina to look elsewhere.
“It’s not something we want to see happen,” she said after an appearance at an automotive conference in downtown. “We discourage any companies that have unions from wanting to come to South Carolina because we don’t want to taint the water.”