{"id":1624005,"date":"2024-04-22T17:03:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T17:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therealnews.com\/?p=312322"},"modified":"2024-04-22T17:03:53","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T17:03:53","slug":"tennessee-volkswagen-workers-vote-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/22\/tennessee-volkswagen-workers-vote-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Volkswagen workers vote union"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Labor<\/figure>
\n

This story originally appeared in Labor Notes<\/a> on Apr. 19, 2024. It is shared here with permission.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In a watershed victory, workers at the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted tonight “UAW, yes!” The company’s sole non-union plant will finally join the rest of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf Volkswagen workers at plants in Germany and Mexico have unions, why not us?\u201d said equipment operator Briam Calderon in Spanish, ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Just like Martin Luther King had a dream, we have a dream at Volkswagen that we will be UAW one day,” said Renee Berry, a logistic worker on the organizing committee who’s worked at the plant for 14 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UAW is riding a\u00a0wave of momentum<\/a>\u00a0after winning landmark contracts at the Big 3 automakers last year. Production workers at Volkswagen earn $23 per hour and top out above $32, compared to $43 for production workers at Ford\u2019s Spring Hill assembly plant by the contract\u2019s end in 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe could see what other auto workers were making compared to what we were making,\u201d said Yolanda Peoples,\u00a0a member of the organizing committee<\/a>\u00a0on the engine assembly line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To head off a union drive, Volkswagen boosted wages 11 percent to match the immediate raise UAW members received at Ford. Peoples saw her pay jump from $29 to $32 an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen they went on strike, we paid close attention just to see what happened. Once they won their contract, it changed a lot of people from anti-union to pro-union members,\u201d said Peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s vote was a key test of whether the union could springboard the strike gains to propel\u00a0new organizing in longtime anti-union bastions in the South<\/a>, the anchors of big investments in the electric-vehicle transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vote was 2,628 in favor of forming a union to 985 against. There were seven challenged ballots, and three voided; 4,326 workers were eligible to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous efforts at this plant in 2014 and 2019 had gone down to narrow defeats. Ahead of the vote, workers said their co-workers had learned from those losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They brushed off threats that a union would make the plant less competitive and lead it to close. After all, VW invested $800 million here in 2019 to produce the I.D. Electric SUV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have seen the enemy\u2019s playbook twice, and they don\u2019t have any new moves,\u201d said Zach Costello, a member of the organizing committee and a trainer on the assembly line. \u201cIt\u2019s the greatest hits now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organizing committee beat the predictable anti-union talking points with conversations across the plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019ve been focusing all our time and attention on the people who matter,\u201d said organizing committee member Isaac Meadows, \u201cand it\u2019s our co-workers who cast votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow Mercedes workers [in Alabama] are right behind us. We\u2019ve set the stage for them to win and they will create the momentum for Hyundai and Toyota.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mercedes workers will vote from May 13-16, with a ballot count on the 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to fellow workers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Angel Gomez knows the benefits that come with a union card, having been a steward with the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the Teamsters at two previous jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gomez followed his family to Tennessee after working at Smithfield Foods and Molson Coors in Wisconsin, as well as Ford in New Jersey, where his father put in 30 years. He was hired at VW last November. He works on the underbodies of gleaming Atlas SUVs as they travel down the line at a steady clip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt first I wasn\u2019t involved in the union,\u201d Gomez said, because the moment he opened his mouth people knew he was from up North; he didn\u2019t want them to write him off while he was still getting acclimated. \u201cDown here I\u2019m the Yankee. Perception is everything. I didn\u2019t want people to see a slick-talking New Yorker from the Bronx.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But despite his trepidations, soon people were approaching him to talk about problems at the plant: \u201cPeople started telling me\u2014white, Black, it didn\u2019t matter\u2014about all the favoritism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He started talking to a handful of Spanish-speaking workers from Venezuela, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico\u2014who saw in a Puerto Rican worker someone from their culture, who could shed light on the union drive because of his own union experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI took a special interest in looking out for people who do their thing, take care of their families, and they always get f\u2014ed with at the job,\u201d Gomez said. He said these people tended to be Spanish-speaking workers who kept their heads down and did as they were told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he convinced the Latino workers in his department to vote for the union. But he doesn\u2019t sugarcoat the challenges. Some people think \u201cif you don\u2019t believe in what uncle daddy Trump is telling you, then you\u2019re a bad person,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s been the biggest drawback\u2014the whole political aspect coming from the right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No partisan politics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Meadows said the worker-organizers had learned from past drives not to get too drawn into partisan politics, and that conducting house visits wasn\u2019t worth the backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, this time around, workers emphasized talking to their co-workers on the shop floor, covering 90 percent of the plant with leaders on every line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also kept the focus on workers improving their jobs and bettering the lives of their families, rather than getting drawn into a fight with GOP actors, an astroturf campaign, or a billboard war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPartisan politics has nothing to do with what we\u2019re doing here,\u201d said Meadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent poll conducted for the conservative Beacon Center found that 44 percent of respondents statewide in Tennessee\u00a0viewed the UAW favorably<\/a>, while just 19 percent viewed it unfavorably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of the vote, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee warned workers they shouldn\u2019t \u201crisk their future\u201d by voting for the UAW and urged them not to give up \u201cthe freedom to decide it themselves and hand that over to a negotiator on their behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHis message is wrong,\u201d said Meadows. \u201cRight now, the only choice we have at this place is, do I stay or do I quit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee was reprising his role from 2019, when he also opposed the drive, stumping alongside the plant\u2019s chief executive officer. At the time, Meadows said, workers booed the governor, and the union drive lost support because of it. This time they\u2019ve grown their committees by focusing on each other instead of the politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople for the most part are smartening up. And they\u2019re not paying attention to the political crap,\u201d said Gomez. \u201cThe politicians know nothing about blue-collar work. They are born with a silver spoon in their mouths.