The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: happyg on February 19, 2014, 09:40:40 pm
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A Volkswagen board member is threatening to withhold future investments in its Tennessee facility if the workers do not unionize, according to Reuters.
can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the south again,” said Bernd Osterloh, head of VW’s works council.
“If co-determination isn’t guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor” of potentially building another plant in the U.S. south, Osterloh, who is also on VW’s supervisory board, said.
Osterloh’s comments come just days after workers at the Tennessee plant voted overwhelmingly against unionization efforts by the United Auto Workers. The United States prohibits company management from intimidating workers during organization campaigns. What makes VW unique is that the law was designed to prevent employers from pressuring workers to vote against the union, not for it.
Glenn Taubmann, a lawyer with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, filed a complaint alleging pro-union intimidation during the UAW’s campaign, though the German auto union, IG Metall, denied they were making such threats. Taubmann said that Osterloh’s most recent comments confirmed those suspicions.
“This is what’s been going on all along. The threats were the IG Metall way of trying to pressure workers,” he said. “ It comes very close to crossing the line [of illegality], if not directly crossing it.”
http://freebeacon.com/vw-board-member-threatens-to-cut-funding-to-tennessee-facility/ (http://freebeacon.com/vw-board-member-threatens-to-cut-funding-to-tennessee-facility/)
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The UAW had a deal that the workers at VW could not be paid more than the workers at GM, Ford, etc.. and they make about $5 an hour more. This info emerged last week and affected the vote.
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Is this guy stupid? Doesn't he realize that if he wants to give the workers whatever they ask, a union is not required? The point of a union is to give the employees the power to force the employer's hand to some degree. If this guy favors such, why doesn't he just capitulate without having to be forced by the union? I don't get his thinking.
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Let them take their bugs back home.
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This person is a member of the corporate level Works Council, NOT of the corporate Board of Directors.
The Works Council includes representatives from labor and management.
So he is a member of the labor side, scolding Tennessee for not approving unionization, in a matter which he likely has little or no say.