Volkswagen workers vote overwhelmingly to join the UAW | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen workers vote overwhelmingly to join the UAW

cnn.com

153 pointsdanans54 comments

Volkswagen expected the plant to be unionized when they were planning it, and it was OK about that. However, the local political leaders in power let it be known that they would not offer VW various incentives for locating the plant in TN if it was to be unionized, presumably because union workers are much more inclined to vote for, and unions much more inclined to contribute to the opposite party. There are three other large non-union auto plants in Tennessee and two in neighboring states. The UAW certainly thinks that the VW plant will demonstrate the advantage of collective bargaining to workers in those other plants.

I thought part of the attraction was “right to work” https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_work_state#:~:text=.... made the unions far more fragile?

The theory may be premised on false beliefs about unions.

It does make things tougher financially for the union but certainly still doable. Especially if you have a big national like UAW that can step in if need be. My guess would be if 70% voted in favor you'd see around that amount paying dues.

Did the union gets seats in the board of directors - as they have in germany?

If I understand correctly, German law REQUIRES labor to be represented on the board, so it's interesting that they were able to set up a plant in Tennessee in the first place when they could not comply with German law doing so.

This in no way upsets Volkswagen, in other words. It's normal.

It seems to be upsetting VW's local US management[1], even if their German based management might be quietly pleased with this outcome.

[1] https://labornotes.org/blogs/2019/06/volkswagen-declares-war...

Based on that article, European management seems to be pushing against US unionization too (installing anti union local ceo, etc)

Anecdotally, I have not come across any German, Austrian, or Swiss CEO who liked unions.

Pretty much, and that's considering unions in Europe are a lot weaker than in the US. A lot of union busting goes in in Austria even if unions are legal. Austrian Antron Paar is notorious for firing everyone who voices about starting a union.

So I have no idea why grandparent and other commenters on HN, would assume VW would be "silently happy" to see more unions, when I'm pretty sure they're not that happy about already having one in Germany but they have to tolerate it because it's the law there, but deep down they'd rather not have any at all as that's how businesses role.

> Pretty much, and that's considering unions in Europe are a lot weaker than in the US.

I think you may be talking beyond your knowledge here. Unions in the Nordics are incredibly strong with clear majorities in at least Denmark and Sweden (I'll let someone else chime in on Norway).

I was wrong to generalize. What I meant was the unions in Europe where I am(Austria) are weaker than in the US since they're too nice and non confrontational resulting in loosing at their own interests.

Respectfully, I don’t think you know what you are talking about.

There are no comic book mafia labour unions with no show contracts, but employees’ rights in Austria are monumentally better in almost every way compared to the US.

Please, don't move the goalposts, I was comparing unions' power not workers' rights, tow deferent things.

Just look how useless the IT union in Austria was with it's salary increases below inflation. You know what would have helped with their negotiations? The right to strike and let IT infra fall apart for a day, but oh wait, they're not allowed to by law. Unions in the US are a lot more confrontational than in Austria.

But since you opened that can of worms, some companies in Austria will fire you on the spot if you talk about starting a company union(Betreibsrat) because in Austria you have no workers protection against being fired for no reason, even while you're on sick leave.

Even colleagues from the US were shocked on how easy it is for them to get fired here when back home they could have sued for unfair dismissal, but here they were told they have no grounds because the employer can terminate you any time for any reason. Another mate, got sued by his employer since the IT infra he was in charge of crashed while he was sick in hospital and the employer could find him liable for the damages by Austrian labor law. In Austria, not the US. And let's not talk about the infamous 'all-in' contracts some companies use to get you to work unpaid overtime.

Now tell me more about these amazing workers' rights in Austria.

I am not an Austrian but what I found online is very different to what you are writing. - Unions bargaining for everyone, including non-members. Where on earth do you have something like that? - IT KV giving everyone a yearly raise instead of only raising the minimum income - Also, laws against "Motivkuendigungen" seem a lot like "protection against being fired for no reason" - You have all-ins everywhere, this is not some Austrian specialty.

Oh and did you hear about the new US specialty of "unlimited vacation"? It is more or less the canceling of your vacation as every vacation you take will be used against you.

I fear you have no idea what a safe haven of a country you seem to be working in.

“… unions in Europe are a lot weaker than in the US.”

Maybe in other countries, but certainly not in Germany. I grew up in the southern US, and am still astounded at how strong and effective unions are here, even in conservative Bavaria. I’m in IT, but employed under a permanent contract that was negotiated by and is enforced by IG Metall, the industrial union for all non-management employees of lots of companies, regardless of job function. For example, Germany requires that employers give 24 paid vacation days per year. The contract I signed has 30.

