The National Labor Relations Board will conduct a hearing to discuss allegations regarding management conduct at Mercedes-Benz’s Vance, Alabama plant. The reports filed with the Board allege that Mercedes violated worker’s rights by forbidding discussion of unions during working hours, as well as threatening termination of employees that solicited for the union.

Reuters is reporting from “a source with direct knowledge of the matter” that General Motors plans to reduce shifts at its South Korean factories by half as it aligns its global manufacturing. The move could eliminate 1,100 jobs. GM had announced last month that it was discontinuing the Chevrolet brand in Europe by the end of next year and GM Korea produces many of the Chevy branded cars sold on the continent.

According to the report, GM Korea has already approached the union representing its production workers about reducing the current two shifts at the Gunsan factory to a single shift. That plant employs 2,200 manufacturing employees. It’s not clear if the surplus employees will be laid off, offered voluntary retirement or relocated to other facilities.

Reuters is reporting that the office of the General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board has recommended that allegations brought by employees at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant be dismissed.

Outgoing United Auto Workers president Bob King admitted that his timetable for a swift unionization of one of the auto plants in the Southeastern United States was overly optimistic.

The United Auto Workers will, for the first time since 1967, ask their membership to pay a 25 percent increase in dues to the union in order to shore up their strike fund and fight for better contracts, a move outgoing UAW president Bob King believes the membership will overwhelmingly support.

Last month Hyundai agreed to a union demand to end night shifts in the company’s Korean factories but it added graveyard shifts to their American plants. In Europe and North America third shifts are returning as companies try to wring out the maximum number of vehicles from their existing capacity. In August, Jaguar Land Rover added a third shift at its Liverpool plant to keep up with demand for the Evoque. In North America, the big American car companies shed lots of excess plants as they went through their financial crisis and to keep up with the rebound in sales as the economy starts to grow they have added night shifts to many of their assembly operations.

Workers at Tesla’s Fremont plant celebrate the 1,000th Model S body built, 2012.

United Auto Workers president Bob King has said that the labor union is interested in organizing Tesla’s assembly plant in Fremont, California and that a group of workers at the site have set up an organizing committee for the UAW. That factory is where Tesla assembles the battery powered Model S. Tesla has prided itself in being different from Detroit and its headquarters’ location, the Silicon Valley, is not exactly a labor hotbed.

Fords are loaded for export at the Port of Baltimore. Photo: Bill McAllen / Port of Baltimore

When most people think about countries that export cars one name that’s usually not on their list is the United States, but the U.S. is exporting more cars than ever. According to the Detroit News, the record total this year is likely to reach 2 million units and perhaps even more surprising than that number if the fact that half of the exports are cars made by GM, Ford and Chrysler. The remainder come from assembly plants located in the U.S. owned by German, Japanese and Korean automakers. Cars are the most valuable manufacturing export from the U.S., followed by aerospace. Spurring the growth in exports is the fact that the United States is currently one of the less expensive places to build a car, due to favorable currency exchange rates and reduced labor costs.

Bloomberg is reporting that Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has resumed talks with the UAW’s retiree health care trust (aka VEBA) to buy the 41.5% of Chrysler that the Italian automaker doesn’t yet own. Fiat executives met last week with the trust’s representatives. The proposed initial public offering of Chrysler stock has been delayed for tax reasons until next year, creating a window of opportunity for a deal. Differing valuations on the stock prompted VEBA’s demand for the IPO, which would establish a market price for the stock, most likely more than Marchionne and the Agnelli family that controls Fiat want to pay.

Norwood Jewell, a nominee to become a UAW vice-president, said that the autoworkers want to eliminate the two-tier wage system that pays new hires at a lower rate than higher seniority workers. The wage system was agreed to by the union to help the domestic automakers as they went through financial troubles when the economy turned down in 2007. New workers are paid slightly more than half of what veteran autoworkers earn.

