VW workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., became the first big auto plant in the South to join the United Auto Workers in a victory for organized labor.
Volkswagen worker Stephanie Romack celebrates after a vote to join the United Auto Workers passes Friday in Chattanooga, Tenn. Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., passed a historic vote to join the United Auto Workers on Friday, making the auto factory the first in the South to vote to unionize since the 1940s.
“Congratulations to the workers at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on their historic vote for union representation with the United Auto Workers,” Biden said in a statement late Friday night. “I was proud to stand alongside auto workers in their successful fight for record contracts, and I am proud to stand with auto workers now as they successfully organize at Volkswagen.”“I’m very proud of the work we did to get here,” Volkswagen worker Robert Soderstrom said by text message.
Hourly wages for production workers at the plant range from $23.40 to $32.40, according to Volkswagen. After their strike last year against the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — UAW workers at those companies won raises that boosted wages for the highest-paid employees to more than $40 an hour.
The UAW says a majority of workers at Mercedes-Benz manufacturing facilities in Vance and Woodstock, Ala., have already signed union authorization cards supporting membership in the UAW, which workers will put to a vote in mid-May. That election, combined with the results of the Volkswagen vote, could have far-reaching consequences for the labor movement in the region, said Stephen Silvia, a professor at American University who has studied the UAW’s efforts in Southern states.
Harry Katz, a professor and labor expert at Cornell University, called the Volkswagen vote and the 84 percent turnout particularly impressive, and potentially motivated by the big raises and other perks UAW workers won last year by striking against the Big Three.“At the same time, it should be recognized that VW may prove to be a special case given that VW management did not aggressively seek to avoid unionization,” Katz added.
But the union’s membership has dropped precipitously over the past few decades, leaving the UAW scrambling for new sources of growth.
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