Posts tagged Volkswagen
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: 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."
UAW membership fell 3.3% in 2023 to 370,000 workers
April 1, 2024 // The UAW is "clear-eyed that our union and many of our industries have been going in the wrong direction for years," a union spokesperson said, adding that is "why we’ve made a historic commitment to organizing the rest of the auto industry, tens of thousands of higher education workers, and everyone in our core industries from heavy truck to agricultural implements to aerospace."
This Union Is Plotting To Take Over The Auto Industry. Can It Be Done?
March 26, 2024 // “It’s no coincidence that UAW is finally gaining ground in Tennessee: Biden has absolutely tilted the playing field at the NLRB in favor of unionization,” David Osborne, fellow at the Institute for the American Worker, told the DCNF. “Unfortunately, many of these changes — like the NLRB’s ruling in Cemex that a union election isn’t even necessary — favor union officials at the expense of rank-and-file workers. In announcing its plans to expand unionization efforts, UAW is obviously embracing this new legal landscape.”
UAW moves to hold unionization vote at Volkswagen plant in Tennessee
March 18, 2024 // The UAW said a supermajority of eligible Volkswagen workers signed union cards to call for the election at the Chattanooga plant. The facility is Volkswagen's only assembly plant in the U.S. and employs about 4,100 workers who make the Atlas and ID.4. The union added that it "is the only Volkswagen plant globally with no form of employee representation."
The UAW Has Set Its Sights on the Anti-Union South
March 8, 2024 // Young people are a crucial group for the campaign. In Alabama, very few young workers have ever been in a union, and their lack of familiarity with organized labor can prove a major stumbling block. While young people across the United States are particularly pro-union, their generational remove from the movement in the Deep South was a central factor in why workers voted against unionizing with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, just twenty-five miles up the road from MBUSI.