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take Governor Lee,\u00a0heir to a wealthy construction family business<\/a>\u00a0with annual revenues upwards of $220 million in 2019 when he became governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are driving this ship”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like last time, there was a union-busting website, stillnouaw.com<\/em>, this time with a social media post from former President Trump attacking UAW President Shawn Fain and equating voting for the union with supporting President Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the anti-union Facebook page only had 15 \u201clikes\u201d as of this week. Previous opposition groups counted hundreds of open supporters. Tennesseans for Economic Freedom, a business group, ran Facebook ads emblazoned with the message: “UAW would spend our paychecks on politics.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey still have not realized that we are making the decision for ourselves,\u201d said Victor Vaughn, a member of the organizing committee. \u201cWe are the ones driving this ship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congressperson Chuck Fleischmann got the message. Even though he opposed the last drive, this time Fleischmann bucked his Republican colleagues and refused to intervene. \u201cThis is something that I\u2019m going to let the workers decide,\u201d he\u00a0told\u00a0HuffPost<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the GOP campaign against the current UAW organizing wave hasn\u2019t been as vicious or coordinated as in previous drives. Only after the union filed for elections in Alabama and Tennessee did the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas issue a joint statement opposing the union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0that they were seeing \u201cthe fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs. Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The threats are implied. But compare that to 2014, when Tennessee Senator Bob Corker said the VW plant would get a new SUV production line if workers rejected the UAW, and state politicians threatened to withhold tax incentives should workers vote the UAW in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking paper<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the lead-up to this week\u2019s election, supervisors would read verbatim from a company newsletter called \u201cThe Talking Paper,\u201d written in such a way that it cast doubts about the union without crossing over into unfair labor practice territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery time the \u2018Talking Paper\u2019 comes out,\u201d Costello said, \u201ceven my supervisor is like \u2018It\u2019s gonna take a while,\u2019 because they have to read every word as it is written. They cannot Cliff Notes it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, the lion\u2019s share of the unfair labor practice charges the UAW has filed in this organizing wave so far have been at Volkswagen. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen the liars that they are when they say they\u2019re neutral,\u201d Costello said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To beat past union drives, the company promised to boost wages and address safety. But workers said these turned out to be empty promises. In 2019, Volkswagen brought back the company president who had originally opened the plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody loved Frank Fisher,\u201d said Peoples, who was hired in 2011. \u201cSo when he came and pleaded, and pretty much said, \u2018Give Volkswagen one more chance here in Chattanooga, we aren\u2019t finished yet, we’re going to make some changes, and I’ll be right here with you,\u2019 that pretty much swayed a lot of people and turned their votes into nos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople understand that they\u2019re just trying to trick us one more time like they did the two times previously,\u201d said Vaughn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costello said Volkswagen shipped Fisher back to Germany soon after the vote. “The conditions in the plant slammed back to the brutal meat grinder that it always was,” he said. “And we have carried that with us into this campaign.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renee sustained multiple surgeries in her long tenure at the plant. Going into the campaign, she said safety was her top concern. “I want to come out of work the same way I came in,” she said. But conditions at the plant have deteriorated to the point where she says workers agonize over whether they’ll come out of work alive or maimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You may lose a leg or a hand,” she said. “I got synthetic in my shoulder” from a rotator cuff tear. “I have a three-year-old granddaughter who I can’t pick up. So my life has changed, but I’m still going to keep going because I’ve put too much blood, sweat and tears into this plant.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gateway to the South<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein compared tonight\u2019s win to the Union Army\u2019s victory in Chattanooga in 1863, during the U.S. Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it \u201cthe gateway to the South.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking Chattanooga, Lichtenstein said, \u201copened the door to the capture of Atlanta, the rest of Georgia, and the Carolinas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith UAW\u2019s win at Volkswagen, another gateway to the South has been opened. No longer will the wage-and-benefit standards of the million-strong auto workforce in the U.S. be set by the non-union portion of the industry. A militant and increasingly powerful UAW will set the standard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costello, too, sees new horizons opening up. \u201cIf workers can unite in this country, I think we can move a lot,\u201d he said. “We could even effect change that goes beyond our workplace.”<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Real News Network<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf Volkswagen workers at plants in Germany and Mexico have unions, why not us?\u201d said one worker, ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1775,5942,453,5585,55805,35067],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1624005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1625956,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624005\/revisions\/1625956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1624005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1624005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1624005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}