The United Auto Workers’ decades-long push to organize a foreign car maker in the South — considered critical to the future of the American labor movement – comes to a head Friday when votes are tallied for the right to represent workers at the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga.
If successful, the UAW will bargain for wages and benefits on behalf of 1,500 hourly workers and, in the process, firmly stamp the union label on the right-to-work, anti-union South. Political and business leaders across the region, particularly in factory-filled North Georgia, fear the labor movement will spread to auto suppliers, flooring manufacturers, carpet mills and other industries.
A victory at Volkswagen, though, won’t necessarily translate into an uninterrupted march by labor across the South. In an unusual twist, Volkswagen management is at least tacitly supporting the unionization efforts. No other Southern-based company, including UAW-targeted German automakers Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina, countenances such a friendly employee-management relationship.
Three days of voting by workers at the Chattanooga plant is scheduled to end Friday evening. However, results may not be announced Friday. Anti-union groups vow to challenge a UAW victory with the National Labor Relations Board. Legal challenges could follow.
The vitriol engulfing the Volkswagen vote underscores the high stakes, big-dollar battle waged by pro- and anti-union groups who’ve descended upon Chattanooga, 100 miles north of Atlanta, for a referendum on the power and future of unions.
“It will be historic if it passes,” said Stephen Silvia, an expert on German industrial relations at American University in Washington. “If they lose, it’s hard to imagine the UAW would be able to organize in the South, or at foreign automobile plants, in the foreseeable future.”
The UAW began knocking on Volkswagen’s doors before the first Passat rolled off the assembly line three years ago. The 400,000-member union — one-fourth the size it was 35 years ago — gained a key ally when the powerful IG Metall union in Germany pushed Volkswagen management to allow the Chattanooga plant to be organized.
The election, which started Wednesday, centers on the establishment of a “works council,” a common labor-management relationship in Germany that hashes out workplace issues. However, U.S. labor law prohibits a council unless a union is recognized to bargain on behalf of workers. The UAW, if victorious, will seek a collective bargaining agreement to allow negotiations on wages, benefits and pensions.
Pro-union workers like Jabbar Ecton, 42, don’t complain about low wages or lousy benefits. New hires at Volkswagen make $15 an hour; more senior workers like Ecton can pull $20 an hour.
“VW employees deserve help and to be heard on the global works council and any help they can get from the UAW,” said Ecton who road-tests Passats. “They can also give us a voice within the plant for safety and other issues.”
U.S. automakers, like most corporations, typically keep unions at arm’s length. VW’s harmony with the UAW is unique, particularly in the South, where many consider “union” a four-letter word. VW says it has remained neutral during the election.
Anti-union activists disagree, pointing to a January “contract” signed by the union and the automaker that “align(s) messages and communication through the time of the election.” The anti-union critics also complain that VW won’t allow their supporters to campaign inside the factory. The UAW, which maintains a table with pamphlets near the company cafeteria, was also given a list of employees’ names and addresses by VW.
“From a very legal standpoint that’s VW’s right,” said Maury Nicely, a Chattanooga attorney whose Southern Momentum advocacy group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the UAW. “The whole premise of our electoral system is that voters have the right to be informed. The degree to which we have seen the term ‘neutrality’ redefined in this election has been unprecedented.”
Nicely’s group has been joined by big-spending national organizations who consider unions a pox on the American economy. The Center for Worker Freedom, for example, a D.C.-based nonprofit affiliated with anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, rented a dozen billboards in Chattanooga attacking the UAW. One depicts an abandoned auto factory with the message “Detroit. Brought to You by the UAW.”
“The UAW isn’t good for my plant; they can’t offer me or any worker anything we don’t have already,” said Greg “Bo” Poteet, 53, a VW technician who lives in Ringgold. “I’m a Christian and a conservative and I refuse to give my (union dues) to things I oppose, like Planned Parenthood, gun control and the Democratic party.”
Tennessee legislators this week threatened to withhold financial incentives for any Volkswagen expansion if the UAW prevails. The company is considering building an SUV line in Chattanooga.
“This sends a message that maybe Tennessee doesn’t want their investment and VW can go somewhere else. It’s like they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face,” said Kristin Dziczek, a labor expert with the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan. “It’s not like auto unions in Tennessee have destroyed the state. There’s a little plant in western Tennessee – General Motors in Spring Hill – that hasn’t caused the downfall of Western civilization.”
Economic developers in Tennessee and Georgia say uncertainty over the VW vote has kept auto suppliers from announcing new projects. Brian Anderson, president of the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, said this week that two foreign auto suppliers keen to be close to the VW plant have postponed any location decision until the union vote is finalized.
“If the union makes an inroad right across the border in Tennessee, its next move will be down into Georgia and that would not be a welcome entrée,” said Roy Bowen, president of the Georgia Association of Manufacturers.
Charlie Bethel, director of legal affairs for Dalton carpet maker J&J Industries, said another union, not the autoworkers, could be emboldened by a VW victory to target tens of thousands of carpet and flooring workers across Georgia who start out at $10 or $11 an hour.
“We feel like we have a good place to work, with competitive benefits,” said Bethel, who’s also a Republican state senator. “We see (unions) as an added cost that, candidly, would not benefit our workforce, but it would tax our ability to remain viable in the American marketplace.”
Still, there’s no guarantee a UAW victory will spur union drives across the South. The unique VW-UAW relationship would be hard to replicate at BMW, Mercedes or Kia in west Georgia – all union targets, according to UAW officials – where management would likely fight like crazy to thwart any union advance.
“If this approach – a friendly organizing drive – fails here, it’s hard to think it will work with other employers that don’t have such a friendly history together,” said Dziczek, the labor expert.
However, American University’s Silvia notes that Mercedes and BMW also employ works councils in Germany and, therefore, might be willing to consider union representation in the U.S.
A VW victory “would give employees’ representatives on the boards of those two companies more leverage to ask for similar sort of treatment,” Silvia said. “VW is setting a pattern.”
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