The publication Labor Notes obtained a recording of a recent all-hands meeting in which Mr. Fischer, the chief executive, appeared to blame a union for the demise of a Volkswagen plant in Pennsylvania in the 1980s.
Mr. Fischer recalled that production at the Pennsylvania plant had started in the first half of 1978 and that by October of that year, there was a strike. “Volkswagen management never was able to really run the plant until it was closed in 1988,” he said on the recording.
In 2015, a small group of maintenance employees at the Chattanooga plant voted to unionize, but Volkswagen refused to bargain with them, leading to litigation.
When the U.A.W. filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board this year, the company objected on the grounds that the case involving that smaller union was still pending, forcing the union to resubmit its petition for a vote after it withdrew the earlier case.
Workers and organizers also took a more conventional approach this time around, emphasizing the benefits of a union on issues like safety and scheduling.
“In 2014, there was a strong focus on how unionization was a necessary legal precondition for implementing VW’s ‘co-determination’ management system,” said Daniel Cornfield, a sociologist who studies labor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “In 2019, the pro-union campaign is much more focused on traditional U.S. organizing issues.”
Mr. Sexton said he and other workers were becoming increasingly upset because production teams were understaffed, leading to greater stress on workers and more injuries. He said the plant’s medical team was often unsympathetic, pronouncing injuries the result of “pre-existing conditions” and sending workers back to the line.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/business/economy/volkswagen-chattanooga-uaw-union.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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