Volkswagen has dug in its heels in first contract negotiations at its assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where workers won a landslide victory in last year’s union drive.
“We’re still waiting for the company to agree to a proposal that simply affords us a fair share,” auto worker Steve Cochran testified before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on October 8. “We are living with health care that forces people into bankruptcy. We are living with no protection from inflation.”
In March, Volkswagen cut shifts, sowing fear and uncertainty during contract negotiations. In late September it presented its “last, best, and final offer,” and issued threats about job and benefit losses if workers authorized a strike. The union is gathering pledge cards for a potential strike.
The three-to-one yes vote covering the plant’s entire 4,300-member workforce in April 2024 was a landmark victory for the United Auto Workers, which had lost plant-wide elections here in 2014 and 2019. This was the first auto plant in the South to unionize through an election since 1940, and the first foreign-owned factory.
But Volkswagen hasn’t accepted defeat. “The company has repeatedly violated labor law to delay us our fair share,” Cochran told Congress. “They have unlawfully cut jobs at the plant. They have unlawfully refused to bargain in good faith.”
It must have felt like Groundhog Day for Cochran as he packed his bags for Washington, DC. He made a similar trip to Germany back in 2016, when Volkswagen was refusing to bargain with his small unit of skilled-trades workers after they voted to unionize in 2015. They never did reach a deal. Almost a decade later, he’s still traveling to the halls of political…
Auteur: Luis Feliz Leon
