UAW Appeals Historic Loss in Tennessee

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union asserted in an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed Friday that Republican public officials and union opponents unfairly influenced workers at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant that rejected the union by a 53-47 percent margin on Feb. 14.

Those groups, the UAW said in its complaint, “conducted what appears to have been a coordinated and widely-publicized coercive campaign, in concert with their staffs and others, to deprive VWGOA workers of their federally-protected right, through the election, to support and select the UAW as their exclusive representative.”

Anti-union forces were not the only political actors to get involved in the election.

President Barack Obama voiced his support for the unionization effort and a prominent VW board member, who also represents European labor group IG Metall, threatened to withhold investments to the plant if it did not unionize.

Glenn Taubman, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorney who represented those employees, said that the union was cherry-picking incidents to overthrow the desires of the majority of workers at the plant.