EXCLUSIVE: Volkswagen Isn’t Fighting Unionization—But Leaked Docs Show Right-Wing Groups Are

[unhappycamper]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15876/anti_union_forces_mobilizing_at_chattanoogas_volkswagen_plant/



Anti-union conservatives are worried that if the UAW successfully organizes Volkwagen's Tennessee plant, it will create a domino effect in the South. Here, protesters lift a sign supporting a UAW organizing campaign at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss.

EXCLUSIVE: Volkswagen Isn’t Fighting Unionization—But Leaked Docs Show Right-Wing Groups Are
By Mike Elk
Wednesday Nov 13, 2013 2:30 pm

After Volkswagen issued a letter in September saying the company would not oppose an attempt by the United Auto Workers (UAW) to unionize its 1,600-worker Chattanooga, Tenn., facility, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was flabbergasted.

"For management to invite the UAW in is almost beyond belief," Corker, who campaigned heavily for the plant’s construction during his tenure as mayor of Chattanooga, told the Associated Press. "They will become the object of many business school studies—and I'm a little worried could become a laughingstock in many ways—if they inflict this wound."

Corker isn’t the only right-winger out to halt UAW’s campaign. In the absence of any overt anti-union offensive by Volkswagen, conservative political operatives worried about the UAW getting a foothold in the South have stepped into the fray.

Leaked documents obtained by In These Times, as well as interviews with a veteran anti-union consultant, indicate that a conservative group, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, appears to be pumping hundred of thousands of dollars into media and grassroots organizing in an effort to stop the union drive. In addition, the National Right-to-Work Legal Defense Foundation helped four anti-union workers in October file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Volkswagen was forcing a union on them.

[mountain grammy]

1. Once again, the 1% trying to buy the hearts and minds of workers..

but what they're selling won't pay the rent or put food on the table. It's pure propaganda, all lies. Try to put that on the table for Thanksgiving dinner.

[Mother Muckraker]

2. German union's incoming boss warns VW about avoiding unions

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/13/autos-igmetall-vw-idUSL2N0IY1LU20131113

"Low wages and union-free areas: That's not a business model that the IG Metall would support," he told Reuters in a telephone interview. "If companies - from VW to ThyssenKrupp - entered these (southern U.S.) states in order to be free of unions, meaning to not acknowledge a fundamental pillar of any democracy, then we're in North Korea. That cannot be accepted."

also this excerpt from OP article:

the National Right-to-Work Legal Defense Foundation helped four anti-union workers in October file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Volkswagen was forcing a union on them.

People like that are actively recruited within the VW plant. You will have a person who is "installed" as a worker by the union busters who then profiles the most reactionary right-wing workers and those are recruited. This gives the image of workers asserting their rights when they're really just ignorant companymen.