The South has the lowest unionization in the country where so-called right to work anti-union laws make it hard to win elections and negotiate contracts. The Chattanooga plants were the only VW facilities in the world without union representation. The Alabama plants of the German-owned Mercedes-Benz have also filed for elections.

As the Times Free Press explained, “Workers’ representation at the plant, giving the union its first breakthrough win at a foreign automaker in the South, the results of a three-day election showed Friday.

“According to Volkswagen, 2,628 votes were cast for the union, or 73%, while 985 workers, or 27%, went against the UAW. Some 83 percent of the eligible 4,300 workers voted, the company said.

“Victor Vaughn, one of the union organizers at the plant, told cheering union supporters Friday night the union had won the required majority support.

“ ‘We now have a voice, and we’re eager to sit down and negotiate a contract,’ Vaughn said during a rally at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 175 union hall.

“ ‘The people have spoken—the four most important words in democracy,’ UAW International president Shawn Fain said at the victory rally. ‘It’s an honor to stand here with workers who made history.’

“ ‘This is a union town,’ said Tevita Uhatafe, a union vice president from Dallas while leading cheers of union supporters gathered at IBEW hall.

“Vicky Holloway, a 42-year-old VW employee who has worked on the assembly line and body shop over the past 13 years, said the mood of workers ‘was much different’ this year than in the earlier unionization efforts by the UAW when VW workers voted against the union in 2014 and 2019.”

 Past failures due to segregation and racism

A critical betrayal of the labor movement leadership since the 1930s labor upsurge was its failure to organize in the South. It was a line written in its platform but never seriously fought for.

The reason was clear to Black workers in the South (and North): the unions refused (but always gave lip service) to organize against legal segregation (Jim Crow) and support the Black freedom struggle.

The bosses played the racism card (appealing to white supremacist ideology) to undermine Black and white worker unity. It only began to change after the end of legal segregation in the late 1960s.

In 2014 VW workers voted against the UAW by 53.2%. In 2019, 51.8% voted against unionization.

The substantial change came after the UAW’s big victory last year` at Ford, GM and Stellantis. The UAW afterwards announced plans to organize all nonunion foreign owned plants as well as US owned assembly plant owned by Tesla in California.

Anti-UAW forces in Tennessee included the Chamber of Commerce, Republican politicians including Chattanooga’s mayor and the governor of the state. They all told the workers a vote for the UAW could lead to the loss of jobs or VW leaving the state.

 UAW’s President response

As reported by the AP, “Union President Shawn Fain said the pundits all told him that the UAW couldn’t win in the South.

“ ‘But you all said, “Watch this,” ’ he told a cheering group of VW organizers at a union hall in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Friday night, when the UAW victory was clear. ‘You guys are leading the way. We’re going to carry this fight on to Mercedes and everywhere else.’

“However, the UAW is likely to face a tougher test as it tries to represent workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A five-day election is scheduled to start May 13, where the union’s campaign has already become heated.

“The UAW has accused the German carmaker of violating U.S. and German labor laws with aggressive anti-union tactics, which the company denies.

“ ‘They are going to have a much harder road in work sites where they are going to face aggressive management resistance and even community resistance than they faced in Chattanooga,’ said Harry Katz, a labor-relations professor at Cornell University. ‘VW management did not aggressively seek to avoid unionization. Mercedes is going to be a good test. It’s the deeper South.’

“Late last year, the UAW announced a drive to represent nearly 150,000 workers at non-union factories largely in the South. The union is targeting U.S. plants run by Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, and Volvo, along with factories operated by electric-vehicle makers Tesla, Rivian and Lucid.”

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies the UAW, said the union flipped the script by installing new leadership, touting the rich contracts it won last year from Detroit automakers after strikes at targeted factories, and exploiting a climate that is now more favorable to unions. He said the union was also adept at translating signed pro-union authorization cards into votes — partly by pushing for a quick election.

 Other unions plan new campaigns

Unions in other industries are already moving ahead with organizing campaigns in the South and trying to learn from the UAW’s playbook.

The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), which has tried and failed to win over cabin crews at Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, hopes to collect enough signatures to force another election at Delta by year end. The union’s president, Sara Nelson, said she was not surprised at the UAW win after strikes that led to record contracts last year.

“I’ve been talking about this for a long time — that strikes and taking on the boss is going to spur organizing, and that’s exactly what we saw here,” Nelson said.

Nelson is trying to secure an industry-leading contract at United Airlines that she can use to court Delta crews. In the meantime, crews at startup Breeze Airways, many of whom live in the South, will vote next month whether to join her union.

The White House issued a statement from President Joe Biden congratulating the UAW. Biden — who joined a UAW picket line in Michigan during the union’s strike against Ford, GM and Stellantis plants last year — praised the success of unions representing autoworkers, Hollywood actors and writers, health care workers and others in gaining better contracts.

“Together, these union wins have helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle-class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers,” Biden said.

Biden criticized six Southern Republican governors, including Bill Lee of Tennessee, who told autoworkers this week that voting for union representation would jeopardize jobs.

Sharon Block, a law professor at Harvard University who worked for the Biden administration on labor and other issues, said the governors’ warning rang hollow after nonunion Tesla revealed that it plans to lay off 10% of its workers after disappointing sales results. She said VW workers saw the governors’ open letter as “an empty threat and a cynical ploy,” and they ignored it.

“Workers for a long time have been told that you can’t organize in the South. And many workers, even not in the South, may work in industries where they’ve been told for a long time you can’t organize,” Block said. “What the UAW showed last night is that we need to go and rethink all those negative statements.”

The broad unity of the workforce at the VW plant—Black and white workers—shows what an actual united front can accomplish.

Malik Miah

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