A rival group to the United Auto Workers at Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant has failed to reach a minimum membership level that permits it to continue to meet regularly with management under a factory policy.
But UAW Local 42 membership has met the highest level of support under the policy, the automaker said Thursday.
"Based on the results of the verification process, the current UAW Local 42 membership meets the support requirement for Level 3 under the Community Organization Engagement policy for the hourly employee group, excluding skilled maintenance. The current American Council of Employees membership does not meet the COE requirements at this time," said plant spokesman Scott Wilson.
ACE President David Reed said in a statement it will shift the way it engages with management at the factory.
"In the coming weeks, ACE's hourly and salaried employee groups will transition to a new model of engagement with management, instead of operating solely under the company's [policy]," Reed said in a statement. "We remain fully committed to the VW-Chattanooga employees and to the overall success of Volkswagen in our community."
The VW policy allows increasing levels of access to plant management depending on a group's support level. The UAW is at 45 percent membership or more, while ACE has fallen below the 15 percent mark.
In last year's filings, ACE said it had 381 members at the plant while the UAW reported a membership of 816 members, or 55 percent of the blue-collar workforce.
Steve Cochran, vice president of UAW Local 42, said it has organized a majority of the blue-collar workforce and it looks forward to collective bargaining.
However, VW has balked at entering into such talks, including with a group of skilled trades workers who last December voted to be represented by the UAW. Earlier this month, VW filed a court appeal to an order by the National Labor Relations Board to recognize the maintenance employees.
VW's policy enacted in late 2014 offers tiered levels of access to facility resources and meetings with management to any official employee group active in the Chattanooga plant. But any interaction with management personnel under the policy is strictly limited to conversations concerning topical employee suggestions, with discussion of particular concerns or issues related to wages and conditions of employment explicitly prohibited, according to ACE.
ACE said the shift in its approach comes amid "a significant increase in worker turnover at the facility" in anticipation of the upcoming addition of a new vehicle model to the plant's production lineup. The high level of employee turnover altered the overall pool of employees eligible for representation under the policy and changed the composition of ACE's membership, the group said.
As a result, ACE's two employee groups will now interact with management in a manner less structured than the schedule of monthly meetings with the facility's Human Resources Department set forth by the existing policy, the group said.
Wilson said that ACE members, as individuals, have the same opportunity as all plant employees to reach out to management under its "open-door policy."
"Though ACE is not able to take advantage of the benefits that qualified groups are given under the COE, they are welcome to re-submit their membership roster for verification in 2017," Wilson said.
Reed said the current policy framework is "incapable of fully accomplishing the level of results that VW Chattanooga team members expect and deserve. The recent changes present an opportunity for us to work with management to develop a more productive approach to resolving workplace issues."
"We are proud of our achievements working within the [policy], especially the significant improvements to the facility's overtime policy," he said.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.