“The international executive board hates two-tiers,” Jewell told Automotive News at a General Motors Co plant in Flint, Mich. as the automaker was announcing $1.3 billion in investments in some of its plants in the U.S. midwest, mostly in Michigan. Jewell is currently director of UAW’s Flint region. “We didn’t do two tiers because it’s a wonderful thing,” he said, explaining that the financial circumstances six years ago more or less forced the two tier wages on the union. “We hate them. We intend to eliminate them over time.”

You’ve probably seen the video that Volvo produced with actor and martial artist Jean Claude Van Damme performing one of his famous splits, while perched on the side mirrors of two Volvo semi trucks demonstrating Volvo Trucks’ “Dynamic Steering”. The video quickly went viral in the automotive and general worlds, with millions of people seeing it in the first few days after release. Now some Swedes are wondering if the timing of the video’s release was calculated to deflect attention from layoffs at the truck maker. Right around the same time that the video was going viral, it was announced that 380 temporary workers will be laid off from Volvo’s plant in Umeå, while another 100 jobs will be lost at Volvo Powertrain in Skövde .

The UAW’s troubles with organizing Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plants are well known throughout the auto world, but Unifor, the Canada union that was once known as the Canadian Auto Workers union, now claims that it has enough union cards to hold a vote on representation.

Though Chrysler-Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne had previously said that an initial public offering of Chrysler stock could take place by the end of 2013, the Italian automaker announced that stock sale will not take place before the new year. “The Board of Directors of Chrysler Group … has determined that it will not be practicable for Chrysler Group to launch and complete an initial public offering prior to the end of 2013,” Fiat said in a statement.

With United Auto Workers president Bob King restricted by union bylaws from being reelected, the union is preparing to select his replacement. Industry watchers expect UAW secretary-treasurer Dennis Williams to be selected next month at a meeting of the UAW’s administrative caucus. Since all but one UAW presidents have been selected by the administrative caucus, the move will likely pave the way for Williams to succeed King, whose term ends in nine months. Before taking the national secretary-treasurer position Williams was the union’s Chicago area regional director.

The UAW has enlisted the help of the German IG Metall labor union in its effort to organize Volkswagen’s U.S. operations. Now Fiat has apparently gotten the union that represents its Italian workers, Fim Cisl, to reach out to UAW officials in an effort to resolve the issue of just how much Fiat is going to pay the UAW’s retiree health benefits trust for the 41.5% of Chrysler the VEBA owns. Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne wants to merge the two companies and that can’t be done without buying that stock. Fiat and the VEBA sides are more than a billion dollars apart.

More drama in the ongoing Volkswagen unionization fight in Chattanooga: Volkswagen USA is not keen on the union, while Volkswagen’s management board is divided on the matter. One thing that seems certain is the prospect of a secret ballot vote on the union, according to Reuters.

A group of workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee plant is circulating a petition aimed at stopping the UAW’s attempt to organize the plant.

After Fiat and Chrysler’s retired UAW workers’ health care benefits trust were unable to agree on a price for the Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association‘s 41.5% share in the Auburn Hills automaker, at the trust’s request C hrysler has filed initial paperwork for a public stock offering to sell part of the VEBA’s stake, about 16% of overall Chrysler shares, the first time in over a decade that the public will be able to own shares in Chrysler, which formerly was wholly owned by Cerberus and before that Daimler. Fiat certainly would rather the IPO not take place now as it complicates Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne’s plans for the Italian automaker to acquire full ownership of Chrysler. The benefits trust has the legal right to force Chrysler to make the stock offering so the VEBA can cash out on the shares it received in exchange for giving up financial claims against Chrysler during the company’s bankruptcy and bailout by governments in the United States and Canada.

