The head of Volkswagen’s Works Council may soon be paying a visit to workers at Chattanooga to discuss the prospect of a works council. Reuters reports that Bernd Osterloh will be headed down south for a “dialogue” about representation. The UAW will not be present at the talks, but representatives of both VW and IG Metall, Germany’s largest labor union, will be in attendance.

Despite the UAW’s absence, the union and IG Metall have their respective ties, with UAW head Bob King acting as IG Metall’s labor representative on Opel’s supervisory board. The meeting is also occurring as the anti-union camp digs in its heels with a campaign aimed at thwarting the UAW’s organization drive.

A group of workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee plant is circulating a petition aimed at stopping the UAW’s attempt to organize the plant.

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After Fiat and Chrysler’s retired UAW workers’ health care benefits trust were unable to agree on a price for the Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association‘s 41.5% share in the Auburn Hills automaker, at the trust’s request Chrysler has filed initial paperwork for a public stock offering to sell part of the VEBA’s stake, about 16% of overall Chrysler shares, the first time in over a decade that the public will be able to own shares in Chrysler, which formerly was wholly owned by Cerberus and before that Daimler. Fiat certainly would rather the IPO not take place now as it complicates Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne’s plans for the Italian automaker to acquire full ownership of Chrysler. The benefits trust has the legal right to force Chrysler to make the stock offering so the VEBA can cash out on the shares it received in exchange for giving up financial claims against Chrysler during the company’s bankruptcy and bailout by governments in the United States and Canada.
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On Friday, Sergio Marchionne, who heads Fiat and Chrysler, told reporters in Milan, Italy that he hasn’t gotten any closer to making a deal with the UAW’s retiree health care trust for Fiat to purchase the VEBA’s shares in Chrysler and take full ownership of the Auburn Hills automaker. The UAW health care trust owns 41.5% of Chrysler and the two parties have not been able to agree on a price. The trust is demanding $5 billion for its shares. Marchionne told the LaPresse news agency, concerning the UAW trust’s suggested price, “They should buy a lottery ticket.” Read More >

Reuters is reporting that in an interview with the German Handelsblatt newspaper, United Auto Workers president Bob King said that a majority of workers at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Chattanooga,Tennessee have signed cards supporting the UAW in the creation of a German-style works council at the factory. “Yes, we have a majority,” UAW President Bob King said.

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Negotiations between Volkswagen and the United Auto Workers over the UAW’s possible representation of workers at VW’s Chattanooga, Tennessee assembly plant began last Friday, according to the German newspaper, the Handelsblatt and Automotive News. The newspaper also reported that UAW president Bob King and VW board member for human resources, Horst Neumann discussed the establishment of a German style “works council” to represent factory workers at the plant. VW and the UAW both declined comment. Read More >

Following labor unrest and increasing costs at their operations in South Korea, General Motors has begun to reevaluate GM Korea’s role in the giant automaker’s production plans. Currently GM Korea, formerly Daewoo, builds about 20% of GM’s global production. The already announced shifting of production of Opel’s Mokka small crossover to the Zaragoza facility in Spain starting in the second half of 2014 may portend other changes in GM Korea’s role. Both foreign and domestic Korean automakers have expressed concern over rapidly rising wages in that country. The strong Korean currency, the won, coupled with those rising labor costs have made Korea one of the more expensive places for GM to build cars. Read More >

Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewanza is stepping down as the CAW gets ready to merge with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). The resulting organization will have more than 300,000 members.

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Sergio Marchionne’s plans to merge Chrysler and Fiat have been delayed because Fiat failed to convince a Delaware Chancery Court judge to set the value of Chrysler stock owned by the UAW’s health care fund known as VEBA. Judge Donald Parsons rejected Fiat’s request to find that a call-option agreement covering at least 54,000 Chrysler shares valued the stock at slightly less than $140 million. That decision means that the dispute over the shares’ value will now proceed to trial. Read More >

Last week, members of the Korean Metal Workers Union approved an annual wage contract with GM Korea that follows more than two weeks of partial strikes that affected GM’s Asian manufacturing base. GM Korea assembles about 40% of Chevy branded cars sold worldwide.

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Ah, the wondrous web of global automaking: Drivers and sorters at DHL are going on strike, and this threatens to cripple production at Jaguar Land Rover in the UK. JLR  has outsourced a good deal of its logistics to Deutsche Post–owned  DHL. DHL employees serving JLR’s plants at Castle Bromwich and Solihull voted for a strike after they did not receive terms and conditions extended to regular JLR staff. Read More >

When there was labor unrest in South Africa, the UAW was quick to spend union dues for a long trip to the scenic South African locale, ostensibly to show  their solidarity with South African union brothers who, coincidentally, fought against Mercedes and Volkswagen. Back home, the UAW pulled a whole packet of race cards. It headlines, a bit strenuously: “South Africans have more rights than workers in Mississippi.”

It would have been more a propos if the UAW would have flown to South Korea to show solidarity with workers  who are about to go on strike against GM, the company, ooops, that is partially owned by the UAW. Read More >

According to media reports, Volkswagen workers received a hefty, inflation-busting pay rise today, giving the impression that VW workers are being especially coddled. Not true. Metal workers in  all of Germany received a 5.6 percent raise in May (3.4 percent more from July on, followed by 2.2 percent starting in May 2014, to be exact.) Volkswagen workers received more or less the same. Read More >

The mantra before, during, and after the bailout was (and still is) that without the bailout, gadzillions of jobs would have vanished, the American car industry would have been wiped out, wheels would have come off the arsenal of democracy, and the sky would have fallen into Lake St. Clair.  Of course, that’s nonsense. There are more than enough other carmakers in America. They would have received the sales, and added the jobs.  They would have been mostly non-union jobs though.

The truth is, without the bailout, the UAW would have vanished, and with it millions of Democratic votes.  Read More >

German autoworkers want their share of the record profits announced by German carmakers last year. IG Metall labor union demanded 5.5 percent. Employers countered with 2.3 percent. Today, workers went on strike. Read More >