Hourly employees at Volkwagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee working on a Passat sedan.
Workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant have voted against union representation in a stinging defeat for the United Auto Workers, which left the union no closer to its goal of organizing auto workers in the Southern part of the United States.
On Friday, following three days of secret balloting, Volkswagen workers voted against joining the union by a margin of 712 to 626, according to a count conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.
The decision follows a bitter campaign in which conservative groups and Tennessee’s Republican political establishment mounted an intense push to defeat the union – including warnings from state government officials that they would withhold further incentives promised to VW.
UAW President Bob King said, “While we certainly would have liked a victory for workers here, we deeply respect the Volkswagen Global Group Works Council, Volkswagen management and IG Metall for doing their best to create a free and open atmosphere for workers to exercise their basic human right to form a union.”
The UAW has been struggling for three decades to organize workers at the various foreign-owned automotive assembly plants that have popped up across the country, the VW factory in Chattanooga just one of the newest.
The union had originally thought it was on the path to victory because VW officials indicated they would not contest the UAW organizing drive. In fact, the company’s seemingly tacit support drew the ire of anti-union forces.
Gary Casteel, who directs the UAW’s Southern organizing blamed the defeat on an anti-union campaign led by Tennessee’s Republican U.S. Senator Robert Corker, a former Chattanooga mayor.
(Click Here for more on the battle leading up to this week’s vote.)
“Unfortunately, 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,” Casteel said.
“While we’re outraged by politicians and outside special interest groups interfering with the basic legal right of workers to form a union, we’re proud that these workers were brave and stood up to the tremendous pressure from outside,” said UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams, who directs the union’s transnational program., who will replace King as UAW president in June.
Corker this past week had stepped up his criticism by predicting a UAW presence would destroy jobs throughout Tennessee.
“If you look at the reputation the UAW’s left behind them, if you look at Detroit, how many companies from South Korea or Japan or Germany, how many of them you think make a stop in Detroit to look at locating there?” Corker said at a news conference. “I don’t think our employees, the wonderful people we have at the Volkswagen plant, I don’t think they fully understand the type of culture that the UAW creates inside a facility.”
(VW hopes new Golf will reignite sputtering U.S. sales. Click Here for more.)
A union victory would have energized the UAW’s efforts to organize workers at other plants operated by international companies across the South.
Nissan turned back a union organizing drive in 2001 but the UAW has been hoping it could gain a foothold at the maker’s newest assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi by carrying momentum over from a win in Tennessee.
(VW nudges pass GM, now world’s second best-selling automaker. Click Here for the story.)
Ironically, the decision by workers at the Tennessee plant could backfire on them and on anti-union forces. Volkswagen had actually been hoping to create a so-called works council similar to the ones at its German plants where labor has an equal seat on parent Volkswagen AG’s board of supervisors. The rejection of the UAW – and thus of a works council could lead the maker to rethink its plans to expand the Chattanooga plant to produce a new crossover-utility vehicle, the CrossBlue.
“Our employees have not made a decision that they are against a works council,” said Frank Fischer, CEO and Chairman of Volkswagen Chattanooga, noting the company is waiting for final certification of the election results by the NLRB. “On behalf of Volkswagen Group of America, I want to thank all of our Chattanooga production and maintenance employees for their participation in this week’s vote. They have spoken, and Volkswagen will respect the decision of the majority.”
(Paul A. Eisenstein contributed to this report.)