With Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal still in the headlines, it would be easy to miss that a small group of hourly employees at the Chattanooga plant — 164 skilled maintenance workers, to be exact — will vote this week on union representation.
The United Auto Workers took this piecemeal approach after the plant-wide vote failed in 2014. At that point, Republican officials like House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick were appearing at press conferences and calling out Volkswagen for welcoming the unionizing effort.
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State GOP Lawmakers Call VW ‘Un-American’: If Union Voted In, No More Incentives
“They were very much pushing for it, it seemed like,” McCormick says now, a year-and-a-half later. “The last time, the company seemed to be behind the UAW. They didn’t allow opposing viewpoints to come in.”
Volkswagen contends it has remained neutral, but it has done much more to accommodate union organizers than other foreign automakers operating in the South.
State lawmakers have toned down their rhetoric. While the German automaker has bigger issues on its plate right now, Tennessee politicians say that’s not why they’re keeping quiet.
State Sen. Bo Watson warned that bringing in the UAW would damage the state’s economy. Now, he says the opposition voices inside the plant seem to be getting time to make their case.
“There doesn’t seem to be one side that’s being allowed to campaign and the other side not being allowed to campaign as there was in the prior labor dispute,” Watson says. “It’s hard to be critical of that.”
Watson says he still thinks the UAW achieving a collective bargaining agreement — even on a smaller scale — might scare away other manufacturers. But he’s not going out of his way to make that point this time.
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