Posts tagged Volkswagen
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.
‘Battle royale’: Tesla and anti-union Musk make enticing targets for UAW’s next push
November 5, 2023 // Some current UAW members are already fired up to take on Tesla. “Go out west to California? Absolutely, I would go,” said John Jake Kincaid, a Stellantis employee in Michigan. “Show them our strength.” Still, fighting for a contract at companies with established relationships with union workers is a far different effort than starting from scratch. Several workers who were key to Tesla’s earlier union effort are no longer at the company. The Fremont plant’s history with the UAW predates the electric vehicle maker. For about 25 years, Toyota and GM operated the facility together in an unusual joint venture. It was a union shop. In 2009, GM pulled out of the partnership as part of its bankruptcy proceedings and in 2010 Toyota shut the operation down, throwing 4,700 people out of work. A month later, Tesla bought the sprawling 5.3 million square foot factory; the union didn’t come with the purchase.
Commentary: Ford-UAW deal: Declare victory and go home
October 26, 2023 // The Ford Motor Company and the UAW struck a deal Tuesday for a 25 percent increase in the union members pay. It was only marginally higher than the 23 percent offer that had been on the table for weeks and far short of the 40 percent than the union had originally wanted. That’s not to say that 25 percent isn’t a significant increase for those workers but they likely could have had it a weeks ago. The union held out for much more until it was apparent that management wasn’t going to be that generous. Still, it was a win for new UAW President Shawn Fain, who got what he wanted. He got lots of media coverage of him leading a strike where he got to talk tough and make bold promises. But he did this without actually straining the union’s strike fund too much, because most workers weren’t striking.
Op-ed: In the wake of the UAW strike, automakers and workers should move to a state that values them
October 23, 2023 // The “us vs. them” mentality of the UAW has created an antagonistic relationship between workers and the automakers’ management, leading to outrageous demands that aren’t in their members’ best interests. Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis will not survive if they have to pay people not to work or offer outdated retirement plans that lead to bankruptcy. Workers deserve better than this. They deserve to have a collaborative relationship with automakers — the kind that leads to both higher wages for workers and stronger competitiveness for companies. That’s why more automakers should look to expand and hire in Tennessee, where we put worker freedom first.
Electric vehicle jobs are booming in the anti-union South. UAW is worried
September 22, 2023 // “The auto industry’s move south hangs over these talks because now only a minority of workers are in unionized assembly plants,” said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University and author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants.” While all of the Big Three’s plants are unionized, not a single plant in the South is unionized. Automakers’ transition to electric vehicles is accelerating these regional trends. Ford and GM are building battery plants below the Mason-Dixon Line, where states have laws that make unionization much harder than in the traditional working-class bastions of the Midwest. UAW leaders and union supporters worry the shift will lower compensation and cut out unions from the auto industry’s future, and they are seeking to address these concerns in talks with the Big Three.