As German I'm used to have elected representatives in the company management. I's been law since 1920 and has been quite effective to protect worker rights. Also it's quite useful to have someone telling management when they screw up.VW Plant Opens Door to Union and Dispute
By JACK EWING and BILL VLASIC
FRANKFURT — The face-off between Volkswagen and the United Automobile Workers over organizing the company’s new plant in Tennessee is rapidly becoming a global clash of cultures.
For months, the U.A.W. has been trying hard to get recognition by Volkswagen to represent workers at its prized assembly plant in Chattanooga.
The effort has unleashed a groundswell of pro- and anti-union sentiment. While some workers are eager for the U.A.W. to come in, state officials and so-called right-to-work groups are just as determined to stop Detroit’s brand of unionism.
Now Volkswagen and its German labor leaders are proposing a solution that is commonplace in Europe, but has yet to be tried in the American auto industry.
The senior labor representative at Volkswagen in Germany, Bernd Osterloh, is planning a trip to the United States to suggest a compromise in what has become a heated battle over the U.A.W.’s relentless drive to organize a foreign-owned auto plant in the American South.
He is expected to push for a German-style works council in the plant — a committee of hourly and salaried employees that gives labor a voice at the management table.
A works council is not like an American union, which can negotiate contracts and authorize strikes. But it does have the advantage of being a familiar form of labor relations for a German car company like VW.
The larger question is whether a works council can satisfy employees and politicians in Tennessee — and give the U.A.W. a foothold in the growing Southern auto industry.
Mr. Osterloh said recently that the Chattanooga plant might have a better chance at landing a hot new sport utility vehicle for the assembly plant, which now produces Passat sedans, if it had a works council to represent it.
In Germany, works councils have a long tradition and are an integral part of the process of mitbestimmung — the right of workers to have a say in corporate decisions. Managers in Germany see the councils as a way to head off labor problems and improve productivity.
To many Americans, the notion of works councils belongs alongside socialized medicine and six-week vacations as examples of the practices that have doomed Europe to near-zero growth. But another way to look at it is that works councils are part of a model that has helped preserve Germany’s industrial base and hold the country’s unemployment to a relatively low level: 5.2 percent, compared with 7.3 percent in the United States.
“It always depends on the people,” said Franz Schabmüller, owner of FS Firmenverwaltung, a group of 10 midsize manufacturing companies based in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt. “If the works council has people of integrity who have the interests of the company at heart, then it can work well.”
One open question in Chattanooga is whether the 1,600 or so hourly workers at the VW factory would need to belong to a union like the U.A.W. to join a works council.
The U.A.W. said it would welcome a works council, but said that it would be legal only if a majority of workers had opted for a union. And many labor experts agree.
“If the company set up a representation system like that, a union would challenge it and they could probably win their argument that it’s a company-dominated union,” said Richard Hurd, a professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University. Such a union set up by the company would violate American labor law, he said.
Emotions in the plant are also rising. Recently the U.A.W. said it had signatures in support of union representation from a majority of the plant’s workers.
But some workers who signed cards have since balked at being part of the organizing effort. With the aid of an anti-union foundation, they are challenging the validity of the cards to the federal National Labor Relations Board.
Now workers opposed to the U.A.W. are circulating their own petition, supported by 30 percent of the plant’s workers.
To some opposed to the union, an attempt to bring European business practices to Chattanooga is a distraction from the bigger issue of whether the U.A.W., based in Detroit, can get a foothold in the South. Two other German automakers, BMW and Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz unit, also have factories in the South, in Spartanburg, S.C., and Vance, Ala. Neither plant is unionized or has an elected works council.
In Germany, works councils are not the same as unions, though the two often cooperate. The councils, whose members are elected by employees, have a right to be consulted on job cuts or other decisions about working conditions. They are barred by law from negotiating over wages. That is the prerogative of labor unions, which typically bargain on an industrywide basis.
In Germany, there is also no clear demarcation between unionized and nonunionized companies. Any person can join a union. The union acquires power only if enough employees join to form a critical mass able to call a strike or otherwise exert pressure on management.
At all but the smallest German companies, workers can elect committees that have a right to weigh in on policies that affect working conditions. At large companies, worker representatives even sit on supervisory boards that choose the chief executive and approve major decisions. If a company has at least 200 employees, it must pay the salary of a full-time worker representative.
And as things now stand, every Volkswagen factory in the world has a works committee except one: the plant in Chattanooga.
Even in Germany, corporate executives sometimes grumble about having to listen to employees and share information. But they also concede that the system allows bosses and employees to cooperate more effectively in times of crisis. One study showed that worker-management cooperation helped contain unemployment during a sharp economic downturn in 2009.
“Like all systems, it has advantages and disadvantages,” said Martin Leutz, a spokesman for Gesamtmetall, an industry association that negotiates wage agreements for many German manufacturers, including Volkswagen. “Fundamentally, we are of the view that mitbestimmung has proved its value.”
But would mitbestimmung work in America? Mr. Osterloh, the head of VW’s works council, thinks so.
But VW’s Chattanooga workers may be a tough sell. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Gov. Bill Haslam are both conservative Republicans, no friends of trade unions. Mr. Corker told The Chattanooga Times Free Press that unionization of the VW plant “would be a negative for the future economic growth of our state.”
An earlier trip by the German labor leaders was called off for unrelated reasons. Mr. Osterloh said this week that he was trying to reschedule it and that Mr. Corker and Mr. Haslam were receptive to a meeting.
“I don’t even know if they know what a works council is,” Mr. Osterloh said in a telephone interview.
A spokesman for Mr. Haslam said on Thursday: “One of the things that makes Tennessee great is that it is a right-to-work state. Volkswagen is an outstanding employer that puts a lot of focus on employee satisfaction, and the company has been incredibly successful with the current structure in Chattanooga.”
Volkswagen, partly owned by the German state of Lower Saxony, has a long history of worker cooperation, and Mr. Osterloh is practically a member of top management. He said he spoke at least once a week to Martin Winterkorn, the VW chief executive.
“When there are problems with production, productivity or quality, those are all things that are talked about with the works council,” Mr. Osterloh said.
Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt and Bill Vlasic from Detroit. Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from New York.
I'm not sure if this will work in the US. Having representatives has a long tradition in Germany, and the idea of cooperation instead of confrontation when it comes to balance the interests of workers and employees has been part of society since the 19th century. So I doubt this will be much of an model for other US companies. Especially since even here companies try to reduce employee participation.
What do guys think about this?
