Employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly Friday to join the United Auto Workers union, marking the first historic test of the UAW’s renewed efforts to organize nonunion plants.
In the end, the union received 2,628 votes, or 73% of ballots cast, compared to the 985 that voted no in the election held by the National Labor Relations Board.
Both sides have five working days to file objections to the election, the NBRB said. If there are none, the election will be certified and VW and the union must “enter into good faith negotiations.”
President Joe Biden, who supported the UAW and won its endorsement, said the union’s victory follows major gains by unions across the country, including actors, longshore workers, Teamsters, writers and health care workers.
“Collectively, these union victories helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers,” he said in a statement late Friday.
Twice in recent years, workers at the Chattanooga plant have rejected union membership in a plant-wide vote. More recently they handed the UAW a narrow defeat in 2019 as federal prosecutors cracked down on a union bribery and embezzlement scandal.
But this time they voted convincingly for the UAW, which for the first time operates under new leadership directly elected by members and is enjoying a successful confrontation with Detroit’s major automakers.
trade union pugnacious new president Sean Fein, was elected on a platform of cleaning up the scandal and moving toward a more confrontational behavior with automakers. An emboldened Fein, backed by Biden, led the union in a series of strikes against Detroit automakers last fall that resulted in… new profitable contracts.
The new contracts increased union wages by a significant third, arming Fein and his organizers with tempting new offers to present to workers at Volkswagen and other companies.
Next up for the union vote will be workers at Mercedes plants near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who will vote on UAW representation in May.
Fein said he was not surprised by the size of the union’s victory Friday after two previous losses.
“I think it’s the reality of where we are and the times we live in,” he said Friday night. “Workers are tired of being left behind.”
The victory, he said, will boost growing unionization efforts in the rest of the country.
“It lets workers everywhere know that everything is OK,” Fein said. “All we’ve heard for years is we can’t win here, you can’t do it in the South, but you can.”
Worker Vicki Holloway of Chattanooga was among dozens of jubilant workers celebrating at the Electrical Workers Union hall outside the VW plant. She said the overwhelming majority voted for the union this time because her co-workers realized they could have more benefits and a voice in the workplace.
“We don’t have a say right now,” said Holloway, who has worked at the plant for 13 years and has been there through previous union losses. “As if our opinions don’t matter.”
In a statement, Volkswagen thanked workers for voting and said 83.5% of its 4,300 production workers voted in the election.
Six Southern governors, including Bill Lee of Tennessee, warned workers in a joint statement This week it emerged that joining the UAW could cost them their jobs and jeopardize the region’s economic progress.
But the stunning victory is a warning to nonunion manufacturers, said Marik Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies unions.
“This will send a strong signal to all these companies that the UAW is knocking on the door, and if they want to remain non-union, they will have to step up their game,” Masters said.
He expects other nonunion automakers to become more aggressive in factories and that anti-union politicians will intensify their anti-union efforts.
Soon after the Detroit contracts were ratified, Volkswagen and other non-union companies raised wages for their workers.
Last fall, Volkswagen raised wages for production workers by 11%, raising the maximum base pay to $32.40 an hour, or just over $67,000 a year. VW said its salary exceeds the median household income in the Chattanooga area, which was $54,480 last May, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
But under UAW contracts, for example, top production workers at GM now earn $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year before benefits and profit sharing. By the end of the contract in 2028, GM’s highly skilled workers will earn more than $89,000.
The VW plant will be the UAW’s first presence at a foreign-owned automaker in the South. However, this would not be the first union auto assembly plant in the South. The UAW represents workers at two Ford assembly plants in Kentucky and two GM plants in Tennessee and Texas, as well as some heavy-duty truck plants.
Additionally, more than three decades ago, the UAW was located at the Volkswagen plant in New Stanton, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. VW closed the small car plant in the late 1980s.