U.S. labor secretary says UAW win at Tennessee Volkswagen plant shows southern workers back unions

Workers at auto plants in the South should be free to unionize without pressure from employers or anti-union governors, acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su said Thursday, even as some southern states pass laws to inhibit organized labor.

“That choice belongs to the worker, free from intervention, either by the employer or by politicians, free from retaliation and threats,” Su told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday in Atlanta. «And what we are seeing is that workers who were thought to be too vulnerable to assert that right are doing it, and they’re doing it here in the South.”

The United Auto Workers union vowed a broad campaign to organize southern auto assembly plants after winning lucrative new contracts in a confrontation with Detroit's automakers. Last week, 73% of those voting at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee chose to join the UAW. It was the union’s first in a Southern assembly plant owned by a foreign automaker.

Workers at Mercedes factories in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will vote on UAW representation in May, and the company has also targeted plants in Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas.

But political and business leaders in southern states have long fought organized labor. Ahead of the Volkswagen vote, six Southern Republican governors criticized the UAW’s organizing drive, arguing that autoworkers who vote for union representation would jeopardize jobs. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Monday called the union vote “a mistake” and “a loss for workers.”

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley said in February that his company will “think carefully” about where it will build new vehicles after the UAW's strike last year. If the UAW organizes other automakers, it could raise their costs,