Labor News & Commentary March 19, 2024 Supreme Court declines to review McDonald's no-poach agreements & more

https://onlabor.org/march-19-2024/

By Sunah Chang

Sunah Chang is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentary: Volkswagen workers in Tennessee file for a union election, the Supreme Court declines to review McDonald’s no-poach agreements, and the Pew Research Center publishes new polling data analyzing public views about union membership.

Yesterday, workers at the Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, filed a petition with the NLRB to hold a union election. The UAW announced that a “supermajority” of the 4,000 eligible workers at the plant signed authorization cards supporting the union. Volkswagen workers who support unionization have expressed that they want to push for higher wages and improved safety measures, and hope to emulate the recent successes of the UAW with the Big Three automakers in Detroit.

The unionization of the Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga would represent a historic feat. The Volkswagen Chattanooga plant is currently the only Volkswagen factory that lacks union representation. If the Chattanooga workers vote to form a union, those workers would be the first American employees of a foreign automaker represented by a union. Successful union formation would also shift the tides for the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant, which previously voted against union representation by the UAW in 2014 and 2019. Today, the UAW’s amplified effort to unionize the Volkswagen workers in Tennessee reflects just one example of the union’s broader campaign to unionize workers employed at the American plants of foreign automakers, including BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Volvo.

FULL story at link above.