Tenn. GOP's Battle With UAW May Be Bellwether for Right to Work in South

[happyg]

By Melanie Batley
Employees at the Volkswagen AG auto plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will finish voting Friday on whether to join the UAW union, and GOP leaders are determined not to let the union win without a fight.

 According to The Washington Post, if a majority of Volkswagen's 1,570 hourly workers vote yes, it would be the first time in nearly 30 years of efforts that the UAW has successfully organized a plant for a foreign brand in the United States.

 "This is all about money for them. They feel like, if they can get up under the hood with a company in the South, then they can make progress in other places," Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker, who has been defending his involvement in the union election, told The Post.

 "There's no question that the UAW organizing there will have an effect on our community's ability to continue to recruit businesses."

 Republican lawmakers are concerned the move is a ploy to extract more lucrative incentives in an environment where states are in fierce competition to retain jobs. There is also concern that a UAW presence could give Democrats a boost in elections for years to come.

 Conservative groups, meanwhile, are pouring money into a campaign to try to convince Volkswagen workers to vote against the UAW. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, for example, helped eight Volkswagen workers challenge union election procedures.

 The Center for Worker Freedom has been handing out anti-union fliers to plant employees and erected 11 billboards around town with slogans such as, "Detroit: Brought to you by the UAW."

 National labor leaders, however, are hoping the decision will be a landmark victory.

 "This is enormously important for the labor movement as a whole," Damon Silvers, policy director at the AFL-CIO, told the Post. "The European transplants are a puzzle that the American labor movement has been trying to work out for decades, and the UAW seems to have figured it out."

 The twist is that Volkswagen itself is behind the union effort, hoping it can replicate a German-style works council, which allows companies to exchange data with employees and work together to resolve issues. In other countries, the company has found the work council system to be a successful model of labor-management relations, according to the Post.

 Some worry that the escalating tensions could ultimately lead to the company relocating, or, at the very least, redirecting some of its work to other plants. That could cost thousands of jobs, a prospect lawmakers want to avoid.

 "What I'm trying to do is make sure the city continues the positive relationship with the company, so they will be more likely to pick this location as opposed to Mexico," Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, a Democrat, told the Post. "We never want to put politics ahead of jobs."



Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Volkswagen-UAW-Bob-Corker-unions/2014/02/14/id/552782#ixzz2tJyRyiBa
 

[Oceander]

Let's hope the forces of good and reason can overcome the UAW.

[Bigun]

Let's hope the forces of good and reason can overcome the UAW.

My worry is that the old Joe Stalin "it doesn't matter who votes what matters is who counts the votes"  concept will come into play here with the Obama NLRB in charge.

[Rapunzel]

USE list.. but it was too close IMO.

[Bigun]

USE list.. but it was too close IMO.

A victory is a victory! Not gonna quibble over the size!

I'm just glad that it was big enough that it couldn't be fixed if you get my meaning!

[Rapunzel]

A victory is a victory! Not gonna quibble over the size!

I'm just glad that it was big enough that it couldn't be fixed if you get my meaning!

Yep.. just wish it had been more lopsided .

[LambChop]

Does it worry no one the representatives of TN were out campaigning for NON-Union, when the company was just fine with it? They are a German company and used to dealing with labor unions.  And by the looks of it, quit successfully.

Bob Corker was making promises of more production if the union is voted out.  What happens now that the union was voted out and VW doesn't give that plant additional production like Bob Corker promised?

I'm sorry, but this is a prime example of big government telling a company how to run it's business.  And I'm disgusted at it.

[truth_seeker]

Does it worry no one the representatives of TN were out campaigning for NON-Union, when the company was just fine with it? They are a German company and used to dealing with labor unions.  And by the looks of it, quit successfully.

Bob Corker was making promises of more production if the union is voted out.  What happens now that the union was voted out and VW doesn't give that plant additional production like Bob Corker promised?

I'm sorry, but this is a prime example of big government telling a company how to run it's business.  And I'm disgusted at it.

Germany has an economy and labor practices, which are both very successful, and go against what conservative Americans thinks works best.

