I am on the fence,  I thought part of the reason they chose tn was no union

I find it interesting that the UAW had a direct impact on VW almost exactly 50 years ago. In 1963, the UAW pressured Johnson to include a 25% tax on imported light trucks as an assault on the VW single and double cabs. You all know how that went...they got harder and harder to import, fewer and fewer are still around...and the big three are known for their trucks. Then all the Jap truck companies come in and make their trucks in the US to avoid a 25% tax.

I bet VW chose to build in the US to eventually bring a light truck to the American market.

I don't really know enough to say for sure either way. Unions can be positive when they are advocating better working conditions and fair wages for their members. Could things be better at VW? I'm sure they could, but I don't know that the UAW is needed to improve things. Back when environmental and occupational standards were very lax, factories were a lot more hazardous to work in. I know they aren't a cakewalk now, but we understand and implement safer working environments and those standards are federal now.

I've never worked at VW so I don't really know for sure, but from the people I've talked to who have jobs there, and everything else I've seen, VW treats their employees pretty well already. I know they get some really good benefits and pay seems to be very good.

About 11 or 12 years ago I took a job at the USPS remote encoding center beside Eastgate. It isn't there anymore, but basically the postal service has big machines that take a photo of each piece of mail and try to electronically read the destination address. For the ones the machine couldn't read, those images were transmitted to encoding centers where workers would sit in front of a computer terminal and key in the address. That's all you did for 8 or 10 hours a day, depending. It was boring and tedious.

During orientation, at one point management left the room and APWU representatives came in and tried to get everyone to join the union. They made it clear it was optional, but they heavily stressed joining. First if you wanted any type of health insurance at all you had to be a union member. Second if you wanted a chance at going "career" (we were all temporary) the APWU had negotiated like, a 70/30 split for full time employees union and non-union.

Overall it just seemed like joining the union was your only ticket into moving up, or getting all the benefits you deserve rather than depending on how hard you worked at your job, which is how I thought it should be. I felt the union existed to benefit the union rather than the employee. Luckily I didn't stay there long though!

I haven't checked to make sure, but I seem to remember hearing no other auto factory in the Southeast has union representation. That includes BMW, Kia, Nissan, etc. If the UAW gets VW, I'm sure they would try to move in on some of those other plants and get them too. Before you know it we might have another Detroit in the Southeast.

Looks like the Vw workers are suing the union per the news,  I think the might also loose the lease program for vehicles if the union came in

I have no use for unions.
KC

Saw that,  getting crazy

On an unrealted note . . . Do any of you know why Caviler quit producing vending machines in Chattanooga in the late 80's?  And why did CrisCraft leave back in the early 70's?

Its hard to find any information on those items because of the huge collector market and people wanting to know where they were built. Google only wants to direct me to ebay. Hows about telling us what happened to these two companies that I know very little of!