On Friday, Sergio Marchionne, who heads Fiat and Chrysler, told reporters in Milan, Italy that he hasn’t gotten any closer to making a deal with the UAW’s retiree health care trust for Fiat to purchase the VEBA’s shares in Chrysler and take full ownership of the Auburn Hills automaker. The UAW health care trust owns 41.5% of Chrysler and the two parties have not been able to agree on a price. The trust is demanding $5 billion for its shares. Marchionne told the LaPresse news agency, concerning the UAW trust’s suggested price, “They should buy a lottery ticket.”

Reuters is reporting that in an interview with the German Handelsblatt newspaper, United Auto Workers president Bob King said that a majority of workers at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Chattanooga,Tennessee have signed cards supporting the UAW in the creation of a German-style works council at the factory. “Yes, we have a majority,” UAW President Bob King said.

Negotiations between Volkswagen and the United Auto Workers over the UAW’s possible representation of workers at VW’s Chattanooga, Tennessee assembly plant began last Friday, according to the German newspaper, the Handelsblatt and Automotive News. The newspaper also reported that UAW president Bob King and VW board member for human resources, Horst Neumann discussed the establishment of a German style “works council” to represent factory workers at the plant. VW and the UAW both declined comment.

Following labor unrest and increasing costs at their operations in South Korea, General Motors has begun to reevaluate GM Korea’s role in the giant automaker’s production plans. Currently GM Korea, formerly Daewoo, builds about 20% of GM’s global production. The already announced shifting of production of Opel’s Mokka small crossover to the Zaragoza facility in Spain starting in the second half of 2014 may portend other changes in GM Korea’s role. Both foreign and domestic Korean automakers have expressed concern over rapidly rising wages in that country. The strong Korean currency, the won, coupled with those rising labor costs have made Korea one of the more expensive places for GM to build cars.

Canadian Auto Workers president Ken Lewanza is stepping down as the CAW gets ready to merge with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP). The resulting organization will have more than 300,000 members.

Sergio Marchionne’s plans to merge Chrysler and Fiat have been delayed because Fiat failed to convince a Delaware Chancery Court judge to set the value of Chrysler stock owned by the UAW’s health care fund known as VEBA. Judge Donald Parsons rejected Fiat’s request to find that a call-option agreement covering at least 54,000 Chrysler shares valued the stock at slightly less than $140 million. That decision means that the dispute over the shares’ value will now proceed to trial.

Last week, members of the Korean Metal Workers Union approved an annual wage contract with GM Korea that follows more than two weeks of partial strikes that affected GM’s Asian manufacturing base. GM Korea assembles about 40% of Chevy branded cars sold worldwide.

Ah, the wondrous web of global automaking: Drivers and sorters at DHL are going on strike, and this threatens to cripple production at Jaguar Land Rover in the UK. JLR has outsourced a good deal of its logistics to Deutsche Post–owned DHL. DHL employees serving JLR’s plants at Castle Bromwich and Solihull voted for a strike after they did not receive terms and conditions extended to regular JLR staff.

When there was labor unrest in South Africa, the UAW was quick to spend union dues for a long trip to the scenic South African locale, ostensibly to show their solidarity with South African union brothers who, coincidentally, fought against Mercedes and Volkswagen. Back home, the UAW pulled a whole packet of race cards. It headlines, a bit strenuously: “South Africans have more rights than workers in Mississippi.”

It would have been more a propos if the UAW would have flown to South Korea to show solidarity with workers who are about to go on strike against GM, the company, ooops, that is partially owned by the UAW.

According to media reports, Volkswagen workers received a hefty, inflation-busting pay rise today, giving the impression that VW workers are being especially coddled. Not true. Metal workers in all of Germany received a 5.6 percent raise in May (3.4 percent more from July on, followed by 2.2 percent starting in May 2014, to be exact.) Volkswagen workers received more or less the same.

The mantra before, during, and after the bailout was (and still is) that without the bailout, gadzillions of jobs would have vanished, the American car industry would have been wiped out, wheels would have come off the arsenal of democracy, and the sky would have fallen into Lake St. Clair. Of course, that’s nonsense. There are more than enough other carmakers in America. They would have received the sales, and added the jobs. They would have been mostly non-union jobs though.

