Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Join UAW In Historic Labor Win

Employees at Volkswagen’s SUV assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have voted to join the United Auto Workers in a historic labor victory, the union and Volkswagen announced late Friday.

A preliminary tally released by the company showed workers favored union representation by a count of 2,628 to 985, a nearly 3-1 margin. The landslide win gives the union a crucial toehold in the anti-union South.

The UAW called it a “historic breakthrough” in a statement.

More than 4,000 workers at the facility would be represented by the UAW, which has most of its auto membership at Ford, General Motors and Jeep parent company Stellantis, collectively known as the “Big Three.” The union previously lost two plant-wide votes at Volkswagen, including one in 2019, where it fell short by just 57 votes.

Volkswagen said in a brief statement that it would wait for the National Labor Relations Board to certify the results as official, suggesting it would not challenge them. The company, which is based in Germany, thanked its workers for voting.

This third Volkswagen election was closely watched because the union has struggled for years to organize foreign-owned auto plants in the South. But the UAW is riding high off its strike against the Big Three last year and has plans to unionize more plants in Southern states, including Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai facilities in Alabama.

The stakes are high for both the union and the industry. Over the years, automakers have increasingly set up operations below the Mason-Dixon line, where unions tend to be weaker and wages lower than in the Midwest. By failing to organize plants in the South, the UAW has lost much of the power it once wielded in setting working conditions across the industry.

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