VW Chattanooga plant, where ID.4 is made, votes to unionize in historic move

electrek ^ | Apr 19 2024 - 7:07 pm PT | Jameson Dow

[Red Badger]

VW’s Chattanooga Assembly Plant has voted to join UAW, in a historic move on the back of several recent union wins in the US.

The UAW have had quite a year, launching an unprecedented strike against all three major US automakers at the same time last September. The tactic worked, and six weeks later the UAW had made a deal with all three automakers, winning big pay increases and other assurances from each of them.

The win didn’t just help UAW workers, though, as soon after the strikes closed, several other companies announced big pay increases. Workers at VW, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda and Tesla all earned pay increases of about 10% or more as companies recognized the need to compete for skilled workers with better packages.

UAW President Shawn Fain called this “the UAW bump,” and said UAW stands for “U Are Welcome,” highlighting to non-union workers that strong unions help workers across the economy, not just at their own respective shops.

After these wins, the UAW announced their intention to unionize all other US automakers at the same time – an idea which President Biden lent his support to. UAW encouraged employees from other plants to signal their intent to join up by signing a union card through the website uaw.org/join/.

Fain even said that when the newly-negotiated contracts with the “Big Three” come up for renegotiation (on May 1, 2028 – International Workers’ Day), that this time the negotiations “won’t just be with a Big Three, but with a Big Five or Big Six” – meaning that the UAW plan to have unionized other automakers by that timeframe.

And today, they’ve got their first big win.

Today’s VW vote was the first test of UAW’s strategy, and the vote succeeded by a wide margin. VW confirmed that the final tally was 3,613 ballots, with 83.5% of eligible employees casting a ballot. 2,628 votes were in favor (73%), with 985 votes against (27%).

Chattanooga’s vote makes history in multiple ways. It’s the first newly unionized auto plant in the US South in 80 years, and is now the only union plant owned by a foreign automaker in the US.

Prior to the vote, Chattanooga was actually VW’s only non-union plant worldwide. In fact, in VW’s home country of Germany, every company over a certain size must have worker representation, generally in the form of union representatives, on the company board.

The plant had conducted other union votes in the past, in both 2014 and 2019, but both failed by slim margins. But the plant has more than doubled in employment since 2019, along with more union momentum now than there was then.

Past votes lost at least partially due to opposition from republican state government officials who oppose worker representation. Today’s vote was opposed by Tennessee’s republican governor, Bill Lee, and republican governors from other nearby states. President Biden released a statement supporting the vote, and chiding said governors for attempting to undermine the vote.

Past votes were also affected by corruption scandals that left UAW’s former appointed presidents in prison. Current UAW President Fain is the first elected UAW president, as opposed to previous presidents that had all been appointed.

VW’s Chattanooga plant currently produces the VW ID.4 and the VW Atlas. The ID.4 was brought to Chattanooga in order to gain access to the US EV tax credit, and VW has considered bringing production of other EVs to the plant.

This was the first success of UAW’s new strategy, but it may not be the last. There is already another vote scheduled for next month at Mercedes’ plant in Alabama (a state where republican lawmakers recently passed a law to try to limit worker representation). That vote will occur from May 13-17, and if successful, would mean nearly 10,000 unionized autoworkers in the South over the course of just a few weeks.

Electrek’s Take Unions are having a bit of a moment in the US, in recent years reaching their highest popularity ever since surveys started asking about them.

Much of union popularity has been driven by COVID-19-related disruptions across the economy, with workers becoming unsatisfied due to mistreatment (labeling everyone “essential,” companies ending work-from-home) and with the labor market getting tighter with over 1 million Americans dead from the virus and another 2-4 million out of work due to long COVID.

Unions have seized on this dissatisfaction to build momentum in the labor movement, with successful strikes across many industries and organizers starting to organize workforces that had previously been non-union.

However, union membership has been down over several decades in the US. As a result, pay hasn’t kept pace with worker productivity, and income distribution has become more unequal over time. It’s really not hard to see this influence when you plot these trends against each other.

It’s quite clear that lower union membership has resulted in lower inflation-adjusted compensation for workers, even as productivity has skyrocketed. As workers have produced more and more value for their companies, those earnings have gone more and more to their bosses rather than to the workers who produce that value. It all began in the ’80s, around the time of Reagan – a timeline that should be familiar to those who study social ills in America.

Top comment by Big Daddy Liked by 36 people Wouldn't it be great if Giga Austin unionized. I think Elon might actually, literally, die if that happened. So let's do an exercise, shall we?

The Austin GF has about 20,000 employees. Let's say that they average $50k each (most are worker bees). That's a billion dollars in salary per year. It would take, things being equal, fifty six years of all of their combined gross, not net pay to equal Elon's bonus.

