UAW aims to make history at VW facility

If plant votes to unionize, it will be rare victory in South

Jamie L. LaReau

The UAW is on the precipice of potentially making history this week as some 4,300 autoworkers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee vote on whether they want union representation.

The polls opened at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday. The secret ballot voting, which takes place inside the plant and is run by the National Labor Relations Board, goes until 8 p.m. Friday, with results expected later that night, according to the NLRB and a Volkswagen spokesman.

Labor experts say if the UAW wins at VW Chattanooga, it will be a historic and hard-won victory, after repeated failures over the past decade to organize foreign automaker plants in the South. For one thing, it would add thousands of members to the UAW. UAW membership is far below its 1979 peak of 1.5 million. The union currently counts almost 400,000 active members and 580,000 retired members.

“This is a defining moment for the UAW. A victory really sets a precedent and breaks the glass ceiling that you can’t organize auto factories in the South,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley. “A victory doesn’t automatically translate into a victory at other nonunion automakers, but it sets the standard and the momentum. So victory is a huge gain.”

GOP governors in South resist UAW

If the vote fails, Shaiken said it will be disappointing, but the UAW still stands a chance with other nonunion factories. Last week, Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama petitioned the NLRB to allow them to vote on joining the UAW.

Just hours before voting was to start, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and five other Republican governors in Southern states with nonunion automakers, penned and signed a lengthy letter Tuesday saying they are “highly concerned” about the UAW’s unionization campaign, which they said is “driven by misinformation and scare tactics.”

“Companies have choices when it comes to where to invest and bring jobs and opportunity,” the governors’ letter stated. “We have worked tirelessly on behalf of our constituents to bring good-paying jobs to our states. These jobs have become part of the fabric of the automotive manufacturing industry. Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy — in fact, in this year already, all of the UAW automakers have announced layoffs.”