VW is pro union?

Article here.

(Reuters) - Volkswagen's top labor representative threatened on Wednesday to try to block further investments by the German carmaker in the southern United States if its workers there are not unionized.

Workers at VW's factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last Friday voted against representation by the United Auto Workers union (UAW), rejecting efforts by VW representatives to set up a German-style works council at the plant.

German workers enjoy considerable influence over company decisions under the legally enshrined "co-determination" principle which is anathema to many politicians in the U.S. who see organized labor as a threat to profits and job growth.

Chattanooga is VW's only factory in the U.S. and one of the company's few in the world without a works council.

"I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the south again," said Bernd Osterloh, head of VW's works council.

"If co-determination isn't guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor" of potentially building another plant in the U.S. south, Osterloh, who is also on VW's supervisory board, said.

The 20-member panel - evenly split between labor and management - has to approve any decision on closing plants or building new ones.

Osterloh's comments were published on Wednesday in German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. A spokesman at the Wolfsburg-based works council confirmed the remarks.

"The conservatives stirred up massive, anti-union sentiments," Osterloh said. "It's possible that the conclusion will be drawn that this interference amounted to unfair labor praxis."

Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, a staunch opponent of unionization, said last Wednesday after the first day of voting that VW would award the factory another model if the UAW was rejected.

The comments even prompted U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene, accusing Republicans of trying to block the Chattanooga workforce's efforts.

Undeterred by last Friday's vote, VW's works council has said it will press on with efforts to set up labor representation at Chattanooga which builds the Passat sedan.

In reply to Xceler8x:

My understanding of this event was that workers like the idea of a "Works Council", BUT that they wanted absolutely no part of the UAW.

Oddly enough, a "works council" has a questionable legality in the US without a union, so the alleged solution here was for the VW workers to start their own union for only their plant and the works council.

IN B4 union praise/bashing.

yamaha wrote: Oddly enough, a "works council" has a questionable legality in the US without a union, so the alleged solution here was for the VW workers to start their own union for only their plant and the works council.

That's what I don't understand. If a company wishes to create some sort of management entity that includes representatives of their workers, why would a law require a labor union to be present?

Big implications here in TN, Nissan has said they'll move to Mexico if their workers try to unionize.

Most articles I read seem to show that the workers wanted the union and VW wanted the union. Unfortunately the local politicians didn't want the union and campaigned heavily to thwart it.

Appears to be a completely political "problem". You can guess what side of the aisle most southern politicians are and what side union workers usually vote for.

In reply to Cone_Junkie:

I don't think it was cut cut/dry case like you think it is.....(And for the record, either political side has had the opposite view, that means 99.9999% of the time the truth is in the middle)

In reply to Mad Scientist Matt:

It basically seems like the laws were written to protect the existance of unions themselves. I'll find the articles later tonight.

Germans love their unions. That's probably why their manufacturing sector is struggling so badly.

Like Unions or hate them, the workers at the plant should have been able to determine for themselves if they wanted to join the UAW or not. They did not need or deserve Senator Corker spreading outright lies to scare them into voting non-union.

I hope the vote goes before the National Labor Relations Board to determine exactly what kind of meddling Corker and his buddies had in thwarting the union

In reply to mad_machine:

I agree with the meddling part(it was stupid as berkeley).......but, what exactly did the UAW have to offer the workers at the plant? Most of what I've heard before this vote(since the media outlets are bickering) was that the employees were already compensated very well compared to their UAW counterparts.

I fully expect to see a non-UAW union there though.

The German unions have a LOT of power. It sounds like the unions on that side of the pond are pressuring VW to make it so that the US workers have some sort of representation. It wouldn't really be in their best interest to have the US be a site of cheap high quality labor. If that happens, it would make a lot of sense for most/many/all future expansions to happen in the US. That would be bad for German factories. I don't think it's so much that they really care about US workers, but they want to keep competitive by incrrasing the cost of labor. It's an interesting tactic.

Is there a sauerkraut union in Germany?

I just want to make sure the guy that puts light bulb in for the check engine light is paid well.

In reply to Anti-stance:

That's not a lightbulb, its tritium.......that way it is illuminated even during catastrophic electrical failure. Gotta hand it to them, they have one reliable feature.

From the company heads perspective there are many positives to having a unionized workforce if that Union is committed and active to doing the best job it can. Even if the "best job" means cutting jobs at VW plants. That is how it works in other parts of the world. Heck they have parties in Japan when the workers figure out how to cut themselves.

Short list of benefits:

Simplified hiring, one contract instead of thousands of individual contracts.

Simplified Benefits, whether put on the union or kept by the company the benefits are much easier to negotiate and manage in bulk.

Stability of workforce if the union is set up right you can invest in training the workforce more as they are likely to stay put. Thus the return on investment is viable to the business. (this is a part that makes or breaks the union/company arrangement. If the union doesn't self motivate improvements then the whole business is in jeopardy.)

Something similar happened in Canada, the Premier of Ontario. Thought that Honda would want to get tax breaks and help fighting unions. Despite several of his staff warning him that Honda wants positive growth for the city as a prosperous city makes for more effective employees. So they wanted to pay taxes and if a union was going to join in and do good things then great. But the Premier went ahead and blurted out his offer and Honda staff left immediately, done and over.

In reply to Advan046:

I don't think VW sought the UAW for those reasons anyways....I personally feel the UAW sought out VW hoping they could increase their dwindling membership.

MadScientistMatt wrote:

yamaha wrote: Oddly enough, a "works council" has a questionable legality in the US without a union, so the alleged solution here was for the VW workers to start their own union for only their plant and the works council.

