UAW: ‘The Only People Who Can Organize the South Are Workers in the South’

Volkswagen (VW) workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly for representation by the United Auto Workers (UAW). It is a huge accomplishment for the workers involved, for all auto workers, and for the labor movement and working class across the United States.

The vote for the union was a whopping 2,628 for to 985 against, according to unofficial results the company released late on April 19. The 73% margin of victory was buoyed by a large turnout: 84% of the plant’s 4,300 hourly workers cast ballots.

EDITORIAL

The results have historic significance. The UAW failed in two previous attempts to organize VW, in 2014 and 2019. Other efforts to organize auto plants in the South have also been unsuccessful. In Chattanooga, workers won for the first time in a foreign-owned U.S. auto plant. It was also the first Southern auto factory where workers approved a union through an election since the 1940s. Chattanooga workers opened the door to extending unionization of other auto plants in the South — and beyond — as part of the nationwide organizing drive the UAW launched last fall.

This victory is a direct result of the union’s 2023 successful strike against General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis.

As World-Outlook reported in UAW Strike Scores Victory for Working Class, “The outcome of the UAW strike, and its popularity among millions, reverberated nationwide — showing the impact of this battle across the auto industry. Even before the rank-and-file finished voting on the new contracts, Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota were the first among the non-union automakers to announce significant wage increases in their factories.”

Going into the strike, the union leadership was headed by Shawn Fain, the first president in UAW history to be elected by direct vote of the membership. Fain’s election, last fall’s strike, the broad organizing campaign under way, and this decisive victory in Tennessee are all evidence of a new rise in rank-and-file activity and confidence that the union can be their organization. This marks a major change.

The initiative came from the ranks and the new UAW leadership responded.

“The U.A.W.’s success in the negotiations with the Big Three in the fall,” reported the New York Times, “set off a surge in interest among Southern autoworkers in organizing their own plants, the union said, and prompted the U.A.W. to kick off a $40 million effort to support them.”

UAW members were in a fighting mood last year. Fain signaled he understood this from the beginning. In contrast to the recent past, UAW members clearly believed that this time the union and its newly elected leadership had a strategy and it produced results.

In a similar way, the UAW launched the organizing drive — aiming to unionize an additional 150,000 autoworkers — with a winning strategy: putting the rank and file front and center. Fain made this plain in a March 24 speech to Mercedes workers in Alabama. “I came here not to win this thing for you. Not to tell you what to do,” Fain said. “The only people who can organize the South are the workers in the South.”

Fain made a similar point in congratulating workers in Chattanooga. “Tonight, we celebrate this historic moment in our nation’s and our union’s history,” Fain told Volkswagen workers in a victory speech, seen in the video below provided by the union. “Let’s get to it and go to work and win more for the working class of this nation.”

The next challenge is coming soon. The union recently announced that a supermajority of workers at the large Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, have signed union authorization cards. A representation election is scheduled to take place there, beginning the week of May 13. The union has also made progress in organizing workers at a Toyota engine factory in Missouri and at a Hyundai assembly plant in Alabama.

Mercedes and other auto workers can only be encouraged by the lessons from Chattanooga. The victory there came after a concerted campaign by local VW workers, assisted by UAW staff, who rallied fellow employees to their cause by explaining how they could fight for better wages, improved health care and retirement benefits, and more paid time off by joining the union. A workers’ committee at the center of the organizing effort was instrumental in countering a concerted anti-union campaign by government officials and employers across the South.

Many politicians in Tennessee had sought to thwart a yes vote by warning workers in public statements that unionization would threaten jobs and the region’s economic prosperity. Governors of six Southern states banded together to make a similar joint statement leading up to the April 17-19 vote. This time such appeals had little impact.

“This election is big,” said Kelcey Smith, a worker in Volkswagen’s paint department and a member of the workers’ committee, in a UAW statement. “People in high places told us good things can’t happen here in Chattanooga. They told us this isn’t the time to stand up, this isn’t the place. But we did stand up and we won. This is the time; this is the place. Southern workers are ready to stand up and win a better life.”

This victory may well be a turning point for the UAW, whose membership has declined precipitously for decades, from 1.5 million in 1979 to just over 370,000 in 2023. It can also help revitalize the U.S. labor movement, coming at a time of increasing support for unionization and an uptick in strike activity. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that last year nearly 459,000 workers took part in “major work stoppages” — each involving more than 1,000 workers — the largest such number in nearly a quarter century.

The victory at VW increases the odds for another milestone union win in Alabama next month.

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