Fresh off its victories over the US’s three biggest domestic automakers, the United Auto Workers (UAW) is going all out to unionize Volkswagen’s flagship plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The UAW led a successful strike for significant increases in pay and benefits for workers at Detroit’s “Big Three” auto manufacturers – Ford, General Motors and Stellantis – last year.
The UAW president, Shawn Fain, is hoping to use the victory to drive a mass union organizing campaign across the US aimed at organizing thousands of workers at top automakers including Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen.
The union announced in early December it had already hit a significant organizing benchmark at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, a plant that has previously rejected union votes.
So far more than 1,000 workers have signed union authorization cards, more than 30% of the bargaining unit. Over 50% of workers in the bargaining unit must sign union authorization cards before requesting recognition as a union, at which point the employer can either recognize the union or request an election to be held. The UAW has noted under their organizing plan they will rally at 50 percent and demand union recognition once reaching 70 percent of support for the union. Under previous leadership, the UAW had come close, but fell short, in winning union elections in 2014 and 2019.
Success this time around would be a historic win for the UAW and organizing in the southern United States where union density has historically lagged behind the rest of the country.
Josh Epperson, who started working at the plant in 2012 as a temporary worker before being hired as an employee five years ago and was involved in the previous organizing drive at the plant, said the effort continued from that election aside for a brief pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the recent UAW gains at the big three US automakers catalyzed the campaign. “It piqued people’s curiosity and in a lot of ways, what better time to try to take it to the next level,” said Epperson.
Epperson said issues over scheduling, especially around workers being called in to work on Saturdays, increases in healthcare premiums and deductibles, overtime concerns and high employee turnover at the plant were all driving renewed interest in unionization.
Some 5,500 employees in total work at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with average compensation of $58,734 annually, according to Volkswagen. Shortly after the big three contract gains, Volkswagen announced an 11% pay increase for workers at the plant, a move workers saw as an effort to tamp down support for unionizing.
“As welcome as that is, does that really solve any of the issues we’re dealing with,” added Epperson. “I want Volkswagen to do well. I want the company to do extremely well. I think one of the ways that can be achieved is by working together. We’re down there handling these parts, working on these issues. The goal is not to be anti-company, the goal is to make it better for everyone.”
As it did in last year’s strike actions, the UAW has emphasized the immense disparities between the huge profits Volkswagen has reported compared with rises in workers’ compensation. The UAW claimed Volkswagen has made $184bn in profits over the past decade. Volkswagen reported €52.2bn (about $57.8bn) in gross profits in 2022 alone.
The UAW has also claimed the compensation packages it secured with the big three US automakers will outpace Volkswagen workers’ pay by over 30% by December 2026. Volkswagen has disputed several figures and claims made by the union in a “myths and facts” document over the past weeks.
The union has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Volkswagen, accusing the company of union busting, which Volkswagen has denied. Fain visited the Volkswagen plant on 18 December to deliver a letter to management demanding an end to union busting at the plant.
“We do this every day, this is what we get paid to do, so we should have a say as far as how certain things are run in the plant,” said Yolanda Peoples, an assembly worker at the Volkswagen plant for over 12 years and supported the two previous union campaigns as she comes from a family of UAW members. “This is what we need inside of Volkswagen, but you have a lot of people who are like, ‘yes, this is what we want,’ but they’re really afraid of getting any backlash from management.”
A group of US senators sent a letter earlier this month to Volkswagen and other automakers where the UAW is currently organizing, calling on the companies to agree to remain neutral at a minimum toward the unionizing efforts, though none of the companies have agreed to sign on to a neutrality agreement yet.
Zach Costello, who has worked at the Volkswagen plant since June 2017, said the UAW’s success last year motivated his decision to became involved with the union campaign. “I had this feeling that something in the air was changing, that people were starting to see that something wasn’t right and that there’s something that we can actually do about it this time,” said Costello. “It gave me, and a lot of other people, hope that we can actually make a positive change.”
He said more and more conversations were being had at the plant about unionizing and what a union could do to improve some of the issues workers face, such as fair compensation, democracy in the workplace, improving safety procedures and giving workers a say on workplace matters.
“As it stands, we don’t really have a whole lot of freedom at work, we don’t have a whole lot of say on how things are done and how things go on,” added Costello. “Our lives are at work and if our lives spend so much time at work and we have no say, then how free are you? If people truly want a democratic life, regardless of how good their job is, worker organization is very important.”
A spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an email: “Volkswagen refutes any claims of union-busting, intimidation or illegal violations of worker rights at our Chattanooga plant. The UAW has said Volkswagen confiscated and destroyed pro-union materials in the break room, but the reality is the break room was simply cleaned by maintenance staff as it is routinely. Labor representation is part of our company’s culture; half of our global supervisory board members are labor representatives. We respect our workers’ right to decide the question of union representation. And we remain committed to providing accurate information that helps inform them of their rights and choices.”
