Workers at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted to join the UAW this week—the first ... [+]
April 20, 2024: This story has been updated to include the official results of the vote and comments from UAW President Shawn Fain.
The United Auto Workers has broken a decades-long string of frustration as workers at the Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee overwhelmingly voted to come under union representation, the first foreign-owned U.S. plant to do so.
“Tonight we celebrate this historic victory, this historic moment in our nation, and in our globe’s history,” UAW President Shawn Fain told Volkswagen workers in a victory speech, seen in the video below provided by the union. “And tomorrow, we go to fight. You guys are leading the way. We’re going to carry this fight on to Mercedes and everywhere else.”
The vote was administered by the National Labor Relations Board which, late Friday, reported a final tally of 2,628 yes votes and 985 voting no. Three ballots were void and seven were not counted because “they aren’t determinative to the outcome of the election,” according to NLRB spokeswoman Kayla Blado.
There were 4,326 workers eligible to vote in the balloting, which took place Wednesday through Friday evening.
“Volkswagen thanks its Chattanooga workers for voting in this election,” the automaker said in a release that confirmed the outcome of the vote.
“We saw the big contract that UAW workers won at the Big Three and that got everybody talking,” said Zachary Costello, a trainer in Volkswagen’s proficiency room, referring to General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.
“You see the pay, the benefits, the rights UAW members have on the job, and you see how that would change your life,” he added in a UAW release declaring victory while the ballots were still being counted. “That’s why we voted overwhelmingly for the union. Once people see the difference a union makes, there’s no way to stop them.”
President Joe Biden issued a statement congratulating the Volkswagen workers on voting to join the union and called out a group of southern governors who attempted to dissuade them from voting yes.
“Six Republican governors wrote a letter attempting to influence workers’ votes by falsely claiming that a successful vote would jeopardize jobs in their states. Let me be clear to the Republican governors that 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,” Biden said.
There are several steps before UAW representation is official for the workers at VW’s Chattanooga plant.
Volkswagen must “begin bargaining in good faith with the union,” according Blado. Now that balloting is complete, “the parties will have five business days to file objections to the election. If no objections are filed, the result will be certified,” Blado explained in an email.
Indeed, bargaining for that first contract is no simple task, Fain said during an interview for a story previewing the vote.
“That’s the hard part of this,” Fain said. “You know, people put so much focus on the election. The election is important because you have to vote to organize to get the first contract but, you know, the first contract will also be a big deal.”
The UAW needed a win. Its membership sunk to 370,239 last year, according to the annual report the union filed with the U.S. Department of Labor earlier this month. That’s down from 383,000 in 2022 and the lowest since 2009.
The UAW will have only a few weeks to revel in this first victory before 5,000 workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama vote on whether to join the union. Voting for workers at an SUV plant in Vance and a battery plant in Woodstock, both near Tuscaloosa, is set for May 13—17.
“This is a defining moment for the workers throughout the South and the rest of the country,” said Brenda Muñoz, University of California-Berkeley labor center co-chair in a statement. “Foreign auto manufacturers can no longer count on the southern states to provide cheap labor at the expense of working families. Workers have had enough. They demonstrated this by voting for a union. There’s nothing cheap about these workers who work hard every day and want family-supporting jobs and a quality life. Workers understand their value in building an economy that works for everyone and are demanding respect and their fair share of the rewards.”
At the conclusion of contract talks with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis last fall Fain vowed the next round of negotiations in 2028 would expand from the Detroit Three to perhaps five or eight companies, meaning automakers with non-union workers that voted to join the UAW.
The union generally uses an initial agreement with one company to set the pattern for contracts with the others. That wouldn’t change with an expanded group.
“We're not going to bargain a great contract with the Big 3 and say that we're not going to push for that with other companies or bargain a great contract with Volkswagen or somewhere else and say that we don't want the workers to have that,” said Fain our interview earlier this month. “I mean, we're going to set a standard and we expect the auto companies we represent to follow that standard.”
