The United Auto Workers Union has decided to drop its push for another vote on allowing workers at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee to unionize.
“The UAW is ready to put February’s tainted election in the rearview mirror and instead focus on advocating for new jobs and economic investment in Chattanooga,” Bob King, the UAW president, said according to The Wall Street Journal.
The decision on Monday came roughly an hour before the UAW was set to appear before the National Labor Relations Board to voice complaints that Republican politicians interfered in the February vote. The autoworkers at the plant voted against unionizing in a vote of 712 to 626.
In appealing the vote the UAW specifically cited Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) as well as Tennessee Gov. William Haslam and State House Speaker Beth Harwell as Republican lawmakers that interfered in the vote. The UAW argued that they “conducted what appears to have been a coordinated and widely publicized coercive campaign” to stop the workers from unionizing.
Corker has denied that he improperly interfered in the vote.