Let me say it again. Twenty thousand people working fifty six years to earn the GROSS pay to equal the bonus that Elon will soon receive.

Twenty thousand people working fifty six years. Please think about it.

View all comments All of this isn’t just true in the US but also internationally. If you look at other countries with high levels of labor organization, they tend to have more fair wealth distribution across the economy and more ability for workers to get their fair share.

We’re seeing this in Sweden right now, as Tesla workers are still striking for better conditions. Since Sweden has 90% collective bargaining coverage, it tends to have a happy and well-paid workforce, and it seems clear that these two things are correlated. That strike is still continuing, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk – who just fired 14,000 people while holding the company hostage and begging for a $55 billion payday for himself – is seemingly uninterested in negotiating.

These are all reasons why, as I’ve mentioned in many of these UAW-related articles, I’m pro-union. And I think everyone should be – it only makes sense that people should have their interests collectively represented and that people should be able to join together to support each other and exercise their power collectively instead of individually.

This is precisely what companies do with industry organizations, lobby organizations, chambers of commerce, and so on. And it’s what people do when sorting themselves into local, state, or national governments. So naturally, workers should do the same. It’s just fair.

[MeganC]

VW should close the plant.

[Red Badger]

That plant makes the VW ID.4 ELECTRIC car..................

[MeganC]

“That plant makes the VW ID.4 ELECTRIC car..................”

Which means no one will miss this plant if it closes. Least of all VW.

[Red Badger]

That might explain why VW didn’t put up much of a fight............

[PAR35]

Companies tend to get the unions they deserve.

[doorgunner69]

Not going to buy one before, definitely not now.

No UAW, no how.

[Alter Kaker]

VW should close the plant.

Not likely. VW supportd the union organizing drive.

[Red6]

Biden.

Under this administration, many of the rules regarding unions have changed. Some of the changes make it far easier to unionize.

Unions know this too. They are pushing hard right now. It’s their golden window of opportunity.

[Red6]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/biden-administration-union-strikes-nlrb-win.html

Do you like to fight battles you know you will lose?

Choose your battle.

In the US, right now, you have an administration which is extremely favorable to unions and the rules are such that trying to block or fight them is difficult.

[MeganC]

“VW supportd the union organizing drive.”

VW was just trying to contain the damage.

They have no qualms about closing US plants and have done so before.

[packagingguy]

I have driven several German cars of various makes. The AM radio never works, and that goes back to an aircooled Beetle I learned on in the 1980s.

If Germans can’t get the AM radio part down how on earth will they ever make a reliable electric vehicle?

There’s a reason VW is dead last in reliability and union or no union this is not likely to change.

(I bought my present GTI for $14,000. Two years earlier it sold for $38,000 new. I thought I was getting a deal.)

[dfwgator]

Say “Auf Wiedersehen” to that plant.

[shoff]

So after they get their 10% raise they will be surprised by the 11% union dues.

[Alberta's Child]

VW has had a strange history in the U.S. They manufactured small cars at a former Chrysler plant in western Pennsylvania for 10-15 years up until they closed the plant in the late 1980s. The UAW was a big reason for the closure, but they also had to deal with internal management strife between the U.S. and German leadership.

As I recall reading some time ago, the company's German plants were subject to union disruption at the time over labor strife at the U.S. plant.

I predict this Chattanooga plant will close in the not-too-distant future. The UAW vote will have nothing to do with it; it just seems like a useless plant that has one of the smallest production/sales totals of any major auto manufacturer in the U.S.

[Vaduz]

And plant closing in 6 months.

[technically right]

Enjoy it while you can UAW folks. The general car buying public can barely afford the ICE powered crap you make now, not to mention the even less affordable and unfit for purpose EV’s. The automakers are pretty well down the road of an industry doom loop. I give it maybe 5 years before one or more of the majors goes under. Depending on which political party is in power they may get bailed out or maybe not. Either way a lot of UAW workers are going to be out of a job but by God, we showed those greedy CEO’s and shareholders who was boss. For a little while anyway.

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

Expect the quality of TN built VWs to plummet while the cost skyrockets.

[Alberta's Child]

One of the interesting dynamics here is that Tennessee is still a “right to work” state — which presumably means that neither the UAW nor VW can compel any of the Chattanooga workers to join the union.

I bring this up because I still remember the media fanfare a couple of years ago when a Starbucks store had the company’s first successful union drive. Within 18 months rhe employees were trying to decertify their union — because they were getting paid LESS than their counterparts at non-union locations.

[2nd Amendment]

I wonder what they will do with the vast manufacturing facilities after they shut down. Went all in for electric cars and pride month. Maybe a flea market or outlet mall. Voted 3 to 1 for union thugs.