Federal officials have officially certified the United Auto Workers’ recent election victory at Volkswagen of America’s Tennessee plant, making the facility the first unionized, foreign-owned auto plant in the South.
The UAW and the German-owned company said Tuesday that they were “jointly committed to a strong and successful future” at the SUV plant in Chattanooga.
“Both sides are now focused on collective bargaining and entering negotiations in the spirit of working together to reach a fair agreement and build world-class automobiles together,” they said in a joint statement.
Volkswagen did not challenge the results of the vote, which went 2,628 to 985 in the union’s favor earlier this month. The nearly 3-to-1 margin was a remarkable turnaround from the UAW’s two previous election losses at the plant, in 2014 and 2019.
The election was closely watched because the UAW had tried and failed for years to organize foreign-owned “transplant” automakers in the South, where union membership tends to be lower and politicians more hostile to organized labor. The union’s inability to make inroads in the region had weakened its clout in the broader industry, especially as more foreign manufacturers set up in states like Tennessee and Alabama.
Some Republican politicians, including Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, had openly urged Volkswagen workers to vote against the UAW. But the union’s successful strike last year against the “Big Three” automakers — Ford, General Motors and Jeep parent company Stellantis — helped galvanize union support at the Chattanooga plant.
Volkswagen generally did not pressure workers on how to vote, employees told HuffPost in interviews before the election. But it remains to be seen whether the company is willing to accept comparable terms to what the UAW negotiated with the Big Three last year, including a top pay rate for production employees that’s headed to nearly $43 per hour at Ford by 2028.
The Tennessee plant was an outlier among Volkswagen Group facilities globally for not having union representation. Tuesday’s joint statement noted that Volkswagen has “a long history of successfully building vehicles together” with union workers.
The UAW will soon have a chance to unionize its second Southern auto plant in as many months. Workers at a Mercedes-Benz facility near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, have petitioned for a union election after a majority signed union cards. The National Labor Relations Board has scheduled a vote to begin May 13.