I told ya'll...unions are coming
back.
Large German firms are heavily unionized, and labor unions are tied into German corporate governance in a much more profound way than they are at American firms even at heavily unionized industries. The system of "codetermination" means that employees are formally represented on German corporate boards. And it's common for German firms to have what are known as "works councils"—representative vehicles through which rank-and-file employees are supposed to be able to exercise voice over what's happening in the workplace. But when German companies come to the United States, they typically don't carry German-style labor relations with them. On the contrary, they've generally flocked to southern states where wages are lower and labor law makes union organizing extremely difficult.
But Volkswagen's existing works councils have started giving the company a hard time about the fact that there's no works council at its Chattanooga plant. All the other VW facilities around the world have one, so they think the Chattanooga plant should have one too.
The problem for Volkswagen is that under existing American labor law, firms around allowed to set up a "company union" to represent workers. If they're going to have a works council in Chattanooga it needs to be through a whole hog independent NLRB certified labor union. And apparently they're negotiating with the United Auto Workers about the idea of letting UAW run an uncontested unionization campaign to do just that.
