The United Auto Workers union formally challenges what its president calls "extraordinary interference" in a Tennessee assembly plant organizing election.
Don't hold your breath for a do-over, Free Press business writer Brent Snavely suggests.
The UAW faces a high legal hurdle in appealing last week’s defeat at Volkswagen’s Tennessee plant.
Citing public statements by Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Corker and other Tennessee politicians, the UAW asked the National Labor Relations Board to set aside the results and conduct a new election. Workers at the three-year-old factory in Chattanooga voted 712-626 against UAW representation. . . .
Corker urged workers to reject the union and suggested Volkswagen would not build a new SUV in Chattanooga if workers voted for the UAW.
In a 58-page complaint submitted Friday, the union accuses Corker and others of creating “a general atmosphere of fear or reprisal rendering a free election impossible.”
"Senator Corker’s conduct . . . is a more than adequate basis for sustaining these objections.”
“They have not accused Volkswagen of doing anything wrong,” says Gary Klotz, a Detroit labor lawyer. (Butzel Long photo)
Not necessarily, Detroit labor lawyer Gary Klotz of Butzel Long tells Snavely.
“They have not accused Volkswagen of doing anything wrong,” Klotz said. “In fact, Volkswagen disavowed Sen. Corker’s comment.”
Normally, a union must prove that those who were seeking to influence the election were doing the bidding of the company for this type of challenge to succeed, Klotz said.
Indeed, VW said the vote wouldn't influence its decision to build SUVs in Chattanooga or in Mexico.
For his part, outgoing UAW President Bob King says:
“It’s an outrage that politically motivated third parties threatened the economic future of this facility. It is extraordinary interference in the private decision of workers to have a U.S. senator, a governor and leaders of the state legislature threaten the company with the denial of economic incentives and workers with a loss of product.”
-- Alan Stamm
