Posts tagged Ford
UAW eyes more wins in South after historic union vote at VW plant
April 22, 2024 // Unions in other industries are already moving ahead with organizing campaigns in the South and trying to learn from the UAW's playbook.
Exclusive: GOP Senators Seek to Reinstate Secret Ballots for Unionization as Volkswagen Workers Vote on Joining UAW
April 19, 2024 // Blackburn told Breitbart News that the legislation is more important than ever, accusing “the Biden administration is teaming up with big unions to intimidate and undermine workers that are opposed to their far-left labor policies.” “The UAW has an 88-year history of killing jobs and putting people out of work. Before workers are forced to consider joining a potentially harmful labor union, they should have the right to confidentially cast their ballot in private,” Blackburn said.
Volkswagen union vote in Tennessee to test UAW’s power after victories in Detroit
April 18, 2024 // More than 4,000 VW workers are eligible to vote, beginning Wednesday and ending at 8 p.m. EDT on Friday. The organizing vote, which is being overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, will need a simple majority to succeed. Fain and others see this week's vote as the union's best shot at organizing the VW plant following the record contracts and strikes at the Detroit automakers, which launched Fain to international prominence as the face of the union last year.
Op-ed: In Pursuit Of Southern Foothold, UAW Faces Resistance
April 17, 2024 // “We the Governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states,” the joint statement noted, adding that the reality in 2024 “is companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity. We have worked tirelessly on behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry. Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy – in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs. In America, we respect our workforce and we do not need to pay a third party to tell us who can pick up a box or flip a switch. No one wants to hear this, but it’s the ugly reality. We’ve seen it play out this way every single time a foreign automaker plant has been unionized; not one of those plants remains in operation.”
Opinion: Why union-free workers shouldn’t believe UAW bosses
April 16, 2024 // Even as laid off unionized autoworkers are expressing their dismay about the UAW brass, Fain and his minions are pouring, by their own account, $40 million in dues money extracted from workers like Woods and Roberson into campaigns to secure monopoly bargaining privileges over currently union-free autoworkers employed in right to work states. Fain’s message to production employees at facilities like the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is that they will get “higher pay, more paid time off and more generous health benefits” if they help UAW officials seize power to “negotiate” how they are compensated and managed. Given the miserable track record of making good on his word, Fain has already established during his still-short tenure as UAW president that there is no good reason Chattanooga or other currently union-free autoworkers ought to believe him.
Opinion: The UAW vote — gambling with our future
April 15, 2024 // The UAW talks a lot about solidarity — but solidarity with whom? Unionized VW employees cannot be in "solidarity" with their fellow unionized workers at other foreign auto assembly plants in the U.S. for one simple reason: Every time the UAW has entered a foreign automotive assembly plant in the U.S., that plant has eventually closed. Mitsubishi in Illinois; Toyota in California; Mazda in Michigan; and VW in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania — the last time the UAW made an American Volkswagen plant unprofitable.
Commentary: Large Drop of UAW Membership in Michigan Is Bad for Biden and Democrats but Great for Trump
April 11, 2024 // Particularly Democrats who hailed it as a new era for union membership and a win for blue-collar workers everywhere and who traditionally have unions and those workers who support them blindly. Now it looks like their victory lap may have been premature, and the happiness may not last long-term. Since those deals were struck last October, I have started to hear grumblings that the rank and file are not as happy as they were possibly at first because of the devil in the details that they were sold on at the time. Particularly the members who do not have seniority, which guarantees them many things they thought they were going to receive.
Commentary: Chattanooga VW Workers Need to Be Wary of the UAW’s Push to Unionize Plant
April 10, 2024 // Autoworkers need to be skeptical of UAW promises and motives, knowing that the UAW is at its lowest membership level since the great recession. This deeply personal decision should only be made after knowing all the facts, not just what they hear from a union hungry for Tennessee dues. The UAW can make grand promises to employees, but once they are organized can refuse accountability on any unfulfilled promises. Remember: workers cannot remove a union just by claiming they were promised something that the union did not deliver on.
Alabama Mercedes Benz plant workers file for union election, UAW says
April 9, 2024 // Union officials have claimed in filings to federal regulators that some automakers are retaliating against workers or encumbering their attempts to organize. The labor group on Wednesday filed charges against Mercedes for violating Germany’s new law on global supply chain practices, which prohibits German companies from disregarding workers’ rights to form trade unions. The company responded to some of the union's charges, saying they are inaccurate. It also said the company recognizes its employees' rights to organize.
Seeking to defy history, the UAW is coming closer to unionizing in the South
April 7, 2024 // Southern politicians have offered their own biting criticism of this latest UAW push, framing their opposition as a move to protect jobs. "Alabama has become a national leader in automotive manufacturing, and all this was achieved without a unionized workforce," wrote Alabama Governor Kay Ivey in an op-ed for the Alabama Department of Commerce. "Make no mistake about it: These are out-of-state special interest groups, and their special interests do not include Alabama or the men and women earning a career in Alabama's automotive industry."