automobile manufacturers

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, January 23, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, January 16, 2024

By Carolyn Fortuna - Clean Technica, January 14, 2024

News out of the Tesla Gigafactory in Fremont is that workers there that they are getting a raise, as are other Gigafactory employees across the US. This means Tesla, as a nonunion car manufacturer, has acquiesced to UAW pressure to adjust labor pay. The move comes after the never-before, separate-and-conquer UAW strike strategy in 2023 which prompted living wage contracts for its members.

UAW pressure, it seems, is hard to beat.

All of Tesla’s production associates, material handlers, and quality inspectors will receive a “market adjustment pay increase.” At this writing, the amount of the increase has not yet been disclosed. The company has about 140,000 employees globally, roughly half of which are in the US. Tesla’s factory in Fremont alone employs more than 20,000 workers, and employees there had been gaining momentum to form a UAW organizing committee.

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, January 11, 2024

The electric vehicle maker Tesla has reportedly informed workers at its California plant that it is hiking wages for factory employees across the United States, becoming the latest nonunion car manufacturer to boost worker pay following the United Auto Workers' historic strike and contract victories late last year.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that all of Tesla's production associates, material handlers, and quality inspectors will receive a "market adjustment pay increase" to start 2024, according to a flyer that company management posted at its Fremont, California plant—which employs more than 20,000 workers.

The document did not make clear the size of the raise, Bloomberg noted.

Tesla is run by billionaire Elon Musk, who has been vocally hostile toward organized labor for years—a stance that has drawn scrutiny and rebukes from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In a 2018 post on Twitter, a platform he now owns and rebranded as X, Musk wrote that there is "nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union."

"But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" he added. The NLRB said the post constituted an unlawful threat against workers considering exercising their right to organize.

By Union Jake, Daniel Swedin, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 26, 2023

By staff - Reel News Network, December 19, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 13, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 12, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 12, 2023

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, December 7, 2023

Workers at Volkswagen's only U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee announced Thursday that they're launching a public organizing committee with the goal of joining the United Auto Workers, which is aiming to expand its membership to include employees at more than a dozen nonunion car companies after winning historic contracts at the Big Three.

In less than a week, more than 1,000 workers at the Volkswagen plant signed union authorization cards, giving the nascent union drive more than 30% support so far at the Chattanooga location.

The UAW narrowly failed to organize the plant in 2014 and 2019. But leaders of the new unionization push expressed confidence that the outcome would be different this time around as the newly emboldened UAW puts special emphasis on the South, where the unionization rate is significantly lower than in the rest of the country.

"People are standing up like never before," said Steve Cochran, a lead organizer of the Chattanooga union drive. "There are a lot of young workers in the plant now and this generation wants respect. They're not okay with mistreatment by management. They see what's happening at Starbucks and Amazon. They know that standing up to join the union is how you win fair treatment, fair pay, and a better life."

Organizers pointed to the $184 billion in profits that Volkswagen Group has brought in over the past decade while workers' wages have stagnated or declined.