Volkswagen plans to appeal the National Labor Relations Board's most recent ruling about union representation in its Tennessee plant.
Volkswagen of America plans appeal a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that would have cleared a path for the United Auto Workers to negotiate a labor contract for 160 maintenance workers at VW plant in the state of Tennessee for the first time.
A three-member NLRB panel earlier this month had denied Volkswagen’s request for the agency to review a December 2015 election in which skilled-trades employees in Chattanooga voted overwhelmingly to designate UAW Local 42 as their collective bargaining representative, upholding results of an election supervised by the NLRB.
Volkswagen spokesman Scott Neal Wilson said the German automaker had not yet filed the actual appeal, but has decided to challenge the ruling. “We didn’t state that an appeal was filed, only the decision to do so,” he said.
The automaker argued that a skilled-trades-only bargaining unit at the company’s assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is not appropriate for collective bargaining since it only represents a fraction of the plant’s 1,600 employees. VW contended production and maintenance employees share a common community of interest and should have an equal voice in their workplace, according to VW representatives.
(NLRB denies VW appeal of union vote. For more, Click Here.)
The UAW pressed VW to negotiate a new contract for the 160 members of the unit approved by the NLRB, which would be the first negotiated at an auto plant in the South owned by an Asian or European carmaker. The Chattanooga plant has a total of 1,600 employees, but the number is expected to grow as the company prepares to use the plant to build a new sport utility vehicle, Cross Blue, which it views as critical to rebuilding the company’s sales in the U.S.
Gary Casteel, the UAW executive board member who has been in charge of the organizing effort in Chattanooga, said Volkswagen’s refusal to come to the bargaining table since the December election is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
Divided union representation is not uncommon at Volkswagen plants around the world or at work sites throughout the United States.
“If Volkswagen tries to force this matter into the federal court of appeals, we see it as a stall tactic that won’t work,” Casteel said.
(Click Here for details about the $18.2 billion hit VW is taking for the diesel scandal.)
“The appeals court with jurisdiction over the Chattanooga plant already has ruled that clearly identifiable employee units within a workforce, such as the skilled-trades unit at Volkswagen, can seek recognition in order to achieve collective bargaining,” said Casteel, adding U.S. courts have long ruled that unions can represent part of a company’s workforce.
“We reject the company’s claim that recognizing and bargaining with the skilled-trades employees would somehow splinter the workforce in Chattanooga. Recognizing clearly identifiable employee units is common in the U.S. Furthermore, Volkswagen plants all over the world — including in countries such as Italy, Russia and Spain — recognize multiple unions that represent portions of a workforce,” he noted.
“The reality is: Our UAW local union already represents a majority of the blue-collar workforce in Chattanooga. Volkswagen knows this because the company has verified our substantial membership level,” he said.
“If Volkswagen wants meaningful employee representation, the company is free to recognize the local union as the representative of its members, as it committed to do previously. It is unacceptable that the Chattanooga plant is the only facility (in the world) not represented on the Volkswagen Global Group Works Council,” he added.
(VW among the few exceptions as March delivers strong U.S. sales. Click Here for the latest.)
Volkswagen of America, however, is facing heavy pressure from conservative Republicans, who dominate the state legislature in Tennessee and who had long assumed the Chattanooga would be a non-union operation when they voted to help subsidize VW’s construction of the plant on what was once the site of an abandoned munitions factory.