Chattanooga Volkswagen officials said Tuesday they have made a number of improvements for employees and believe that it would be more beneficial for workers to continue the present setup.
However, VW said if workers opt to have representation by the United Auto Workers that it will abide by the decision.
The UAW is pushing for an early vote on the issue.
Volkswagen also said it wanted to resolve the issue about UAW representation of maintenance workers before having a plant-wide vote.
UAW earlier lost a plant-wide vote, but wound up representing a group of maintenance workers.
It recently withdrew from that representation.
The statement says, "Volkswagen Group of America has announced plans to invest more than $800 million into the future to make electric vehicles at the Chattanooga plant while adding 1,000 jobs.
"We want to continue building on our strong and successful 10-year relationship in Tennessee.
"Given the challenges the industry is facing, a motivated and skilled workforce is a key pillar for the success or our company. The basis for this is good working conditions for our employees.
"We’ve heard the concerns that our workers have raised in an open dialogue and we’ve responded with improvements in working conditions: we’ve adjusted shift work, we’ve reduced overtime to have more predictability and we’ve raised wages. We want to continue that open dialogue also in the future.
"We believe that we can achieve more for the company and our workers by continuing that open dialogue as we have done successfully so far.
"Nevertheless, we respect our workers’ right to decide on representation and have always believed that any election for the Chattanooga plant should include both production and maintenance employees. We will now take steps to ensure that the prior maintenance-only petition is properly resolved first.
"As a company, and as colleagues, we will respect the decision of our team."