VW Workers Vote on Unionizing Tennessee Plant in Latest UAW Push

A historic effort by the United Auto Workers to unionize more than a dozen factories outside of Detroit faces its first test this week, as workers at Volkswagen’s lone U.S. plant cast ballots.

More than 4,000 employees at VW’s SUV factory in Chattanooga, Tenn., are scheduled to begin voting Wednesday on whether to be represented by the UAW, with results expected by the end of the week.

The 89-year-old UAW has yet to unionize any foreign-owned auto-manufacturing plants in the U.S., many of which are in Southern states where antiunion sentiment runs deep and right-to-work laws serve as an organizing deterrent.

A rejuvenated UAW leadership is seeking to harness momentum from historic contracts it won late last year at General Motors, Ford Motor and Jeep-maker Stellantis. The union got pay increases of 25% over more than four years, enhanced retirement benefits and other gains, following a six-week strike that saw walkouts at nine U.S. factories.

The vote in Chattanooga is shaping up to be a referendum on whether UAW President Shawn Fain’s worker-empowerment message will resonate with auto-factory workers outside the union’s industrial-Midwest stronghold. Fain wants to leverage the union’s success in Detroit to expand its reach and membership, which has gradually declined from 1.5 million members in the 1970s.

As of 2023, the UAW had roughly 370,000 members with many of them collected in other sectors, such as gambling and higher education.

UAW leaders say conditions are ripe to snap its losing streak among auto workers in the South.

“When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six,” Fain said late last year.

Workers behind the unionization effort at Volkswagen said they want to join the UAW for more pay, better work schedules and other benefits.

Volkswagen said it has “some of the best-paying jobs in the area” and is proud of its working environment at the plant.

“We fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to a secret ballot vote on this important decision,” the company said. VW’s European factory workforce is unionized, and labor officials hold several seats on the German automaker’s supervisory board.

For decades, Detroit executives have complained that the UAW contracts leave them with heavier labor costs than Toyota, Honda and other foreign rivals with nonunion U.S. workforces. In 2022, foreign automakers paid a top wage of about $28 an hour, compared with about $32 at the three Detroit companies.

The new UAW contracts secured in the fall further boosted the top pay for factory workers at GM, Ford and Stellantis to roughly $42 an hour. Since then, Tesla and several foreign automakers have doled out significant wage increases to their U.S. workers.

Beyond VW, the union wants to organize factories of about a dozen other automakers, including Toyota Motor, Honda Motor and electric-vehicle maker Tesla, accounting for about 150,000 workers. That is roughly the same number covered under the contracts with GM, Ford and Stellantis, at factories mostly in union-friendly states in the Great Lakes region.

A unionization vote at VW’s Chattanooga factory failed in 2014, and the UAW fell short again in a close vote in 2019. Workers at a Nissan Motor plant in Mississippi in 2017 also rejected UAW representation.

On Tuesday, a group of six Southern governors, including Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, issued a letter in opposition to the UAW’s organizing drive, claiming it would threaten their auto-industry investments and the health of the companies.

“Unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy,” reads the letter, also signed by the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas.

Fain’s team seized on a confluence of macro factors that aided the union’s historic contract wins in Detroit last fall: a tight labor market, high inflation and a record run of carmaker profits—all set amid a galvanized U.S. labor movement.

In the past few years, other labor unions have mounted successful organizing drives at Starbucks stores, an Amazon.com warehouse and the Dartmouth men’s basketball team. And unions have notched several collective-bargaining wins—at United Parcel Service, farm-equipment maker Deere and other companies.

Fain was elected UAW president in March 2023 on a message of reform, following years of corruption in the union’s top ranks. The electrician and Indiana native has brought in activists from other sectors in the labor movement, including people with experience running organizing drives.

A unionization vote by about 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers at the German automaker’s plant near Tuscaloosa, Ala., is expected next month after enough signatures were gathered to call for a vote under NLRB rules, the UAW has said.

In Chattanooga, workers will vote up or down on the question of whether they want to be represented by the UAW in collective bargaining. Voting, which will be done in person at the factory, was scheduled to start before dawn on Wednesday and run until 8 p.m. Friday.

The National Labor Relations Board is overseeing the vote and expects to have results by late Friday night.

Write to Mike Colias at [email protected]