Maintenance Workers Attempt to Fix a Plant that is Not Broken

On Friday October 23, 2015 165 Chattanooga Volkswagen maintenance employees filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a secret ballot election to give United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 42 collective bargaining power.

This is the UAW’s way of trying to unionize the entire Volkswagen plant one group at a time and there’s a term for it, micro-unions.

UAW Local 42 was created after a failed vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga last year. In February 2014, 1,500 workers at the Chattanooga Tennessee plant held a vote deciding whether or not to join the union. The UAW lost the vote 712-626. 

Local 42 was created without any official power and acts more as a “voluntary society” for the UAW. It cannot collectively bargain or obtain dues.

Now, 165 part and full-time employees at the Volkswagen plant are trying to unionize again and it has everyone thinking they’ve seen this before. The maintenance workers at the Volkswagen plant want UAW Local 42 to become an official and fully authorized power in collective bargaining talks.

If the UAW unionized this plant they would increase their membership by 165 members with the hope of expanding to the rest of the plant and into southern auto manufacturers. This would also be the UAW’s first union at a foreign-owned automaker in the southern right-to-work states.

If it is successful with its micro-union strategy then slowly the UAW will demand more from Volkswagen. Workers will have union dues automatically taken from their paycheck. They will be paying thousands of dollars to a union that has spent millions on liberal causes and Democratic candidates.  

And that’s the reason that 712 workers voted “No” against the UAW in 2014. Now the UAW is trying to seep into the plant one group at a time, because they know its impossible to win an election where everyone votes.

And the truth is, they’re right.

You can’t fix what isn’t broken and the maintenance workers shouldn’t try.