The truth is, without the bailout, the UAW would have vanished, and with it millions of Democratic votes.

German autoworkers want their share of the record profits announced by German carmakers last year. IG Metall labor union demanded 5.5 percent. Employers countered with 2.3 percent. Today, workers went on strike.

Chevrolet’s Celta, Prisma and Onix models will be in short supply when workers General Motors’ Gravataí plant in southern Brazil go on strike for higher pay and shorter hours. Workers of the plant’s first and third shifts already approved the strike, Reuters says, the second shift is expected to follow suit today.

Opel’s Supervisory Board, with half of its members delegates of the labor union, decided today the first closure of a German car factory in decades. According to Reuters, “Opel will end producing Zafira MPVs at its 50-year old Bochum plant by the end of next year, a move that has triggered a rare and public split within union ranks following months of tough negotiations.”

The closure will lead to the loss of 3,000 jobs in Bochum, as part of Opel’s attempt to put an end to 15 straight years of losses in Europe. It will be a while.

Nissan workers will get a pay raise without the help of the Union. Or maybe they get a pay raise to help keep the union out.

No works council without representation. Those are the words of UAW President Bob King, in an interview with Autoline Detroit, when asked about a possible works council at VW’s Chattanooga assembly plant.

They may not have western-style unions in China, but workers sure do strike. Workers at Honda’s transmission plant in Foshan, Guangdong Province, walked off the job on Monday after their pay increases weren’t as large as they had hoped.

The head of Germany’s metal worker union IG Metall, Berthold Huber, urged workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant to join the UAW. In a letter distributed to Chattanooga workers, obtained by Reuters, Huber says:

News of Volkswagen being open to establishing a works counci l at its plant in Chattanooga are widely interpreted as the UAW getting a long-sought nose under the southern tent. It could also be a shrewd move to block the union.

Upon receipt of a multi-billion dollar loan from the Canadian government, General Motors signed a “Vitality Commitment”, essentially a covenant in the loan agreement between GM and Canada’s government, which guaranteed that a certain amount of GM’s North American production would remain in Canada. That number is widely reported as being 16 percent, while page F-69 of GM’s IPO filings outlines that the covenant is valid until GM repays its loan commitments or until December 31, 2016, whichever comes later.

While Oshawa has widely regarded as one of GM’s best plants in terms of producing high-quality vehicles, the future of GM’s Oshawa plant is looking increasingly bleak.

The 12-person protest that took place at Chrysler’s Warren, Michgan truck plant got little notice in the automotive news cycle, save for a couple of mentions on the usual aggregators. In truth, it’s not the juiciest story to sell in this click-driven wasteland, though these stories tend to raise the most interesting questions. This example highlights an issue that is going to dog the UAW for some time – how will the UAW control their workers when they are also the owners?

The UAW has been a bit luckless in its organizing efforts of foreign automakers in the U.S. Recent attempts to brand transplanted Asian and German automakers as human rights abusers have gone a bit over the heads of the targeted working masses. With that being a dud, the UAW is back to old-style organizing, and back at its old target, Nissan. The UAW has tried two times, two times it received a black eye in Smyrna, TN. The UAW is back to collect another shiner.

“Dieter Zetsche is lucky that he can stay for three more years,” writes Der Spiegel in Germany. The labor side of Daimler’s Supervisory Board had demanded Dr. Z’s head, the magazine writes. After long debates with Daimler’s Supervisory Board Chairman Manfred Bischoff, a compromise was found.

An alleged environmental measure will land Russia in the court of the World Trade Organization, a club Russia had joined only in August. Importers have to pay a “recycling fee” of around 5 percent of a car’s sticker price, local makers do not. “Russia’s trading partners say the new levy is a purely protectionist play under the guise of environmental ‘recycling’,” Reuters writes. “The European Union Trade Commissioner, Karel de Gucht, has threatened to invoke the disputes procedure of the World Trade Organization.”