As the post-COVID inflation spun up, they pretty quickly got us an 8% across-the-board pay increase without much drama, because they’re taken pretty seriously by management, and that’s on top of lots of little increases over the years.

I don’t adore everything IG Metall does, but I have trouble even imagining a comparable situation in the US, especially the southern US.

You're comparing the most powerful union in Germany though. There are much weaker unions in Europe. For example the IT union in Austria is super weak.

But it's the relevant uni on for vw

Why do you say the IT union is super weak in Austria? Honestly asking.

Have you seen the results of the KV negotiations of the IT union in the last years with booming inflation?

> so it's interesting

Not at all. I don't think German labor law ever applied to American residents working in the US...

This year has been absolutely amazing for Union drives:

https://aflcio.org/formaunion/union-organizing-wins

Anyone who is rightfully dissatisfied with the share of value they own compared to capital should be unionizing to seize the means from them

Growing tensions with the PRC have been essential for this. If VW had to compete with BYD, I doubt the former would survive.

Elon is right, tariffs are going to be necessary if we don’t want to cede the auto industry to China, and I cannot imagine we do. It’s really hard to compete with nearly slave labor.

That same slave labor is the reason why so many western companies moved their factories to China in the first place form 1978 when China open to international business and leaving a working class of people without jobs, and VW was one of the first to open a factory there.

Funny how we never saw the usage of Chinese slave labor as an issue warranting tariffs when it made western companies huge profits and leaving westerners jobless, but only when they have to face with the new Chinese competitors and loose profits do they cry wolf.

Hypocrisy much?

I’m not sure it’s hypocrisy so much as pure self-interest. It would be hypocrisy if the complaint was actually about the condition of Chinese workers. Few really care about that unless they’re jumping out of windows, and most not even then.

In both cases, it’s just capitalists wanting to make money. It may be awful but it’s at least consistent.

Three generations, several Presidential administrations, and a few massive shifts in geopolitical realities later, it's more amazing how much continuity there has been in policy than how "hypocritical" a bunch of totally different people are to each other.

I don't think the problem is slave labour. I think it's just that the Chinese companies don't seem to care about undercutting themselves, and will instead sell as much as they can to whoever will buy.

I can go on Alibaba and buy batteries directly from Eve Energy Co for reasonable prices-- batteries that I could stick in my homebuilt electric car, or do exactly whatever I wanted with. I can buy synthetic crystals, quartz, yttria stabilized zirconia monocrystals, sapphire boules, etc.

In the west all these things are locked up. You can't buy them if you're an ordinary person, so no one buys them to experiment on.

A western car manufacturer wouldn't sell batteries to an individual, nor would his supplier. But in China they don't care, if you pay, you get it.

Of course, upon all this, they're also strategic. The government actually analyses things and figures out critical technologies for the future and makes sure that a decent number of people are working seriously on them, that they do this as a job, and with the intent of actually realising large-scale production with real impact.

> Of course, upon all this, they're also strategic.

The Chinese government set out to build EVs in 1994 - GM was already well advanced on their electric vehicle (the EV1, which launched in 1996). However, GM discontinued the EV1[1] in 1999, but the Chinese government stayed the course. No publicly listed American company can stay on-task on a project that will only bear fruit in 30 years; long-term projects are the first to be lose funding when there are macro-economic headwinds; see multiple Google X projects, and Google is/was one of the better companies at attempting long-term projects. Hell, even government agencies like NASA struggle with projects that span more than one presidential administration.

1. Incidentally, the Tesla co-founders were inspired to start Tesla by the EV1 - which is why referencing traditional automotive OEMs as "dinosaurs" is laughable

Are VW's shareholders actually doing well?

It seems Volkswagen stock is down -16.23% last-5-years, and trading at a price-to-book ratio of 0.39.

I'm not an accountant, but with such a low P/B ratio, is there a chance the company gets bought out and liquidated for its assets, costing everyone's jobs?

For comparison: Ford trades at price-to-book ratio of 1.13 and is up 16.62% last-5-years (still not much better than the risk-free rate). And long-term TSLA shareholders, of course, have made incredible profits.

https://ycharts.com/companies/VLKAF/price_to_book_value

https://ycharts.com/companies/F/price_to_book_value

It bears repeating that Tesla isn't in the same category: their main value is in their stock price, not stamped metal and batteries, or even the knowledge in assembling those into vehicles.

>Tesla isn't in the same category: their main value is in their stock price,

So it's like Bitcoin. It's worth a lot because a lot of people believe it's worth a lot.

This is true for any stock. The difference between speculation and investment is what drives that belief in future worth of the assest.

That would make Tesla's value more speculation than investment.

VW's problem is the EU: the EU decided (corruption? incompetence? both?) to hand over the EU market to non-EU companies, like the chinese ones.

