Could the union victory at Volkswagen set off a wave?
By voting to join the United Auto Workers, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the union something it has never had: a factory wide foothold at a major foreign automaker in the South.
The result, in an election that ended Friday, will enable the union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Now the question is what difference will it make beyond the Volkswagen plant.
Labor experts said success at VW might position the union to replicate its showing at other auto manufacturers throughout the South, the least unionized region of the country. Some argued that the win could help set off a rise in union membership at other companies that exceeds the uptick of the past few years, when unions won elections at Starbucks and Amazon locations.
“It's a big vote, symbolically and substantively,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.
The next test for the UAW will come in a vote in mid-May at a MercedesBenz plant in Alabama.
In addition, at least 30% of workers have signed cards authorizing the UAW to represent them at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri, according to the union. That is the minimum needed to force an election, although the union has yet to petition for one in either location.
“People only take action when they believe there is an alternative to the status quo that has a plausible chance of winning,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal.
Still, it's unclear how far the campaign may spread beyond German manufacturers. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have been relatively friendly to unions outside the United States and a recent German law could prompt financial penalties against companies that crack down on union organizing.
Compared with previous elections in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen's pushback against the union was mild this time, according to workers. The company presented reasons it believed a union was unnecessary, including pay that is above average for the Chattanooga area, but said it left the decision to the workers.
Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at research firm AutoForecast Solutions, predicted that most Japanese and South Korean manufacturers with plants in the South would be more difficult targets for the UAW because they have worked hard to develop a close relationship with workers or have butted heads with unions in their home country, or both.
The Chattanooga vote also could lead to a broader political battle over unionization within the region. Business and political leaders in the South say a greater union presence could threaten their states' economic advantages and slow down job creation.
“If we become less competitive, why not do it in Detroit?” said Gerald McCormick, a Republican who was the Tennessee House majority leader when the UAW first prompted a union vote at the Volkswagen plant in 2014.
Six Republican governors highlighted those concerns in a statement Tuesday, which said that the union campaign was “driven by misinformation and scare tactics.” Opposition from state and local politicians helped defeat the union in a vote at a Nissan plant in Mississippi in 2017 and in elections at VW in Chattanooga in 2014 and 2019.
The UAW's political support for Democrats — the union endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection in January — could also be a vulnerability in such a fight.
Isaac Meadows, a worker at the Volkswagen plant, said in an interview in February that the endorsement had led some coworkers to have second thoughts about the union, but that he had advised them that “the political landscape changes every four to eight years and doesn't directly affect us.”
Even so, a change in presidential administrations could bring a more skeptical National Labor Relations Board, which presides over union elections and enforces labor law and could make it more difficult for the union to win at other plants.
Worker advocates and union organizers acknowledged that the win in Chattanooga could trigger a strong response.
“You have to imagine the backlash,” said Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, which helps workers seeking to unionize and bargain collectively. “My hope is that enough people understand both within the UAW and within the union world writ large that you have to defend the union election.”