For decades, the labor movement has seen its power decline in the South. The United Auto Workers on Friday began efforts to reverse that decline.
The UAW provided one of the biggest organizing victories for the labor movement in the South in the years when Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the union despite efforts by state Republicans to condemn the effort.
The UAW has had its eye on the Chattanooga facility for more than a decade, and the union narrowly lost two previous elections in 2014 and 2019, the latter of which was decided by about 60 votes. This time, workers voted 2,628 to 985 to join the UAW out of more than 4,000 eligible, marking a key victory for union president Shawn Fain’s ambitious strategy to take on non-union automakers in the US.
“Many of the commentators and pundits told me, repeatedly, when we announced this campaign: ‘You can’t win in the South.’ They said workers in the South are not prepared for this,” Fain told workers on Friday. “You all moved a mountain.”
The UAW’s plan built heavily on the momentum gained as a result of last year’s campaign high risk strike at the big three auto companies, which drew President Joe Biden to their picket lines and dominated headlines for months. It also strengthened relationships developed with VW workers in the years since supporters began organizing in Chattanooga.
“This time the atmosphere has changed,” Renee Berry, a VW employee since 2010, told POLITICO. “A lot of people voted against it in 2014, 2019, but now they’re on board.”
The German-based automaker has, throughout each of the organizing efforts, remained officially neutral, although the UAW in 2019 asserted that VW had repeatedly violated that principle and those tensions persisted into this week’s vote. The UAW has filed unfair labor practices charges against VW, accusing it of illegal anti-union tactics, which the company denies.
After Friday night’s vote, VW thanked workers for participating in the elections.
Compared to other non-union competitors like Tesla, whose leader Elon Musk blatantly opposes unionization and has repeatedly fought with the National Labor Relations Board, VW’s position placed self-imposed limits on how it could approach the UAW’s messaging. .
That left Tennessee’s top elected Republicans to lead the fight against the union. They argued that the UAW’s presence could impede future investment or encourage VW and other employers to consider bringing jobs to other states.
In 2014, then-Sen. Bob Corker, who had previously been mayor of Chattanooga, was among those who worked aggressively to turn workers against organizing with the UAW.
“This is all about money for them. They feel like if they can work under the hood of a company in the South, they can get ahead in other places,” Corker said. the Washington Post in 2014.
A representative for Corker declined an interview request with the former senator, who retired at the end of his term in 2018.
Similar messages at the time came from Governor Bill Haslam and other powerful figures like State Senator Bo Watson, who called VW’s stance “un-American” and launched the perspective to cut financial incentives to the company. (Watson’s office did not respond to an email from POLITICO.)
Ultimately, workers in 2014 voted 712-626 against the union, which was irritated by the opposition from “politicians and external special interest groups”.
The Republican Party used a similar playbook five years later, with Haslam’s successor as governor – Bill Lee, owner of a construction contractor – visiting the Volkswagen factory and extolling the benefits of a non-union shop for workers. in Chattanooga.
However, this ominous rhetoric was not strong enough this time to discourage workers from demanding the UAW’s decade-long quest.
Earlier this month, Lee said unionization would be “a big mistake” and recently joined a group of fellow Southern governors in projecting a unified front against the UAW — and tried to influence GOP-leaning workers by subduing the union to Biden, whom the UAW endorsed in January after prolonged delay.
“They proudly call themselves democratic socialists and seem more focused on helping President Biden get re-elected than on reducing autoworker jobs in the factories they already represent,” the letter stated. “We want to maintain good-paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto industry here. A successful unionization campaign will halt this growth, to the detriment of American workers.”
The attack was led by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, whose state is expected to be the next battleground as the UAW is scheduled to hold a Mercedes-Benz worker election next month. Back-to-back victories could further boost organization in the auto industry and damage the South’s reputation as hostile terrain for unions.
Biden praised VW’s results and directly rebuked the Republican Party’s pressure.
“Let me be clear to the Republican governors who 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,” he said in a released statement by White. Home. “I will continue to support American workers and oppose Republican efforts to weaken working people’s voices.”
