Volkswagen USA granted limited recognition to an independent union founded by workers at its Chattanooga, Tenn., plant who fought to keep the facility from being organized by the United Auto Workers.
The move will complicate the United Auto Workers’ long-running effort to organize the plant and thereby gain a foothold in union-averse Southern states.
The newly recognized group, which calls itself the American Council of Employees, will be allowed to meet with Volkswagen officials, but will not be granted recognition as an official union for the plant’s workers and therefore cannot engage in collective bargaining.
Volkswagen officials granted similar limited recognition to a United Auto Workers worker group, Local 42, last year. In both cases, the German-owned company said it was abiding by a policy of meeting with worker groups but that was as far as it went. The United Auto Workers nevertheless hopes to eventually get Volkswagen to recognize Local 42 as the Chattanooga workers’ representative.
Vincent Vernuccio, a labor policy lawyer with the free market Mackinac Center, said that Volkswagen’s recognition of the American Council of Employees amounted to the United Auto Workers having its bluff called. “VW’s actions show it is serious about forming a new type of voluntary unionism. This is what the UAW has been trying to sell VW workers,” he said.
Mike Cantrell, United Auto Workers Local 42 president, in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner, dismissed the rival group: “We believe Volkswagen will honor its commitment to recognize UAW Local 42, and we will continue working toward the process of collective bargaining with the company.”
The United Auto Workers has long sought to organize the Chattanooga plant workers. It has had a powerful ally in IG Metall, the union that represents Volkswagen’s German workers, which has pressured the company on the union’s behalf. However, despite claiming to have already signed up a majority of workers, the United Auto Workers lost a federally monitored union vote, 712-626, last year.
The union has not given up, though, forming the unofficial Local 42 as a vehicle to build support. Part of its pitch to workers has been that the plant needs a “works council” similar to what the auto company’s European plants have so that workers can bring concerns to management. A union would be part of the council.
The recognition of the American Council of Employees group means the plant’s workers have an alternative to the union if they decide they want communication with management. That likely would drain potential recruits from the United Auto Workers group.
“If the UAW files [with the government] for an election to be the exclusive representative for all workers in the plant it will be proof that they have been feeding a line to the VW workers for the last several years,” Vernuccio said.
At the same time, Volkwagen’s recognition of the American Council of Employees suggests that overall there is majority support at the plant for some form of a workers’ representative, which may ultimately benefit the United Auto Workers, since it has the larger group.
An audit last year determined that Local 42 had signed up 45 percent of the plant’s workforce, and the union says it has since passed the halfway mark. The American Council of Employees, by contrast, represents 15 percent of the plant’s workers.
“Anti-union activity at the plant has been declining since the launch of UAW Local 42 and verification by Volkswagen that we surpassed the highest level of engagement under company rules,” Cantrell said.
ACE interim President Sean Moss told the Chattanooga Times Free Press, though, that his group was more in line with the engagement policy that the auto manufacturer’s U.S. branch has laid out.
“Being locally led and having so many members in both the hourly and salaried groups, ACE is far more in line with Volkswagen’s philosophy of employee engagement and the works council model of inclusion and direct representation,” he said.
Matt Patterson, executive director of the Center for Worker Freedom, an affiliate of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, noted that “Both groups are essentially unofficial, voluntary clubs and Volkswagen, Chattanooga remains union-free — for now.”
