Chattanooga Volkswagen workers reject UAW

Friday, February 14, 2014

photo Media set up as they wait for Frank Fischer, Chairman and CEO of the Volkswagen Group of America, and Gary Casteel, U.A.W Region 8 Director, to announce the result after Volkswagen employees voted to accept/deny representation by the United Auto Workers labor union concluding a three day election.

Volkswagen's Chattanooga employees have spurned the United Auto Workers, rejecting two years of wooing by the Detroit-based union in a vote of 712 to 626.

The vote count came late Friday after three days of balloting by VW workers in the National Labor Relations Board-supervised election. Some experts said the result is a blow to the UAW and that the VW plant was its best chance to organize a foreign-owned auto factory in the South.

Jack Nerad, executive market analyst of Kelley Blue Book, said UAW put a lot of work into trying to organize VW's Chattanooga operation. He termed it "a publicity setback for certain."