Posts tagged Volkswagen
Opinion: UAW won’t keep their promises, doesn’t hold to Tennessee values
January 22, 2024 // If VW employees were to join the union, most of their dues wouldn't even stay in Tennessee. Dues would go to union leaders living lavish lifestyles that are out of touch with the workers they claim to represent and also to support largely extreme Democratic policies which are out of touch with Tennessee values. Even though Tennessee is a right-to-work state, once unionized, all their workers would be forced to fall under the UAW contract, even if they don't join. While UAW contracts have income floors, they also have ceilings that cap how much workers can earn. Workers can say goodbye to any pay-for-performance structure which benefits employees that produce strong results.
Commentary: States should protect workers from Democrats’ latest assault on their rights
January 19, 2024 // Ending the secret ballot is just one of the ways these Senate Democrats are trying to deprive workers of their rights. They ultimately want automakers to sign a so-called neutrality agreement. As I’ve documented, such agreements typically do three things. The first is to gut the secret ballot in favor of card check. Second, they give unions the personal information of every worker at a company — another violation of privacy and another invitation to intimidation. Finally, neutrality agreements put a gag order on companies, prohibiting them from talking to their workers about unionization. Yet that violates workers’ right to the full information they need to make the best choice. And that’s exactly why unions want to shut companies up — because it makes workers easier to control.
Tesla’s latest decision is a critical defensive move against the UAW
January 12, 2024 // As per a report published by Bloomberg on January 11, Tesla notified workers at its Fremont, Calif. assembly plant of pay increases across its factories in the United States. The report, which cited a flyer posted at the facility, stated that all United States-based production associates, material handlers and quality inspectors will be receiving what Tesla calls a "market adjustment pay increase." However, the flyer did not state any hard numbers of how much said increase will actually be.
Commentary: UAW campaign to organize Southeast carmakers gets into gear
January 11, 2024 // The announcement in Tuscaloosa follows a similar one by workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., in December. Both the VW and Mercedes announcements are at the leading edge of an “unprecendented” new campaign by the UAW targeting 13 carmakers, from Hyundai and Rivian to Tesla and Honda, according to The Detroit Free Press. That drive pushes the union into territory long hostile to organized labor. Only about 5 percent of Southern workers are in a union, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Republican politicians have long used the region’s low union involvement as a selling point.
NLRB complaint alleges Lucid fired employees for union effort
January 10, 2024 // This is not the first time the union has attempted to organize outside of its traditional Big Three stronghold. It has been able to get enough support at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to have union elections there twice, and twice at plants operated by Nissan in Canton, Mississippi, and Smyrna, Tennessee. But most of the efforts to organize companies like Tesla failed before even reaching the point of an NLRB-supervised representation election.
German Union Backs UAW Organizing Effort at VW Chattanooga
December 23, 2023 // IG Metall, which participated in the UAW’s failed organizing drives at Chattanooga in 2014 and 2019, also has a stake in the UAW’s new fight in Tennessee. IG Metall, Germany’s largest labor union, represents 125,000 VW workers.
UAW files unfair labor practice charges against Hyundai, Honda and Volkswagen
December 14, 2023 // The UAW has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen, the union said. The union alleges management at facilities for the companies have participated in illegal “union-busting as workers organize to join the UAW.” The charges come roughly two weeks after the UAW said it was launching an unprecedented campaign to organize 13 nonunion automakers in the U.S.
Commentary: Unions are coming not just for the few, but for everyone
December 6, 2023 // This week brought wonderful news on that front. The United Auto Workers (UAW), fresh off a historic, victorious strike against the Big Three automakers, announced plans to unionize not just one, not two, but more than a dozen of the remaining non-union auto companies in the US. Tesla, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen – essentially all of them. After the attractive contracts won in the strikes brought a flood of interest from workers across the country, the union has decided to seize the moment. The UAW is aiming to be exactly where a strong union needs to be: everywhere. Is this plan bold? Yes. Will it be difficult? Yes. Are they in for years-long fights against enormous multinational corporations backed by hostile state governments? Yes. But the great insight that the UAW is showing here is this: the fact that facing down an existential threat will be hard doesn’t matter. If the auto workers’ union is not capable of organizing foreign companies’ auto plants in hostile southern states, its power will die; and if it is not capable of organizing workers at rich and growing and staunchly anti-union companies like Tesla, its power will die. So the choices are to do those things, or die. Despite the difficulty of the task, the choice, when presented like that, is very easy.
UAW launches campaign to unionize Toyota, Tesla and other automakers
November 30, 2023 // United Auto Workers union said its next target is to unionize factory workers at Lucid, Rivian, Tesla and 10 foreign automakers, a move that comes after it garnered new employment contracts from Detroit's Big Three automakers. BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Mazda, Mercedes, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo are based overseas but all have manufacturing operations in the U.S. Because these companies have brought in billions of dollars in profit over the past decade, their hourly factory workers deserve to make more money, UAW President Shawn Fain said in a video Wednesday.
UAW Wage Gains Filter Over to Non-Union Workers
November 29, 2023 // Volkswagen of America and Nissan are joining the cluster of non-union automakers offering their employees double-digit pay raises in the wake of contract settlements negotiated by the UAW in the wake of the union’s so-called “Stand-up Strike.” Both companies are no strangers to tangling with the UAW, fighting off organizing efforts within the past decade. VW, with the help of Tennessee’s Republican political establishment, blocked a UAW organizing drive by fewer than 100 votes in a 2019 vote supervised by the National Labor Relations Board. Nissan defeated a 2017 organizing effort in Canton, MS, by a 2-to-1 margin in a drive undermined by corruption charges which were then haunting the union. Earlier this year, Nissan says it defeated an International Association of Machinists effort to organize tool-and-die makers employed at the company’s manufacturing plant in Smyrna, TN, in a vote supervised by the NLRB.