Media set up as they wait for Frank Fischer, Chairman and CEO of the Volkswagen Group of America, and Gary Casteel, U.A.W Region 8 Director, to announce the result after Volkswagen employees voted to accept/deny representation by the United Auto Workers labor union concluding a three day election.Volkswagen's Chattanooga employees have spurned the United Auto Workers, rejecting two years of wooing by the Detroit-based union in a vote of 712 to 626.
The vote count came late Friday after three days of balloting by VW workers in the National Labor Relations Board-supervised election. Some experts said the result is a blow to the UAW and that the VW plant was its best chance to organize a foreign-owned auto factory in the South.
Jack Nerad, executive market analyst of Kelley Blue Book, said UAW put a lot of work into trying to organize VW's Chattanooga operation. He termed it "a publicity setback for certain."