(Reuters) - The United Auto
Workers will form a local union in Tennessee to represent workers at a
Chattanooga Volkswagen AG plant, The Tennessean newspaper reported on
Thursday.
It is a
preliminary step toward the UAW gaining a toehold among foreign
automakers in the U.S. South, a region that has often been inhospitable
to organized labor, after the union lost a February election at the
Chattanooga plant.
The
Tennessean, in Nashville, said that it was told by UAW
Secretary-Treasurer Gary Casteel that a formal announcement about
establishing a voluntary union would be made later on Thursday.
The newspaper reported that Germany's VW will not work with the local
unit of the union until it has the support of a "substantial portion" of
the Chattanooga plant's employees.
"Just like anywhere else in the world, the establishment of a local
organization is a matter for the trade union concerned," VW spokesman
Scott Neal Wilson said in statement to Reuters. "There is no contract or
other formal agreement with UAW on this matter."
The February election that the UAW lost at VW Chattanooga by 712-626
was a major setback for the union. Its former president Bob King, whose
term expired in June, had vowed to successfully bring the UAW into a
foreign-owned Southern plant, saying that if the union was unable to do
so, its future was in jeopardy.
The UAW had asked the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, the federal
agency that oversees union elections and polices labor disputes, to
invalidate the results of the February election and hold a new one.
The UAW said that VW workers were improperly influenced by anti-union
statements made by Tennessee Republican politicians and outside interest
groups in the days leading up to the election.
The UAW withdrew its legal challenge just hours before a hearing was
slated to begin in April. Casteel told Reuters at the time that they
were worried "objectionists" would delay the process and take the focus
off Tennessee workers.
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