In milestone, VW workers in Tenn. vote for union
In a landmark victory for organized labor, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union, becoming the first nonunion auto plant in a Southern state to do so.
The company said in a statement late Friday that the union had won 2,628 votes, with 985 opposed, in a three-day election. Two earlier attempts over the past 10 years by the UAW to organize the Chattanooga factory were narrowly defeated.
The outcome is a breakthrough for the labor movement in a region where anti-union sentiment has been strong for decades. And it comes six months after the UAW won record wage gains and improved benefits in negotiations with the Detroit automakers.
The UAW has for more than 80 years represented workers employed by General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the producer of Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Dodge vehicles, and has organized some heavytruck and bus factories in the South.
But the union had failed in previous attempts to organize any of the two dozen automobile factories owned by other companies across an area stretching from South Carolina to Texas and as far north as Ohio and Indiana.
“Tonight you all together have taken a giant, historic step,” Shawn Fain, the president of the UAW, said at a celebratory gathering in Chattanooga. “Tonight we celebrate this historic moment in our nation’s and our union’s history. Let’s get to it and go to work and win more for the working class of this nation.”
A string of victories for the UAW could have profound effects for Southern autoworkers and the broader auto industry. Nonunion autoworkers typically earn significantly lower wages than those in UAW-represented plants, and collective bargaining could bring them substantial increases in pay, benefits and job security.
At GM, Ford and Stellantis, any layoffs have to be planned with advance notice to the union, and workers get supplemented unemployment benefits. Nonunion plants don’t have to take such measures.
A large UAW presence in the South would also upset an automotive landscape in which UAW contracts have left GM, Ford and Stellantis with higher labor costs than nonunion rivals like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Tesla and Hyundai.
“This is a watershed moment for the industry,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley who has followed the UAW for more than three decades. “It sets an example that would resonate across the industry, and across other industries where there’s a large presence of nonunion workers.”
The UAW’s success in the negotiations with the Big Three in the fall set off a surge in interest among Southern autoworkers in organizing their own plants, the union said, and prompted the UAW to kick off a $40 million effort to support them.
Volkswagen workers who voted in favor of UAW representation said they hoped the union would help them win higher wages and more paid time off. The Chattanooga factory now pays a top wage of about $35 an hour, compared with the top wage of more than $40 an hour that GM, Ford and Stellantis now pay UAW workers.
The UAW contracts also provide health care coverage that is almost entirely paid by the companies, substantial profit-sharing bonuses, cost-of-living adjustments to insulate workers from inflation and generous retirement programs.