Union officials say they expect Volkswagen to make an announcement this week about one of their Tennessee bargaining units being officially recognized by the company.
The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has been a longtime target of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which has been unsuccessful at unionizing the workers there. Earlier this year, workers at the plant voted against the UAW establishing itself at their plant even though the union was backed by Volkswagen itself.
Since that time, the UAW kept going in their hopes of organizing those local workers and even formed a voluntary local union last summer known as UAW Local 42.
In a letter provided to The Daily Caller News Foundation, Local 42 told its voluntary members, “It is our understanding that Volkswagen this week will announce a new policy in Chattanooga that will lead to recognition of Local 42. We await details from the company on this policy and will share more thoughts after the announcement.”
This prediction was based on “discussions that took place in Germany last spring, between representatives of the UAW and Volkswagen.”
However, some see this as circumventing the workers’ wishes. Matt Patterson, executive director at the Center for Worker Freedom, said in a statement, “The commitment of the company to allow this outside organization, which has decimated auto jobs in Detroit and left entire companies and cities bankrupt, is a betrayal of the VW workers who gave a loud and clear ‘No!’ to the UAW, by a vote of 712 to 626.”
“It is also a betrayal of the community, whose mostly-conservative residents and representatives were never told that the price for their new auto plant was allowing the Big Government-supporting, Obama-loving UAW into their midst,” Patterson went on to say.
He added, “It’s not rare that a union uses sneaky, under-handed tactics to bully their way into companies, regardless of the wishes of the workers they claim to represent. What’s rare is that the company would be complicit in such duplicity.”
When asked about these criticisms, a spokesperson for the UAW told TheDCNF that the vote didn’t reflect the true intent of the workers because some were intimidated into voting against the union.
A spokesperson for Volkswagen told TheDCNF that they will provide information on this topic when it is available.
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