The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga is set to become the first unionized auto factory in the South not owned by one of Detroit’s Big Three.
Volkswagen automobile plant workers celebrated after a majority voted to join the United Automobile Workers union.Credit…George Walker IV/Associated Press
In a landmark victory for organized labor, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Automobile 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 bids by the U.A.W. to organize the Chattanooga factory over the last 10 years 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 U.A.W. won record wage gains and improved benefits in negotiations with the Detroit automakers.
The U.A.W. 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 heavy-truck 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.
With the victory in Chattanooga, the U.A.W. will turn its focus to other Southern plants. A vote will take place in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., near Tuscaloosa. The U.A.W. is hoping to organize a half-dozen or more plants over the next two years.
“Tonight you all together have taken a giant, historic step,” Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., 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 U.A.W. could have profound effects for Southern auto workers and the broader auto industry. Nonunion auto workers typically earn significantly lower wages than those in U.A.W.-represented plants, and collective bargaining could bring them substantial increases in pay, benefits and job security.
“Volkswagen workers will have a chance for better pay and working conditions under a collective bargaining agreement,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They’ll have a lot of job protections under a union contract that they don’t have now.”
