President Joe Biden has now weighed in on the UAW’s attempt to score its first win in its long-standing effort to organize workers at a foreign-owned assembly plant in the U.S.
Workers at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a vote on the question of joining the union after a supermajority signed cards signaling their intentions in just 100 days, the UAW announced Monday.
Volkswagen’s only U.S. plant employs more than 4,000 workers according to the union and is the German automaker’s only plant where workers are not represented by a union.
In a short video posted to YouTube, workers expressed reasons for wanting to join the UAW that included phrases such as “we need a change,” “we want to be heard” and “people are not getting treated fairly.”
We respect our workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests,” Volkswagen said in a statement acknowledging it had received the petition. “We will fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to vote in privacy in this important decision.”
Monday evening a statement from Pres. Biden was distributed by the White House expressing his support for the Volkswagen workers’ petition to vote on whether or not to join the UAW.
The entire statement read:
“I congratulate the Volkswagen autoworkers in Chattanooga who filed for a union election with the UAW. As one of the world’s largest automakers, many Volkswagen plants internationally are unionized. As the most pro-union president in American history, I believe American workers, too, should have a voice at work. The decision whether to join a union belongs to the workers.”
The president’s support was not surprising as the UAW endorsed his bid to be re-elected for a second term during an event in Washington, D.C. on January 24.
In his endorsement speech, UAW President Shawn Fain alluded to the situation at the VW plant and Biden’s moves to fill the NLRB with members more supportive of giving workers there the opportunity to decide if they want to join the union.
“Also in 2015, we won our first election of a group of skilled trades workers at Volkswagen, where we’re still organizing today,” Fain said. “Volkswagen defied the law and refused to bargain. They dragged it out as long as they could, because they knew Trump’s National Labor Relations Board would undo our victory. That set us back a decade. President Biden, on the other hand, has made changes at the National Labor Relations Board that have opened new opportunities for organizing.”
While Biden is in a tight race to win re-election, the UAW is trying to notch its first victory in a long-running, frustrating, battle to convince workers at U.S. plants owned by foreign automakers, the so-called transplants.
Momentum among workers at some of the transplants to at least think about joining the UAW picked up after the union won big pay raises and other benefits for its members following an historic simultaneous strike against General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis last fall.
Sensing their workers might be attracted to the UAW, several foreign automakers including Hyundai, Honda and Toyota immediately granted raises to their non-union employees.
But in announcing the new contracts, Fain said his goal in the four years leading to the next round of negotiations would be to organize workers at the U.S. plants owned by the transplants.
A win in Chattanooga would be a start, as the UAW attempts its own march through the South to turn Fain’s goal into a reality.
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