A group opposed to the United Auto Workers announced Monday night that it had won bargaining rights under Volkswagen’s union-friendly organizing policy.
Back in November, the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. released the Community Organization Engagement Policy to help clarify what bargaining rights labor groups get. However critics quickly attacked the rule change, arguing it was designed to help the United Auto Workers unionize employees at the plant. Now the American Council of Employees, a group opposed to the UAW, has used the union friendly policy to gain some representation rights as well.
Volkswagen announced in a letter to employees, which was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation, “Based on the results of the verification process, the current ACE membership meets the support requirement for Level 1 for both hourly and salary employees. The company will reach out to the ACE in the near future to start the discussion regarding the opportunities available to them under the policy.”
Prior to the policy change, all attempts by the UAW to organize the workers at the factory were unsuccessful, including an election earlier in 2014. Despite the lack of support from workers at the plant, Volkswagen management backed the UAW, which made critics even more suspicious of the policy change. It wasn’t long after when UAW was finally able to gain the highest level of representation rights under the policy.
The policy is broken into three levels which grant a different amount of bargaining rights to a labor group depending on how many signatures it was able to get. In December, the UAW was able to get to Level 3 which meant it had receive the highest level of rights because it got at least 45 percent of employees to approve. ACE was able to achieve level 1.
“We are excited to be able to provide VW-Chattanooga employees with a truly locally, direct voice in discussions with management and we are ready to take the next step towards establishing a works council here at the plant,” Sean Moss, interim-president at ACE, announced in a press release provided to TheDCNF.
“Being locally led and having so many members in both the hourly and salaried groups, ACE is far more in line with Volkswagen’s philosophy of employee engagement and the works council model of inclusion and direct representation,” Moss added.
TheDCNF was unable to reach UAW for further comment.
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