“I was proud to stand alongside auto workers in their successful fight for record contracts, and I am proud to stand with auto workers now as they successfully organize at Volkswagen.”
The Volkswagen plant became the first Southern auto factory to approve a union with an election since the 1940s, according to The Washington Post. Axios said the VW factory now becomes the only unionized auto assembly plant in the U.S. not owned by the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis.
Richard Bensinger, the former national organizing director of the AFL-CIO, told the Detroit Free Press that the UAW’s victory marks a “pivotal moment in our nation’s history, in that this finally marks the reversal of a 40-year decline in unions.”
The UAW had tried twice before—in 2014 and 2019—to organize the Volkswagen plant, but lost both times by less than 100 votes. Republican politicians used scare tactics to dissuade workers from joining the union, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee even visited the plant in 2019 to deliver an anti-union message to workers.
But on Friday evening, the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, announced that workers had voted 2,628 to 985 for union representation. That’s a margin of 73% to 27%.
Here’s how VW workers celebrated when the vote count was announced:
“This election is big,” Kelcey Smith, a worker in the paint department at Volkswagen, said in story posted on the UAW website. “People in high places told us good things can’t happen here in Chattanooga. They told us this isn’t the time to stand up, this isn’t the place. But we did stand up and we won. This is the time; this is the place. Southern workers are ready to stand up and win a better life.”
The organizing drive’s success can be attributed to the UAW’s strikes, led by the union’s new president Sean Fain, against Detroit’s Big Three automakers last fall which resulted in record contracts that included wage increases of at least 25% over 4 and a half years and other benefits.
“We saw the big contract that UAW workers won at the Big Three and that got everybody talking,” said Zachary Costello, a trainer in VW’s proficiency room. “You see the pay, the benefits, the rights UAW members have on the job, and you see how that would change your life. That’s why we voted overwhelmingly for the union. Once people see the difference a union makes, there’s no way to stop them.”
Last year saw a revitalized labor movement as more than 500,000 workers went out on strike, including Hollywood actors and writers, more than doubling the figure from the previous year. according to Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
After the strike victory, Fain pivoted immediately to organizing. In February, the UAW announced it was allocating $40 million for organizing non-union automobile and electric vehicle battery workers in the U.S. over the next two years.
The union announced organizing campaigns at 13 non-union automakers, including Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. The toughest unionization drive will undoubtedly be at Tesla, whose owner mega-billionaire Elon Musk is notoriously anti-union.
Fain was on hand to celebrate the UAW’s victory with the VW workers. He told the cheering crowd:
“Many of the talking heads and the pundits have said to me repeatedly, before we announced this campaign, you can’t win in the South. They said Southern workers aren’t ready for it. … But you all said, watch this. You all moved the mountain.”
And the UAW president added: “Tonight you all together have taken a giant, historic step. 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.”
The UAW now has momentum heading into the unionization vote set for May 13-17 at the Mercedes-Benz plants in Vance and Woodstock, Alabama. The UAW says that a majority of the Mercedes-Benz workers have already signed cards supporting the union.
RELATED STORY: Majority of workers at Alabama Mercedes plant sign union cards in major breakthrough for UAW
In a statement, W confirmed the union's victory: "Volkswagen thanks its Chattanooga workers for voting in this election."
The German automaker had remained neutral during the organizing drive. The Chattanooga plant had been the only one of Volkswagen’s 120 facilities around the world that did not have some form of employee representation.
But Republican politicians in Tennessee, including Gov. Lee and Sen. Bill Hagerty, fought to the end to persuade VW workers to once again reject the UAW. In a letter signed by five other Southern governors, Lee accused the UAW of using “misinformation and scare tactics” and claimed that unionization could stop “growth in its tracks.”
Their letter claimed the UAW was “more focused on helping President Biden get reelected than on the autoworker jobs being cut at plants they already represent.”
Biden was having none of that malarkey. In his statement congratulating the VW workers, Biden said: “Six Republican governors wrote a letter attempting to influence workers’ votes by falsely claiming that a successful vote would jeopardize jobs in their states. Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose. … I will continue to stand with American workers and stand against Republican’s effort to weaken workers’ voice.”