ACE, with 381 VW members, bills itself as UAW alternative

Mike Burton sits in the meeting room of the new location of the American Council of Employees headquarters off Bonny Oaks Drive near Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Tuesday, November 11, 2014.
Mike Burton sits in the meeting room of the new location of the American Council of Employees headquarters off Bonny Oaks Drive near Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Tuesday, November 11, 2014.
photo Mike Burton sits in the meeting room of the new location of the American Council of Employees headquarters off Bonny Oaks Drive near Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Tuesday, November 11, 2014.

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The rival group to the United Auto Workers union at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee brands itself as local, independent and free of outside influence or political agenda.

But the group called the American Council of Employees won't divulge how they are funded, and the lawyer who recently filed overdue disclosures with the U.S. Department of Labor touts his expertise in "union avoidance."

ACE has 381 members among both hourly and salaried workers at the Chattanooga factory, according to the filing. By contrast, the UAW said last month it had 816 members among the hourly workers alone. That's about 55 percent of the blue-collar workforce.

ACE's filing with the Labor Department says the Chattanooga law firm of Evans Harrison Hackett PLLC represents it. The firm's partners include Maury Nicely, who was a chief spokesman for the Southern Momentum effort, and Philip Byrum, who corresponded with federal officials when ACE missed filing deadlines on its finances and membership.

Byrum's bio on the law firm's website says he has taught seminars on harassment, disability law, the Family and Medical Leave Act and "union avoidance."

Nicely said ACE has billed itself as "the anti-union union." ACE was founded as a labor organization because that's what it needed to be, he said. But, Nicely said, ACE's goal isn't to be the exclusive voice of the VW workforce.

ACE's aim is to see a works council set up at the Chattanooga plant, he said.

ACE doesn't believe that "a Detroit-based labor organization is the best thing for the community," he said.

Mike Cantrell, the president of UAW Local 42, criticized the group for not disclosing its sources of income, other than listing about $15,000 in "other receipts." Local 42 derives all of its funding from the national UAW. Neither the UAW local nor ACE collect dues from members.

"Southern Momentum never disclosed its source of funding and, now, neither has its sister organization," Cantrell said in an email. "Folks can debate ideas all day long, but the one thing we should all agree on is transparency."

Volkswagen's hands-off approach to organizing at the plant stand in contrast to most other foreign automakers in the South. That's in part because of the influence of labor representatives who control half of the votes on the board of the world's No. 2 auto producer. They have chafed at the U.S. plant standing alone among the company's worldwide plants without formal labor representation.

The company wants to create a works council to decide plant-specific issues like working conditions, scheduling and safety at the plant. But U.S. law says the company can't create a works council without the participation of an independent union.

Volkswagen has created an internal labor policy for the plant that stops short of granting collective bargaining rights.

ACE wants to prevent the UAW from gaining bargaining rights for the first time at a foreign-owned automaker in the South, and its leaders previously spearheaded the successful effort, dubbed Southern Momentum, that helped thwart the UAW in a union election at the factory last year. The UAW lost by a margin of 712 to 626.

The UAW blamed the narrow loss on "outside interference" by Republican politicians like U.S. Sen. Bob Corker and anti-union groups like Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, which the union said worked in concert with Southern Momentum.

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