The United Auto Workers would like Volkswagen AG to voluntarily recognize the U.S. union as the best choice to represent the German automaker's workers at its Tennessee plant, the union's president said on Thursday.
Doing so would eliminate the need for a more formal and divisive vote, UAW President Bob King said, and allow the union and VW to represent the workers using an "innovative model" that would be a milestone in the union's long-running effort to organize foreign-owned auto plants.
Critics, however, argue that such an approach would be undemocratic.
King has been trying to organize foreign-owned, U.S.-based auto plants to bolster a union membership that has shrunk since its peak in the late 1970s.
Historically, the U.S. South has been hostile to unions, and scoring a win at VW would mark the UAW's first success at a major foreign automaker's plant in that region. That could alter the landscape in the U.S. auto sector, opening door to similar efforts at plants owned by Germany's Mercedes in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina, and possibly those owned by Japanese and South Korean automakers, analysts have said.
GERMAN LABOR MODEL
The question in Tennessee would be whether the UAW seeks a formal vote for recognition or asks VW officials simply to recognize the union as the official bargaining unit for the workers under a new German-style representation model called a "works council."
