by Daniel Johnson
April 22, 2024
Earlier than the vote for unionization, the Tennessee plant was the one Volkswagen plant on the earth that didn’t have employee illustration.
The United Auto Employees is hopeful to unfold its affect all through the South, a area that has been traditionally hostile to unions. Why the optimism? For the primary time, the union group received an election vote in an meeting plant situated within the South run by a overseas automotive firm.
As U.S. Information & World Report experiences, the UAW received its election with 73% of the vote after being stonewalled in 2014 and 2019. Notably, earlier than the vote, the plant was the one Volkswagen plant on the earth that didn’t have employee illustration, that’s, union illustration.
After the historic win, UAW President Shawn Fein celebrated with organizers in Tennessee, telling the group, “We’re going to hold this struggle on to Mercedes and in every single place else.”
The Mercedes struggle Fein referred to is 2 Mercedes-Benz vegetation situated in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which specialists like Harry Katz, a labor relations professor at Cornell College, believes it is going to be tougher to unionize as a result of it’s deeper within the South than Tennessee.
“They’ll have a a lot tougher highway in work websites the place they’re going to face aggressive administration resistance and even neighborhood resistance than they confronted in Chattanooga,” Katz advised U.S. Information & World Report. “VW administration didn’t aggressively search to keep away from unionization. Mercedes goes to be a great take a look at. It’s the deeper South.”
To Katz’s level, already six Southern governors had already warned employees in opposition to becoming a member of UAW, together with Alabama’s Gov. Kay Ivey. The opposite governors who signed onto the joint assertion had been Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, and Tennessee Gov. Invoice Lee.
Governors within the South, as NPR experiences, usually use incentives to lure overseas automakers to the area and offered some assurances that they wouldn’t need to cope with UAW except they selected to.
Principally, these auto employee jobs had paid properly sufficient previously that employees have historically felt a union doesn’t actually profit them, however with the UAW’s $40 million funding into the South, that sentiment could also be altering. Quinton North, a Black employee at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, mentioned that Fein’s management is a purpose he switched his vote from no to sure. “He’s (Fein) actually confirmed what he’s—he’s for the employees.”
President Joe Biden additionally weighed in on the makes an attempt of the Republican governors to make use of fear-mongering techniques, releasing an announcement affirming the best of American employees to decide on whether or not or not a union represents their greatest pursuits.
“Let me be clear to the Republican governors that attempted to undermine this vote: there’s nothing to concern from American employees utilizing their voice and their authorized proper to kind a union in the event that they so select.”
