Defying Southern Governors, a VW Plant Prepares for Major UAW Vote

From email.

A major union vote gets underway today at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the United Auto Workers Union has tried for years to organize workers. A union vote at the same plant failed in 2014 and 2019, but this time, the UAW, with a string of victories last year, thinks it has the labor movement's momentum and worker concerns on its side. For their part, Volkswagen workers complain about lack of paid time off, punishing work schedules, and repetitive stress injuries that are ignored by management.

Organizers are looking to not only address those concerns but raise the general fortunes of VW workers, one plant employee told HuffPost:

“We should not be living on subsistence. We should not just be proud that we can afford an apartment and put food on the table. We should be thriving. What kind of bleak existence do we live in where it’s greedy to want more than to just survive?”

Organizing the VW plant would be an important victory for the UAW in the South, where the labor movement has been stymied by anti-union propaganda and restrictive laws. Governors from six Southern states recently took the extraordinary step of publishing a joint statement discouraging workers from voting to unionize, saying it would jeopardize their jobs.

Southern car plants are centers of electric-car manufacturing, and the UAW has faced particular difficulty in organizing factories run by foreign manufacturers. But VW employees have seen the recent gains made by their colleagues at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. “I want my life to be more like their life,” one VW worker told Bloomberg.

He may get it.