Scandal-ridden Detroit-based union was rejected by workers in 2014 vote
Chattanooga, Tenn. (April 15, 2019) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping workers protect their rights against compulsory union abuses, is offering free legal aid to employees at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee plant. The offer comes as United Auto Workers (UAW) union officials once again attempt to force workers at the plant into the union’s monopoly bargaining ranks.
UAW organizers attempted to unionize the facility’s workers five years ago, even demanding that the company install the union through a coercive union card check. However, when the VW workers eventually held a secret ballot vote they rejected UAW representation 712-626. Foundation staff attorneys provided free legal aid to VW workers both before and after the 2014 vote, including in defending the result of the vote after UAW lawyers moved to overturn the union’s defeat at the National Labor Relations Board.
Foundation staff attorneys also assisted VW workers in filing charges, citing improprieties in the UAW’s card check campaign in Chattanooga, which included union attempts to get workers to sign union authorization cards through coercion and misrepresentation and the UAW’s use of cards signed too long ago to be legally valid.
To guard against similar improprieties surrounding the proposed election now sought by union organizers, the Foundation is once again offering free legal aid to VW Chattanooga team members. Additionally, Foundation staff attorneys have created a special legal notice to the workers explaining their legal rights. That notice can be found on the Foundation’s website here.
Regarding UAW officials’ renewed push for union monopoly bargaining powers over the Volkswagen Chattanooga employees, National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix offered the following comments:
“UAW boss demands that both Volkswagen and the community be silent suggests they are scared that if workers get all the facts the workers will want nothing to do with this scandal-ridden union. Just days ago a federal judge labeled the UAW a ‘co-conspirator’ in a corruption and embezzlement scandal that has already resulted in numerous UAW officials being sent to prison for their role in illegally stealing workers’ training funds. The UAW’s desire to hold this vote as quickly as possible is apparently an attempt to make workers vote without the full facts and before the next embarrassing development in the union’s ever-expanding corruption scandal.”
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
