The Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted tonight against joining the United Auto Workers. The vote was 712 to 626 with 89% of the employees voting.
The decision to consider union representation would have put the UAW into a southern marketplace. Tennessee Republicans fought hard against this and insisted allowing the UAW into their state would hinder job growth. Senator Bob Corker told the VW plant workers if they voted against joining the union, the plant would get a contract to build a new SUV.
“I’ve had conversations today and based on those am assured that should the workers vote against the UAW, Volkswagen will announce in the coming weeks that it will manufacture its new mid-size SUV here in Chattanooga.”
How Corker had this information is unknown.
Senator Corker could be facing a primary challenge for his seat in Tennessee and appearing to the Tea Party as not being conservative enough to keep the Democratic-leaning UAW out of the state could hurt him in that race. By influencing the unionization vote he will appear to be right, and that will strengthen his candidacy for November.
Volkswagen theoretically could have already decided to bring the SUV to the Tennessee plant and the senator knew this, but used the news to influence the UAW vote against the union. What we do know that happened right now is the factory workers voted no, and the UAW lost a chance to get a foothold in the south.
The official statement from Volkswagen on the union vote:
“There is no connection between our Chattanooga employees’ decision about whether to be represented by a union and the decision about where to build a new product for the U.S. market.”
edited by Kyla Davis
