Until recently, it would have been safe to presume that a majority of the 鈥 scheduled to run May 13-17, 2024 鈥 would reject this opportunity to join the United Auto Workers.
The employed by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, foreign-owned auto plants in the South . Two of those drives aimed to organize the entire Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
But the third time the UAW tried to organize the VW plant, , winning in an election held there in April.
I conduct research about organized labor in the United States and other countries. My most recent book, 鈥,鈥 highlights the big challenges workers and the UAW have long faced when trying to organize auto plants in the South. In my view, the union was finally able to succeed in Chattanooga because of its new leadership and closer cooperation with VW workers in Germany.
A successful model
As I explain in my book, one reason it took the UAW so long to score its first plantwide win was that an employer playbook for discouraging unionization had worked according to plan.
The automotive companies operating in the American South had largely with little union membership. They screened out hires who might be sympathetic to unions and divided the workforce by using temp agencies to fill a significant share of positions. They throughout the plant to run pro-company and anti-union messaging. And they donated lavishly to local churches, charities and politicians to undercut local support for unionization.
At the same time, Southern political and business leaders sought to attract investment 鈥 especially from foreign-owned manufacturers 鈥 by offering massive subsidies, low taxes, lower labor costs and a largely compliant workforce.
Southern than than their Northern peers and have, until now, had little say over what happens in their workplace.
This model succeeded. Today, of U.S. auto workers are in the South, up from around 15% in 1990.
Whenever the UAW has sought to unionize the industry throughout the region, the Southern political establishment, which the Republican Party dominates, .
Most recently, six Southern GOP governors encapsulated that tradition in a shortly before the VW vote. In it, they denounced the UAW鈥檚 organizing drive as 鈥渟pecial interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.鈥
听
Strong leadership
The UAW鈥檚 win in Tennessee suggests that this model has begun to break down. Three factors can explain why it may no longer work.
First, the in March 2023 marked a turning point. The charismatic , whom MotorTrend recently named 鈥,鈥 wasted no time shifting the UAW away from its prior accommodation with automakers.
Fain used forceful rhetoric and innovative tactics to score wins at the bargaining table throughout the UAW鈥檚 concurrent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis in the fall of 2023.
The gave workers substantial pay and benefits increases and restored cost-of-living adjustments. Those deals also eliminated a two-tier wage structure that paid workers hired since 2007 significantly less for doing the same job than colleagues with more seniority.
By the end of 2023, the UAW had shown Southern autoworkers that it could deliver gains that their employers were unlikely to grant on their own. More autoworkers throughout the region .
New organizing approach
Second, the UAW revamped its approach to labor organizing.
Out went its top-down approach, led by union staffers who weren鈥檛 necessarily the most skilled at organizing. Under Fain鈥檚 leadership, the UAW hired 鈥 a proven organizer from the Service Employees International Union 鈥 to take charge.
Shepherd has empowered the automotive employees who were supportive of unionization to .
For example, at the Mercedes plant, committed employees far earlier than UAW had previously recommended, and it dispensed with visiting undecided workers at their homes because they thought that tactic would be counterproductive in the South.
Shepherd has hired professional organizers to back up his team, and he鈥檚 promoted the creation of than the voluntary organizing committees the UAW had traditionally used.
These changes have paid off. More Southern workers have signed cards than ever before.
German solidarity
Third, the UAW鈥檚 relationship with Volkswagen鈥檚 German works council leadership, which represents employees in the workplace, has dramatically improved. A is an elected body of employees anchored in German law that represents employee interests at the workplace and company levels. It is distinct from the German metalworkers union, , which has always been supportive of unionization at German-owned auto plants in the American South.
Ties between the UAW and the works council were . But the .
This time, the German works council to soften VW management鈥檚 resistance to unionization and to urge Chattanooga employees to vote for the UAW.
Tougher territory
Just because the UAW won by almost a 3-to-1 margin in Chattanooga doesn鈥檛 mean that victory at Mercedes in Alabama or elsewhere is a sure thing.
Both the Alabama political establishment and the factory鈥檚 management have at Mercedes than Volkswagen executives and Tennessee officials did ahead of the vote at the Chattanooga plant.
Forging a close relationship between Mercedes鈥 German works council and the UAW has proved elusive. On the other hand, a core of Mercedes Alabama employees has proved particularly adept at organizing. They set up a dense network in the plant 鈥 that is, people whose jobs require them to move about the plant.
They have also summarized their circumstances with snappy lines that have gone viral. For example, longtime Mercedes employee Jeremy Kimbrell declared 鈥溾 鈥 a reference to the lower pay they receive compared to their peers in Michigan and other more established automotive manufacturing hubs.
Mercedes management in Alabama has also made a series of moves that have enraged and emboldened the workers at that plant. It for many years and instituted a deeply unpopular , which management last year after the UAW鈥檚 successful strikes.
Mercedes management judged the anti-union campaign to be going so badly that it , and replaced him with the current vice president of operations, Federico Kochlowski, just two weeks before voting was set to begin.
Sacking an unpopular plant manager is a common union-avoidance tactic, much like firing the head coach of a poorly performing sports team to appease fans. .
An outcome that鈥檚 hard to predict
The outcome of the vote at the Mercedes plant is harder to predict than it was for the Volkswagen factory because Mercedes has never had a union recognition election before. One thing is certain, however: The UAW鈥檚 organizing campaign is not ending there.
Fain has repeatedly declared that the UAW intends to 鈥 potentially doubling the ranks of its members in the industry.
There are about a dozen more campaigns underway that could follow the vote at Mercedes. At least 30% of the workers at and have already embraced the UAW 鈥 a key first step toward a formal election.
, Professor of International Relations,
This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .