UAW President Bob King speaks with the media inside the Chattanooga Electrical Apprenticeship and Training Center after the vote was announced in this file photo.Attorneys for Chattanooga Volkswagen workers opposed to the United Auto Workers said Tuesday the union is using “false evidence” in its request to delay an April 21 hearing on an its appeal to a February union vote.
But UAW President Bob King sought again Tuesday to lay the blame for what he said was a flawed election on Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and other politicians he says violated VW workers’ rights by threatening plant employees.
“That Haslam and other Tennessee officials used the power of their elected office to intimidate workers into voting against representation isn’t surprising,” King said in a column on the UAW’s website. He added that the political leaders “made no secret of their disdain for the UAW or the right of Volkswagen workers to freely choose representation.”
But attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Foundation, representing five workers in the UAW appeal of the election before the National Labor Relations Board, said that whether any organization campaigned against the UAW in the Feb. 12-14 election is immaterial because that’s not grounds for overturning the vote.
“The UAW’s case proceeds from the misguided premise that it is objectionable if any entity campaigned or spoke against the union in the election. While this belief may reflect how elections are conducted in Venezuela or North Korea, it does not reflect how elections are conducted in this free nation,” the attorneys said.