The United Auto Workers union gained entry to Volkswagen AG’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant after a group of skilled tradesmen voted to create a collective bargaining unit at the auto maker’s only U.S. facility.
The vote passed with 71% of the workers who voted agreeing to form the bargaining unit. The vote was 108 for and 44 against.
The vote pertains to a small group of skilled tradesmen, but allows the UAW to set up a bargaining unit for them to negotiate for wages, benefits and work rules with the German auto maker, and will open the door to wider representation. The group includes a little more than 160 electricians, welders and other repair workers that maintain the assembly line.
Volkswagen said in a statement that it plans to appeal the decision to the National Labor Relations Board.
This was the UAW’s second attempt at organizing workers at VW’s only U.S. factory, which builds the Passat sedan and has plans to build a sport-utility vehicle.
“We have said from the beginning of Local 42 that there are multiple paths to reach collective bargaining,” said Mike Cantrell, president of Local 42 in a statement. “We believe these paths will give all of us a voice at Volkswagen in due time.”
Cantrell said he would immediately seek to initiate collective bargaining for the skilled trades employees.
The plant employs about 1,450 manufacturing workers, including the skilled tradesmen, and 2,500 total employees.
A unionization effort for the entire plant failed in a vote in early 2014, but the UAW created a local chapter to represent workers at the plant anyway, even though the chapter didn’t have the right to bargain for wages and benefits.
That chapter, Local 42, was recognized by Volkswagen as a Tier 3 worker group that has rights to meet with the plant’s human resources officials.
In November, a regional director of the NLRB determined that the skilled tradesmen could form their own collective bargaining group, even without a vote of the entire group of workers at the plant.
On Friday, the NLRB hadn’t received an appeal from the company, but an official said VW has 14 days following the election to request a review.
Gary Klotz, a veteran labor law attorney at Butzel Long in Detroit, said VW’s review has “almost no chance” of being overturned by the NLRB and would likely be aimed at a federal appeals court review. In 2011, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld the right of small bargaining units to be able to collectively bargain on their own behalf. This ruling is the basis for the creation of the VW micro bargaining unit.
Furthermore, the NLRB has already rejected reviews similar to that proposed by VW from several other companies, Mr. Klotz said.
Following the successful vote, the unit will have the right to bargain with the company. However, it isn’t clear whether Volkswagen must negotiate with the unit while the validity of the vote is being reviewed. Federal labor law requires that once a collective bargaining unit is created, a company must negotiate with it.
The UAW has been trying to unionize the VW plant since before it opened, seeking to break into multinational auto plants, which have almost exclusively prevented unionization. VW is unionized in Germany and operates with a labor-management council, called a works council, at every other plant in the world. U.S. labor law, however, prevents the creation of such a group without the workers being represented by an independent union.
Read more here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/uaw-wins-victory-at-vw-chattanooga-plant-as-workers-vote-to-unionize-1449283820