Labor & Employment Law

Building Trades Backs Local Hire Drive for Tennessee VW Plant

By Mike Hall

Volkswagen is building a $1 billion auto plant near Chattanooga, Tenn., after being lured there with a $565 million incentive package of taxpayer money. But, according to grassroots group “Volunteers for Local Hire,” many of the jobs building the facility are going to out-of-state and even out-of-country workers.

Last weekend, the group, along with members of unions from the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), held protests at 35 VW dealerships in 19 states, in support of the Tennessee group’s drive to win a “local hire” agreement with VW to ensure state contractors and workers have a fair share of the new work.

BCTD President Mark H. Ayers says protests are “not a union vs. non-union issue,” but that the broad support for the Tennessee workers shows people are “getting fed up with seeing their own tax dollars squandered on corporate welfare that doesn’t benefit them.”

And they are sick and tired of watching foreign corporations?who have long-standing, formal policies regarding respect for workers and communities in their home countries?come to the United States and abandon those principles to take advantage of a continuing “race to the bottom” business mentality that inflicts so much economic and social damage on American workers and American communities.

For more on the VW plant and to sign a petition supporting a local hire agreement, click here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).