A Volkswagen EV ID.4 crossover at the Volkswagen of America plant in Chattanooga, Tenneessee, on June 8, 2022.
Michael Wayland | CNBC
DETROIT — Volkswagen workers at a plant in Tennessee have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for a vote to affix the United Auto Workers, the union announced Monday.
The filing comes after a “supermajority of Volkswagen workers have signed union cards in only 100 days,” the union said, marking a serious milestone within the labor group’s organizing drives of nonunionized auto plants within the U.S.
The UAW has previously failed to prepare foreign-based automakers within the U.S. Most recently, plants with Volkswagen and Nissan fell wanting the support needed to unionize. In 2019, VW workers at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant rejected union representation in an 833-776 vote.
The Chattanooga plant is VW’s only U.S. assembly plant and employs greater than 4,000 autoworkers who could be eligible to vote for union representation.
VW confirmed receiving a notice that the UAW has filed a petition with the NLRB to carry an election. The corporate said it respects its workers’ right to a democratic process and to prepare.
“We’ll fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a probability to vote in privacy on this essential decision. The election timeline will probably be determined by the NLRB. Volkswagen is happy with our working environment in Chattanooga that gives a few of the most effective paying jobs in the world,” the corporate said in an emailed statement.
VW production workers at the plant earn between $23.40 per hour and $32.40 per hour, with a four-year grow-in period to top wages, in response to the corporate.
VW’s hourly wages are lower than those the UAW negotiated last 12 months with the Detroit automakers, which this 12 months range between about $25 an hour and $36 an hour for production workers, including estimated cost-of-living adjustments, or COLA. By the top of the UAW contracts, top wages are expected to surpass $42 an hour for production workers.
VW is considered one of 13 nonunion automakers within the U.S. that the UAW set its sights on late last 12 months after securing record contracts with the Detroit automakers.
The drive covers nearly 150,000 autoworkers across BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.