VW workers reject UAW organizing drive at Tenn. plant

The workers at Volkswagen, Chattanooga, have spoken. Gabe Nelson has the story in Automotive News.

Workers at Volkswagen AG’s plant here voted to reject UAW representation, dealing a devastating loss to a union that saw the Tennessee factory as its best chance to gain a toehold at a foreign-owned assembly plant in the South.Results of the vote — 712 opposed to the UAW and 626 in favor — were released late Friday by retired Tennessee Circuit Court Judge Sam Payne after three days of voting at the plant, where the company builds the Passat sedan.

Volkswagen said 89 percent of approximately 1,500 workers eligible to vote participated in the election.

The National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the voting, must still certify the results.

Volkswagen did not resist the two-year organizing drive, which made it unusually easy for the UAW to win workers’ support for a vote.

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which opposed the organizing bid, claimed the union and Volkswagen’s German management “colluded for over two years to stack the deck against the workers” and allow a rapid-fire election.

“If UAW union officials cannot win when the odds are so stacked in their favor, perhaps they should reevaluate the product they are selling to workers,” Mix said in a statement.