Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted Friday to join the United Auto Workers, a historic first test of the UAW’s new effort to organize non-union plants.
The union ultimately received 2,628 votes, or 73 percent of the total vote, while only 985 votes were cast against it in the election held by the National Labor Relations Board.
The NLRB said both parties have five business days to file objections to the election. If not, the election will be certified and Volkswagen and the union must “begin negotiations in good faith.”
President Joe Biden, who has endorsed and won the support of the United Auto Workers, said the union’s victory came after significant gains by unions across the country, including actors, port workers, Teamsters members, writers and health care workers.
In recent years, workers at the Chattanooga plant have refused to unionize twice in plant-wide votes. Most recently, they narrowly defeated the UAW in 2019 as federal prosecutors investigated the union for a bribery and corruption scandal.
But this time, they voted convincingly for the United Auto Workers, which for the first time is operating under new leadership elected directly by its members and is gloating in its successful confrontation with Detroit’s major automakers.
The union’s new president, Shawn Fain, was elected with the intention of cleaning up after the scandal and taking a more confrontational approach with the automakers. Last fall, with Biden’s support, an emboldened Fein led the union in a series of strikes against Detroit automakers, resulting in lucrative new contracts.
Next up for a union vote are workers at the Mercedes plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who will vote for UAW representation in May.
Fein said he wasn’t surprised by the size of the union’s victory Friday after suffering two previous losses.
“This shows workers elsewhere that everything is OK,” Fein said. “All we’ve heard for years is we can’t win here, you can’t do it in the South, but you can.”
Chattanooga worker Vicky Holloway was one of dozens of cheering workers celebrating at the Electrical Workers Union hall near the Volkswagen plant. She said the overwhelming vote to unionize this time was because her colleagues realized they could enjoy better benefits and have a voice in the workplace.
“Right now, we have no say,” said Holloway, who has worked at the plant for 13 years. “It’s like our opinions don’t matter.”
In a statement, Volkswagen thanked workers for voting and said 83.5% of its 4,300 production workers participated in the election.
Six Southern governors, including Tennessee’s Bill Lee, warned workers in a joint statement this week that joining the UAW could cost them their jobs and threaten the region’s economic progress.
But Malik Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies unions, said the landslide victory is a warning to non-union manufacturers.
“This will send a strong message to all these companies that the UAW is knocking on the door and they have to step up their efforts if they want to remain non-union,” Masters said.
Shortly after the Detroit contract was approved, Volkswagen and other non-union companies gave workers significant pay raises.
Last fall, Volkswagen raised wages for production workers by 11 percent, raising the top base wage to $32.40 an hour, or just over $67,000 a year. Volkswagen said its pay exceeded the Chattanooga area’s median household income of $54,480 last May, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
But under the UAW contract, senior production workers at General Motors, for example, now make $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year, not including benefits and profit sharing. By the time the contract ends in 2028, GM’s top workers will earn more than $89,000 a year.
Follow us on Google news ,Twitter , and Join Whatsapp Group of thelocalreport.in
