The United Auto Workers would like Volkswagen to voluntarily recognise the US union as the best choice to represent the German automaker’s workers at its Tennessee plant, the union’s president said.
Doing so would eliminate the need for a more formal and divisive vote, UAW president Bob King said, and allow the union and VW to represent the workers using an “innovative model” that would be a milestone in the union’s long-running effort to organise foreign-owned auto plants.
King has been trying to organise foreign-owned, US-based auto plants to bolster a union membership that has shrunk since its peak in the late 1970s. Historically, the US South has been hostile to unions.
The question would be whether the UAW seeks a formal vote for recognition or asks VW officials to simply recognise the union as the official bargaining unit for the workers under a new German-style representation model called a “works council.”
“An election process is more divisive,” King said in a telephone interview, referring to outside nonunion groups that would likely pit workers against each other. “I don’t think that’s in Volkswagen’s best interests. I don’t think that in the best interests of Tennessee.
“If they want to...recognise us based on majority, I think that is the quickest, most effective way,” he added, saying the UAW has taken a similar approach with hundreds of other companies in the United States. King declined to give a timeline on how long the process will take.