The United Auto Workers is officially seeking a new vote to represent the workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant.
The union has long sought to represent the workers at the German automaker’s sole U.S. plant, seeing it as a way of getting a foothold in the union-averse American south but lost a worker vote last year. This time, the union is seeking to represent just 165 members in the plant’s maintenance department, not the entire factory.
The filing indicates that the union lacks the support to win over a majority of all workers, the usual standard for a workplace election, and is instead hoping to secure more limited recognition through those who do back it. The National Labor Relations Board, the main federal labor law enforcement agency, under President Obama’s administration has adjusted its policy to allow such “micro-unions.”
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UAW indicated in a statement Friday that it still sought to represent all of the Chattanooga workers eventually. “A key objective for our local union always has been, and still is, moving toward collective bargaining for the purpose of reaching a multi-year contract between Volkswagen and employees in Chattanooga. We support our colleagues in the skilled trades as they move toward formal recognition of their unit,” said Mike Cantrell, president of UAW Local 42, the union’s branch in the region.
“We have said from the beginning of Local 42 that there are multiple paths to reach collective bargaining,” Cantrell said. “We have been considering this option for some time. All options have been, and will remain, on the table.”
No date has been set for the election.
Organizing the Chattanooga plant has been a major project for UAW, which is trying to make inroads in southern states. Numerous foreign auto manufacturers have located in the south, and the region’s lack of a union culture is widely believed to be a reason why. Tennessee, like many other southern states, has a right-to-work law that prohibits union contracts that require workers join or to support a union as a condition of employment.
UAW has had a powerful ally in IG Metall, the union that represents Volkswagen’s German workers, which has pressured the company on the U.S. union’s behalf. VW’s owners have taken a generally neutral approach, not actively opposing the union’s efforts — it allowed UAW organizers onto the plant site last year, for example, while barring anti-union groups — but has refused to voluntarily recognize the union either.
The union said in 2013 that it had the backing of a majority of workers and called on the VW to recognize it, arguing that a worker vote wasn’t necessary. Eight workers filed charges that year with the labor board saying that the signatures that the union had used to claim support were obtained fraudulently. The NLRB found “evidence … that a few of the individuals soliciting cards may have misrepresented the purpose of the cards and/or distributed ambiguous authorization cards” but declined to sanction the union.
The automaker called for a federally monitored election and the union was rejected by the plant’s workers in a 712-626 vote in February 2014.
UAW did not give up and has retained a presence in the area ever since through Local 42, hoping to build enough support to win a second bid. For most of the last year, it has said it has the backing of a majority of workers.
In November 2014, the company granted Local 42 limited recognition as a worker representative group. UAW said that the first step toward official recognition. In an email to the Washington Examiner in February, Cantrell even said it had obtained a “commitment” from the company.
However, the company maintained that the recognition was simply part of a blanket open door policy toward any group of employees and did not represent any commitment towards collective bargaining. It subsequentlly granted similar recognition to a smaller, independent workers’ group that called itself the “American Council of Employees.”
Cantrell said Friday that “the company reverified Local 42’s membership at the highest level under the policy” but also said, “At the end of the day, the policy cannot be a substitute for meaningful employee representation and co-determination with management.”
The effort to organize the plant has hit another complication: the scandal involving VW’s rigging its U.S.-made cars to fool emissions testing systems, though it is not clear how or even if the scandal will affect the union’s bid.