That's what I don't understand. If a company wishes to create some sort of management entity that includes representatives of their workers, why would a law require a labor union to be present?

we weren't a union shop, but we had worker reps that met with the owner of the company on a weekly basis when i built trusses. they talked about everything that had anything to do with the workers- wages, benefits, working conditions, the stuff in the vending machines in the break room. whatever a worker had a concern/question about was brought up and dealt with. it worked out pretty well- we had people from our unionized competitor 8 miles away applying all the time and saying how much better our place was than their old place..

i don't see why they can't do the same thing..

In reply to novaderrik:

What you describe is basically the German version of unions.

In reply to novaderrick:

The problem is, the laws pertaining to unions/non-union groups make it somewhat tricky to do something like that without a union. While honestly what your employer had is most likely the best idea/way, though it might technicly be illegal.

yamaha wrote: In reply to novaderrick: The problem is, the laws pertaining to unions/non-union groups make it somewhat tricky to do something like that without a union. While honestly what your employer had is most likely the best idea/way, though it might technicly be illegal.

why would it be illegal? the owner of the company listened to the workers via elected representatives. the only reason something like that would be illegal would be if the unions greased up some politicians somewhere along the line to give them a monopoly on workforce/management relations- and we all know that stuff like that can never happen in this country...

mazdeuce wrote: The German unions have a LOT of power. It sounds like the unions on that side of the pond are pressuring VW to make it so that the US workers have some sort of representation. It wouldn't really be in their best interest to have the US be a site of cheap high quality labor. If that happens, it would make a lot of sense for most/many/all future expansions to happen in the US. That would be bad for German factories. I don't think it's so much that they really care about US workers, but they want to keep competitive by incrrasing the cost of labor. It's an interesting tactic.

"Cheap high quality labor?" "Increase the cost of their labor?"

Watch out. Your bias is showing.

Japan and Germany have had many decades of manufacturing success while the U.S. has had a rough run of it lately. I'd say those unionized workforces are working out pretty well for those countries.

Advan046 wrote: Something similar happened in Canada, the Premier of Ontario. Thought that Honda would want to get tax breaks and help fighting unions. Despite several of his staff warning him that Honda wants positive growth for the city as a prosperous city makes for more effective employees. So they wanted to pay taxes and if a union was going to join in and do good things then great. But the Premier went ahead and blurted out his offer and Honda staff left immediately, done and over.

Not everyone feels like having their workers represented is a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, any out of control union is as bad as out of control corporate management. It would seem Japan and Germany understand that working together and not trying to take advantage of one another is one way to a strong and vibrant company and national economy.

Xceler8x wrote: Don't get me wrong, any out of control union is as bad as out of control corporate management. It would seem Japan and Germany understand that working together and not trying to take advantage of one another is one way to a strong and vibrant company and national economy.

That is a salient point and bears repeating. US history is replete with instances where both entities (ownership and union) have earned their woeful reputations.

VW may have proved itself to their US employees but the UAW has a long way to go before it earns the respect of potential members.

Xceler8x wrote: ...Japan and Germany have had many decades of manufacturing success while the U.S. has had a rough run of it lately...

Anyone know why Germany has not had the outsourcing issues the US has had?

I am sure they do some of it, but how did they avoid going to the lowest cost solution that the US seems to have gone?

In reply to novaderrik:

Reuters said: "While it's something novel, they are up against a statutory framework set up to prevent this from happening," said Steve Bernstein, an attorney at Fisher & Phillips, a national labor law firm that represents the management side in labor issues. Bernstein said that as long as any workforce body only "consults" with management, they may meet U.S. labor law but if they "deal" - or negotiate - with management then that would not be allowed. "The test is whether they are exchanging ideas and proposals with management. If they refrain from that, you will have a committee with diluted power, but more likely will be accepted" under U.S. labor law, he said.

Things like that continue being claimed, and I don't have 3 years of my life to devote to finding the actual law.

aircooled wrote:

Xceler8x wrote: ...Japan and Germany have had many decades of manufacturing success while the U.S. has had a rough run of it lately...

Anyone know why Germany has not had the outsourcing issues the US has had?

They have had them and still have them to a certain extent. A lot of the medium sized companies got burnt outsourcing their stuff to China so they went closer to home in former Eastern block countries.

Also, there has been a lot of wage suppression going on in Germany as well - part of the industrial labour relations framework over there and the consensus politics called for more moderate wage increases (if any), especially in the past 15-20 years of low inflation, sometimes bordering on deflation. There's also been a considerable erosion of the social safety net and a growth of low paying part time jobs that have contributed to this, combined with readily available, underemployed people from the former GDR.

The unions were much more outspoken and sometimes militant in 80s; not much of that happening these days. In a sense the relation between management and labour is better these days (although it was never as acrimonious since about the 60s as it is/was over here; the early part of the 20th century was a very different matter), but that's also partially because of the "well, if you don't like it we'll just ship your jobs to Poland/Czech Republic/Hungary/Romania" approach.

It wasn't always like that, in the 80s and 90s Germany was considered the "sick man of Europe" as the economy stagnated badly and the whole place was basically going nowhere. One of the reasons I left at the end of the 90s was that I had had enough of pretty much a continuous recession for the whole decade. Things did get better afterwards, but I was also able to make considerably more money abroad than I would have been able to in Germany.

aircooled wrote: I am sure they do some of it, but how did they avoid going to the lowest cost solution that the US seems to have gone?

Some of it is because the manufacturers did concentrate on premium products, some of it is because they only have a few gigantic corporations and a lot of the high quality stuff is made by small to medium sized companies that don't readily outsource. A lot of the owner = manager type companies are still adopting the paternalistic approach that dates back to the earlier 20th century where you have the implied "you'll look after the company, we'll look after you and you have a job for life" agreement. In a sense it's a little Japanese, they'll pay a bit less but you don't have to worry too much about getting kicked out either.