The United Auto Workers (UAW) reported Friday night that Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the union, marking a major milestone for labor organizing and its first successful organizing campaign. a different manufacturer than the Big Three of Detroit.
The option to unionize won 73% of the vote, or the support of 2,628 workers, to the UAW, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which monitored the election. A total of 3,620 employees (about 84%) voted in these elections. Seven votes were challenged and three were annulled.
"In a historic victory, an overwhelming majority of Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the UAW," the union said in a statement issued Friday night, before official results were released. "As the votes continue to be counted, the result is clear: Volkswagen workers in Cattanooga are the first southern auto employees outside of Detroit's Big Three to win their union."
“The vote is another step in their employees' campaign to achieve the right to collective bargaining,” UAW local director Tim Smith said in a statement.
Smith and UAW Assistant Director George Palmer were present Friday in Chattanooga to oversee the counting of the votes.
Chattanooga was VW's only vehicle assembly plant worldwide that is not unionized. For years, the UAW had been trying to unionize the plant where some 4,000 people work in the production of the ID.4, Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models.
Background
In February, more than half of the employees at the plant in the southern state of Tennessee filled out forms requesting to join the UAW, the industry union. The mobilization of a majority of the workforce prompted the vote to determine Chattanooga's unionization that began on April 17 and ends this Friday.
In 2019, a similar initiative at the Chattanooga assembly plant ended with a vote in which 776 workers approved the union and 833 rejected it.
UAW denounced this Friday that workers “have to overcome disinformation campaigns by politicians and external pressure from business groups that deny” them the right to collective bargaining.
One of the main reasons why workers have rejected unionization in the United States is the fear that companies will close workplaces that vote to join the UAW and move production plants to Mexico.
Since the UAW launched a 25% wage increase over four years during negotiations at the end of 2023 for the signing of collective agreements at General Motors (GM), Ford and Stellantis, the union has gained popularity among workers at other manufacturers that They are not unionized.
The UAW has indicated that it wants to take advantage of the success of the negotiations with the three American automobile manufacturers to unionize the workers of the rest of the companies in the sector, especially in the southern states, which are more reluctant to this type of organization.
Mercedes-Benz's 5,000 workers at its assembly plant in Vance, Alabama, will vote May 13-17 to determine whether to unionize.