Bill McMorris reports for the Washington Free Beacon on a legal challenge involving a union’s tactics within a Tennessee Volkswagen plant.
Volkswagen is pushing back against the UAW campaign to unionize a subset of workers in right-to-work Tennessee in a case that is bound for federal court.
The company says it will appeal a National Labor Relations Board ruling that would allow skilled maintenance workers to organize. The NLRB, which oversees all union elections, approved the December election results in April.
Volkswagen spokesman Scott Wilson said the union should not be able to cherry pick and divide workers within the plant in order to organize the factory piecemeal. The company plans to appeal the NLRB decision in federal court.
“We disagree with the decision to separate Volkswagen maintenance and production workers and will continue our effort to allow everyone to vote as one group on the matter of union representation,” Wilson said in an email to the Washington Free Beacon.
Workers at the plant rejected the UAW by a 712-626 vote margin in 2014, despite the fact that the company maintained neutrality and granted organizers favorable conditions, such as access to the workforce. The UAW subsequently formed Local 42, a voluntary union, as a way to build support among employees. The maintenance workers who voted to join UAW in December represent about 10 percent of the 1,600 workers at the plant.