WionDrive News Desk 
More than 1,000 factory workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant have signed union authorization cards with The United Auto Workers (UAW) union. This comes after the UAW last week said it was launching a first-of-its-kind push to publicly organize the entire non-union auto sector in the US after it won record new contract with the Detroit Three automakers.
The union has outlined that if 30% of workers at a non-union plant sign cards seeking to join, it would make that public. If 50% of workers seek to join, the union said it would hold a rally with UAW President Shawn Fain to tout the effort. At 70% and with an organizing committee in place, it would seek recognition or demand a union representation vote.
Responding to the development, Volkswagen, which employs about 3,800 workers at the plant that produces the Atlas and ID.4, said that it respects “the right of the workers to determine who should represent their interests in the workplace.”
The Detroit-based union body said workers at 13 non-union auto factories are seeking to join, announcing simultaneous campaigns across the country. The workers are from Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Rivian, Nissan, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The total number of workers at their US assembly plants are nearly 150,000, about the same number as those employed by the Detroit Three companies that recently signed new labor agreements with the UAW.
With the Big 3 Detroit, the UAW deal included an immediate 11% pay hike and 25% increase in base wages through 2028. It shortened the time needed to reach top pay to three years from eight years and also boosted the pay of temporary workers by 150% with a provision for making them permanent.
After the record contract with the Big 3 Detroit, Volkswagen too last month said it would hike pay for factory workers in Tennessee by 11%. Several other foreign automakers joined the list by announcing significant pay and other compensation improvements. Volkswagen said that the recent pay hike reflects “our constant commitment to our team members.” However, analysts and industry officials saw the move as an effort to keep the UAW out of their plants.
The latest developments mark a new era for auto factory workers after UAW’s decades of unsuccessful efforts to organize auto factories operated by foreign automakers. Its efforts to organize Nissan plants in Mississippi and Tennessee failed by wide margins, and two attempts to organize Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga narrowly failed. In 2019, Volkswagen workers at the plant voted 833 to 776 against union representation.
