Monday, July 8, 2013

Cruse and Associates: UAW wants Volkswagen workers to seek union election

The United Auto Workers abutment has amorphous casual out cards to advisers of the Volkswagen bulb in Chattanooga to actuate whether there is abundant abutment to authority a abutment representation election.

But the cards are not the official instruments the abutment would accept to aggregate from at atomic 30 percent of the VOLVO VIDA DICE plant’s alternate workers to force a abutment vote, said Gary Casteel, administrator of the UAW’s District 8, which includes Tennessee.

"We accept not started an official acclimation campaign," he said, agitation some civic media reports.

"What got some humans up in accoutrements is that we anesthetized out some cards, but they were never about ambience up an election," Casteel said. "The cards were just appraisal the akin of support."

That assuming was accepted by Volkswagen agent Guenther Scherelis at the plant, which has about 2,700 workers active anon by the German automaker to body the midsize Passat sedan.

"We heard that they had broadcast those cards, but it is an action of the abutment and not something that Volkswagen is complex in," Scherelis said.

Some advisers said they had apparent the cards or were acquainted of the union’s absorption in acclimation the plant, but there seems to be no bright accord on whether there would be abundant abutment to force a abutment election, abundant beneath on whether the UAW could win that vote if it occurred.

While it takes alone 30 percent of the workforce to assurance cards requesting a abutment vote — which would again accept to be captivated by abstruse election aural 40 canicule — the UAW has said it would wish to see a abundant college allotment than that afore calling for a vote.

In contempo years, unions about wish at atomic 75 percent of a workforce to assurance cards afore a vote is scheduled. The success amount for abutment referendums drops decidedly if lower percentages of workers assurance election cards, according to statistics of the Civic Activity Relations Board, which conducts such votes.

Pay alterity exists

Volkswagen’s alternate pay begins at about $14 and can ambit to about $20 an hour. New workers at UAW accessories Ford VCM such as the General Motors bulb in Spring Hill activate at about $17 an hour, and accomplished workers accomplish about $29, added benefits.

At the VW plant, earlier workers are added admiring of the abutment than adolescent advisers are. Some adolescent workers abhorrence they could lose some of their accepted allowances if the abutment negotiates a arrangement with Volkswagen.

One of those allowances is a accepted car leasing plan through which workers can get a new Volkswagen or Audi car every six months and accounts it via amount deductions.

Volkswagen appear in July 2008 that it would absorb added than $1 billion to body the Chattanooga plant, which began architecture the new American-only adaptation of the Passat midsize auto in April 2011.

Sales accept been so able-bodied that Volkswagen appear March 22 that it would activate hiring an added 800 workers and accessible a third about-face to accommodated customer demand.

UAW President Bob King has said the union’s ambition is to adapt at atomic one of the South’s adopted auto plants aural the next brace of years, with hopes of accretion to others if the aboriginal abutment drive is successful.

Industry experts say the UAW’s adaptation is at stake, as its associates has alone to alone 390,000 civic from 1.5 actor in 1979.

Volkswagen, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, has 62 assembly accessories worldwide, and Chattanooga is the alone one that isn’t unionized.

If Volkswagen workers go union, it would be a aboriginal a part of the foreign-based automakers that accept congenital operations in the South, starting with Nissan in Smyrna in 1983.

Other nonunion, foreign-owned plants are operated by Japanese automakers Nissan in Mississippi; Toyota in Kentucky, Alabama, Texas and Mississippi; and Honda in Alabama; German automakers Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina; and South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia in Alabama and Georgia.

The UAW bootless in two efforts at acclimation Nissan’s Smyrna ability in 1989 and 2001. Unionization drives aswell accept bootless at added plants, including the Mercedes-Benz branch abreast Tuscaloosa, Ala.

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