In Germany the company and the unions strive to cooperate, not be adversarial. Labor sits on a board, concerned with how each plant operates. Labor participates in reaching worker-related decisions with company management.

That is why VW was willing and comfortable about a union at their plant in Tennessee.

The old American automobile company model failed. The VW model has prospered.

For you enthusiasts: American companies introduce one new high-performance model about every 5 years, while VW Group introduces 5 every year. (Lamborghini, Bugatti, Bentley, Porsche, Audi etc.).

[mountaineer]

I'm sorry, but this is a prime example of big government telling a company how to run it's business.  And I'm disgusted at it.

Looks more like some legislators urging workers to vote against unionization than actually telling anyone what to do - and the workers voted however they chose.

Labor loses big in Tennessee
02/15/14 01:22 PM
By Ned Resnikoff

Organized labor suffered a major defeat on Friday night in Tennessee, when the United Auto Workers (UAW) narrowly lost a vote to unionize the Volkswagen manufacturing plant in Chattanooga. Workers voted 712-626 against forming a union, ending months of bitter campaigning on the part of both the UAW and its conservative opponents.

Those opponents did not include Volkswagen, which announced early on that it would not challenge the UAW’s organizing drive. Instead, the German auto-maker welcomed cooperation with the union in hopes that they could form a cooperative “works council” modelled after the labor-management governing structures found in much of Germany’s private sector. For its part, the UAW was hoping to extend its influence in the historically anti-union South, now that organized labor’s strength has significantly waned in traditional Rust Belt strongholds like Michigan.

But despite Volkswagen’s assent, the UAW faced unexpectedly strong opposition from the state Republican Party and conservative special interest groups.

“This seems pretty unique to me,” said labor historian Erik Loomis, of the right’s attempts to ward off unionization. “Certainly local and state politicians have involved themselves in campaigns to defeat unions in the past, but I’ve never heard of a company agreeing up front to a union and politicians then organizing to defeat it with no corporate help.”

Opponents of the organizing drive suggested that UAW was partially responsible for Detroit’s bankruptcy. The Center for Worker Freedom, a project of Americans for Tax Reform, purchased a billboard in Chattanooga that said, “DETROIT: Brought to you by UAW.” The Center did not respond to a request for comment.

“Nobody would wish what’s happened in Detroit on any community,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told the Washington Post earlier this week. ”It’s just cratered. There’s no question that the UAW has had a negative impact on the big three automakers.”

In the weeks before the vote, Corker became one of the most outspoken opponents of the unionization drive. He insisted he was not opposed to unions on principle. Instead, his problem was with the UAW; in the same Washington Post interview, he said that he had no problem with Volkswagen creating its own union to help run the plan. (Company-sponsored unions have been illegal in the United States for nearly 80 years.)

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation vice president Patrick Semmens confirmed in an email that his organization had “provided free legal assistance” to workers who opposed unionization. He also accused UAW of using under-handed tactics to crush opposition.

“Frankly, I don’t think we would have seen so many non-employees weighing in if VW hadn’t cut a deal with the UAW to limit dissenting workers’ ability to make their case,” he said.

Semmens pointed to local news coverage in which anti-union workers claimed they were prevented from asking questions during UAW informational sessions. Semmens also objected to an agreement between Volkswagen and UAW which outlined the shape of their power-sharing arrangement before any vote even took place.

That criticism, at least, was echoed by some pro-union voices. Labor journalist Mike Elk said on Twitter that UAW’s efforts to restrict press access were “problematic from a union democracy standpoint.” He also suggested that the union as a whole was insufficiently grassroots-oriented and democratic. ...

Rest of story at MSNBC

[LambChop]

Looks more like some legislators urging workers to vote against unionization than actually telling anyone what to do - and the workers voted however they chose.Rest of story at MSNBC

Legislators manipulated the vote to their will.  Made promises I really hope get backed up.  They also threatened VW to withhold the tax incentives if the UAW got voted in.  We'll see in the coming weeks if that plant gets additional production.  I really hope so for those people who work there's sake.