CAW members at GM’s CAMI plant in Ontario have voted to begin negotiating their contracts as early as this week after a vote by workers. At stake is the production of the GMC Terrain and Chevrolet Equinox, two popular crossovers that may have their production moved to Mexico or the United States.

Articles about right-to-work spawn a lively discussion at TTAC, sometimes with more than 200 comments, interspersed by appeals for selective self censorship. The topic won’t go away. Neither at TTAC, nor in the nation. “Laws that weaken the power of organized labor could spread to more U.S. states in 2013 after supporters of the measures scored a major victory over unions in Michigan this week, and earlier in the year in Indiana,” says a report by Reuters.

They are back! Two years ago, a group of Chrysler workers were caught were caught drinking and doobing on their lunch break. Not just that, they were caught on camera by a local TV station. The video went viral, and Chrysler was forthwith associated with quality enhanced by booze and marijuana. 13 workers were fired. Yesterday, they got their jobs back, courtesy of Chrysler’s contract with the UAW.

President Obama joined the debate about Michigan’s “right-to-work” law. “What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money,” Obama told workers during a visit to the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Michigan. He forgot to mention three important items.

This is going to be interesting: Michigan lawmakers are expected to introduce right-to-work legislation today, Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder is for it, the UAW, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan is fiercely against it.

As part of its agreement with the CAW, Ford will open up 400 jobs to laid off workers from its Windsor and St. Thomas plants (aka the birthplace of our beloved Panther) – but with 885 potential applicants and 400 jobs, allocating them will be tricky.

Next up in the “we couldn’t make this shit up” category – PSA and Citroen were hit by strikes after workers were called out for being unproductive.

Labor leaders in South Korea are scrambling to convince GM to retain production of the Chevrolet Cruze in South Korea, though GM says that the move to 5 global facilities is a done deal.

GM’s German union chief wants the company to move production of the Mokka baby SUV (aka our Buick Encore) from South Korea to Europe. The reason? Because it would help with overcapacity in Europe.

Opel’s German unions want a deal with management before Christmas, Opel works council Chairman Wolfgang Schaefer-Klug told Reuters in an interview. Here the cliff notes:

Sergio Marchionne can’t wait to get his hands on the 41.5 percent of Chrysler, which are in the hands of the UAW’s VEBA trust. Once Fiat is in total control, Fiat and Chrysler could be merged, and the cash could be used to … but you know the drill from years back. Currently at stake are 3.3 percent. Fiat has a call option, but the UAW trust doesn’t want to fork the shares over.

According to the Brazilian enthusiast site webmotors, the UAW has come on down for the São Paulo Auto Show for the first time ever. Could it be that they were interested in checking out the product specialists?

Officially, no. The UAW is hard at work researching how and what factors drive Brazilian consumers to buy the cars they do. More specifically, the UAW wants to know if Brazilians consider or would be willing to consider work relations and conditions as factors in their decision.

A brief, two-day strike at a Lear seat plant near Toronto has ended, with production at GM’s Oshawa plant back on schedule.

The drama over a possible strike at the Big Three was averted this summer, but it ain’t over yet; roughly 75 employees walked off the job at two key suppliers this weekend.

Unions reached a last minute deal with Opel: Plant closures and layoffs are off the table through 2016. This according to information given by works council chief Walter Einenkel to the usually reliable Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

Down to the wire, and nothing: German unions had set Opel a deadline until today to come to an agreement about the future of Opel. The unions had offered to forgo a 4.3 percent pay hike and waive future pay raises if Opel extends a moratorium on plant closures through 2016. Today’s deadline passed without an agreement, Reuters says.

Ford is expected to announce the closure of its van factory in Southampton, England, Reuters says. British shop stewards have been summoned to an emergency meeting at Ford’s European headquarters in Basildon, Essex, today.