They way they did that was to come up with the craziest green agenda ever: no more sales of ICE vehicles in the EU by... 2035. They decided that a few years ago and this was the beginning of the end for all the EU car manufacturers.

There's no way the EU car manufacturers can be competitive with Tesla on one hand (better batteries) or the chinese (way, way, way cheaper vehicles) by 2035.

So EU politicians, in their usual idiocy, decided to destroy the economy of the biggest country in the EU, Germany.

Seeing this as an EU citizen makes me sick.

I understand that it's great to take ESG postures but... At the cost of destroying your entire economy? All the while the EU is a measly 400 million people and there are billions of people in, say, China and India who don't give a fuck about destroying the planet.

Insanity. 2035 was way too early: this left no time to german car manufacturers. A sad state of affair.

"EU politicians" don't exist. The EU agenda is set by national governments in the Council - including the German one, which happens to have produced important Commissioners like the current Commission President.

The woes of VW have little to do with the green agenda (the electric switch is a reality worldwide), and more to do with a brand tarnished by the emission scandal and the whiff of corruption emanated by the (lack of real) consequences in Germany - because the German government largely looked the other way.

Yes, EU decided to hand over their markets to China even though Mercedes and Audi sell more cars in China than all of Europe combined.

> is there a chance the company gets bought out and liquidated for its assets

Not really. Its partially state owned and considering the influence of the unions and the government nobody could really buy it (especially not to liquidate it).

The valuation is not great, but they are still reasonably profitable also it pays a 5-7% dividend which is quite decent (and I think if its taken into account the return over the last 5 years was positive if still not great).

There is literally no connection between stock price and value to labor and customers from the activities of the business

VW would be better off as a worker owned cooperative and have no stock price

There was a time before the stock market created the mechanism to decouple labor from production

The plan now is to create the inverted stock market - returning capital to its rightful owner

Such unionization also has significant spill-over effect on non-unionized workers, which improves their outcomes also (https://www.nominalnews.com/p/unions-strike-action-and-the-e...). It's good to see this shift as it also improves outcomes for consumers.

Saw how comfortable and respectful unionized jobs are when my wife had a medical condition. At my tech company, they'll try to create fake narratives to PIP you out.

Unions are totally worth it when there is abuse of power.

s/abuse of power/imbalance in power/

Imbalance of power is almost universal, but the abuse of it isn't necessarily so.

[dupe]

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40094264

I found abook is the best gift, particularly when it includes a bookmark that is a sufficiently thick envelope.

I was surprised at the time that Volkswagen's labor stakeholders in the EU permitted non-union shops elsewhere.

A solid win.

For future, I support sectorial bargaining, to level the battlefield.

(Idle thought: Perhaps UBI would serve same purpose.)

VW runs a "Works Council" for the German plans, which is basically a union, except it's funded by the company rather than union dues. As it happens it's illegal for companies to contribute any financial support to a labor organisation in the US [1].

So while VW originally wanted a union, and "Work Council" type setup when they came to the US. Local law basically made it illegal for VW to do that. Not only that, but the local politicians seemed to have fought tooth and nail to discourage VW workers from unionising. It also seems that since the plant was originally setup, US based management have brought their strong dislike of unions to the table. So while VW didn't try to prevent unionisation originally, in more recent years their US management has made it very clear they don't want unions, and also don't like the "Works Councils" that VW operates elsewhere.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/business/volkswagen-worke...

And the US VW management is not under the control of the German VW management who own the US subsidiary? Therefore the anti-union actions from the US management come with the blessing or even the order of the German management?

How is not allowing the company to directly fund unions "anti-union"? It's the opposite if anything, it keeps them independent and prevents them from being coopted and influenced by management (after all UAW seems to be generally more effective than German unions).

> after all UAW seems to be generally more effective than German unions

Citation needed. Tesla is currently discovering just how effective German unions can be.

> How is not allowing the company to directly fund unions "anti-union"? It's the opposite if anything, it keeps them independent and prevents them from being coopted and influenced by management

Nothing prevents a unions from refusing to accept cash from the company, or taking union dues etc to maintain their independence.

I don't think workers at any of Tesla's factories in the are unionized.

Good for them. More shops should be unionized.

Well, naturally, same as in Germany.

Eh. Sectoral bargaining is very very different from the much more-confrontational US model where individual firms unionize, to the extent that I don't really think they should even be in the same category as each other. In an alternate history sectorally bargained US, auto workers might actually have lower wages than UAW workers do today because the manufacturing industry sectoral union wants to have a more competitive export sector. They are just two completely different models of not just unionization but how to organize society and have labor-corporate-government relations, so it's not helpful to compare them

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