The American Council of Employees on Saturday sharply criticized Volkswagen-Chattanooga for its "deliberately biased implementation of the recently adopted Community Organization Engagement Policy."
Citing new details about the policy’s membership verification process, ACE said it "has concluded that VW is not only acting in bad faith, but is purposely favoring the United Auto Workers."
ACE officials said they recently submitted hundreds of signed “revocation statements” which signified employee intention to revoke any prior authorization of representation by the UAW, and formally requested that the documents by utilized in verifying organization membership under the policy.
In a letter sent by Volkswagen-Chattanooga in response to ACE’s request, Vice President of Human Resources Sebastian Patta said such “revocation statements” would not be recognized and "indicated that the recent verification of UAW membership was based solely on a random sampling from an unsubstantiated list of employee names, without any requirement for supporting documentation or employee signatures."
Maury Nicely, local lawyer representing ACE, said, “We are very troubled by the fact that Volkswagen has chosen to ignore signed statements clarifying the wishes of so many of its employees, while at the same time orchestrating a process by which the UAW’s membership is verified without any supporting documentation whatsoever.
“Instead of ensuring an accurate verification of organization membership through the checking of individual authorization signatures, it appears that Volkswagen has created an intentionally opaque process wherein membership is established based simply on a random sample from a list of names lacking any evidence supporting an employee’s authorization of membership.”
Keri Menendez, a VW-Chattanooga assembly worker and member of ACE, said Volkswagen's decision "to ignore the preferences of employees completely defeats the purpose of the policy."
She said, "I have a lot of co-workers who've said they expressed interest in the UAW a long time ago, but later decided against joining the UAW and signed a revocation statement. Now they're worried that they're listed as members of the UAW... Under this process, any number of employees could be listed as members of the UAW without even knowing it."