UAW says VW workers at Tennessee plant file for union election | Wilnesh News

Detroit – Volkswagen Workers at a Tennessee plant have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking to vote to join the United Auto Workers The union announced on Monday.

The union said “a vast majority of Volkswagen workers signed union cards in just 100 days” ahead of the filing, which marked a major milestone in the labor group’s organizing campaign at non-union auto plants in the United States.

The UAW has previously failed to organize foreign automakers in the United States. Recently, Volkswagen and Nissan plants failed to gain the support needed to form unions. In 2019, VW workers at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant voted 833 to 776 to reject union representation.

The Chattanooga plant is Volkswagen’s only U.S. assembly plant and has more than 4,000 autoworkers who are eligible to vote for union representation.

A Volkswagen spokesman did not immediately respond for comment. The automaker has previously said it respects workers’ rights to organize but will also crack down on any information it deems misleading or wrong.

Mass production workers at the plant earn between $23.40 and $32.40 an hour, with a four-year growth period before reaching the top wage.

Volkswagen’s hourly wages are lower than what the United Auto Workers union negotiated with the Detroit automaker last year, with production workers’ hourly wages this year ranging from about $25 to $36 an hour, including an estimated cost of living adjustment (COLA). By the end of the UAW contract, maximum wages for production workers are expected to exceed $42 an hour.

Volkswagen is one of 13 non-union automakers in the United States, and the UAW set its sights on Volkswagen late last year after signing a record-breaking contract with the Detroit automaker.

The event covers nearly 150,000 autoworkers from BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.