Volkswagen’s only U.S. plant on the southern border of Tennessee has become a battleground for worker representation as the United Auto Workers union seeks to expand its footprint beyond Detroit.
Workers at the German automaker’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant where VW assembles its ID.4 electric SUV will vote starting Wednesday on whether to join the UAW.
4,3,000 eligible workers can vote until late Friday.
This week’s vote marks the UAW’s third attempt to organize VW’s Tennessee plant, the only non-union plant in the world.
The UAW, which has been shrinking in size, sees the VW vote as the first in a series of moves to expand the union beyond the Detroit-controlled automaker and into the southern United States, an area unfavorable to organized labor.
“This is the best opportunity they’ve ever had,” Art Wheaton, a labor professor at Cornell University, said of the UAW.
The 89-year-old union is one of the largest in the United States with more than 391,000 active members, but no foreign-owned auto manufacturing plants in the United States have yet formed a union.
Conditions have never been better for the UAW, with President Biden rallying public support by joining picket lines in Detroit last year, where the union joined forces with three major automakers (General Motors, Ford Motor Co., and Jeep maker Stellantis). won a record contract.
If the UAW finally wins at VW’s Tennessee plant, it would reverse decades of strikes at southern auto plants.
In addition to the two narrow losses, Volkswagen has also suffered three major failures at plants in the south owned by Nissan.
Pablo Di Si, head of Volkswagen’s North American operations, told Reuters last month that the company would remain neutral before the vote.
But many non-union automakers, including VW, offered raises after the Big Three talks, a move that many analysts saw as a move to keep their factories union-free.
Workers supporting the union at the VW plant say they are hopeful of a victory and want better wages and benefits, as well as improved factory safety.
The victory is also critical to the future of the UAW as union membership continues to shrink from a high of 1.5 million in the 1970s to about 370,000 last year, the lowest since 2009.
Current organizing efforts target 150,000 non-union members, which would double the size of the UAW.
Kelsey Smith, who was hired about a year ago to join the union organizing committee, said the union deal after a six-week strike against Detroit automakers inspired him.
The UAW won a record contract, including double-digit pay raises and the reinstatement of cost-of-living adjustments.
Mr. Smith himself wants some of those perks.
“It showed me, and the rest of this country and the world, that we can make a difference for ourselves and our families just by coming together as a group,” he said.
But some workers at the plant say the risks of unionizing outweigh the potential rewards, and worry that rising VW labor costs could threaten their job security.
Anti-UAW groups are also speaking out, with a billboard near the Chattanooga plant urging passersby to visit a webpage highlighting the union bribery scandal that resulted in federal convictions for several former UAW leaders. ing.
The current UAW leadership was elected after the issue was resolved with federal authorities.
The opposition will test UAW President Sean Fein, who is embarking on an ambitious organizing effort in the South and West.
Fein and his team have committed $40 million by 2026 to organizing more than a dozen nonunion stores owned by EV makers like Tesla and foreign automakers like Toyota Motor Corp. did.
Fein refuses to portray non-union automakers as enemies, instead painting those workers as future UAW members.
with post wire
