Have you heard? The UAW finally managed to win a very small victory at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant.

UAW claims BIG win

Volkswagen Employee Parking

The United Auto Workers Union union is calling this a big win and its first foothold at a foreign automaker in the South. I guess its easy to have a big win when you keep changing the rules of the game until you are guaranteed a win.  This was the second attempt to organize at VW Chattanooga in less than two years. The first time was in February 2014, when the union lost a vote of about 1500 blue-collar workers 712 to 626.  When this didn’t work rather than accepting the will of the workers and going away, they formed a non-dues-paying Local 42 in Chattanooga to continue organizing efforts at the Chattanooga plant.

The UAW petitioned for the new election, in October 2015,  to represent the maintenance workers. These are the folks who maintain the robots and fix the more sophisticated equipment. VW objected,  arguing it would rather have an election of maintenance and production workers. The National Labor Relations Board ordered that the election was to be held against VW’s wishes.

The two-day election, overseen by the NLRB, resulted in 71 percent of the 152 maintenance workers voting in favor of unionization. The UAW, which is on life support considers 108 votes in their favor a BIG win.

While VW appeals the decision of the NLRB to hold the election, the American Council of Employees(ACE) plans to continue signing up employees in hopes of helping VW set up a works council at the factory. ACE has the goal of setting up a labor panel consisting of both blue-collar and white-collar workers to oversee issues of training, safety, and employee scheduling.  This is the structure used at VM uses at nearly all of their other plants.

Volkswagen Car Hauler