The UAW victory at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is not simply impressive; it is HUGE. With 3,613 ballots counted, some 73% of the workers voted in favor of union representation. (The final total was 2,628 votes in favor of joining the UAW, and 985 votes against.)
Clearly, the union gained the confidence of the VW workers after impressive UAW strikes and contract victories last year at “The Big Three.” This election in Tennessee has been closely watched because the union has struggled for years to organize foreign-owned auto operations in the South.
Will Mercedes-Benz in Alabama be next? Could be: Those workers vote next month. — Paul Baicich
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It’s even better than you think.
I just got back from the biennial (except-for-covid) Labor Notes conference in Chicago. Years ago a gathering of labor dissidents and left-wing dreamers, over the last decade it’s become a site to celebrate some actual union victories: West Virginia and Chicago teachers, my own Local’s 2016 NYC Verizon strike. Two years past, as a sign of changing times, along with Bernie Sanders, two newly elected union presidents—Teamster’s Sean O’Brien and UAW’s Shawn Fain—addressed the Labor Notes convention in person.
As this year proved, that change was not a desperate gamble, but a promise. On Friday morning, UAW members were confidently predicting the big win in Chattanooga that materialized that night at 8 pm, and the conference was abuzz with talk of future victories at auto plants across the south. Wary Auto workers at not just Volkswagen and next up Mercedes Benz, as Paul Baicich writes, but at Hyundai, Honda, and Rivian have been watching the big three auto strike for signs of life and got it with that big three win and those UAW creative strategies. Tennessee, the Autoworkers at Labor Notes were saying, is just the beginning, and that just might mark the end of the low-wage, no-union, gerrymandered south.
I consider myself a pretty good judge of (and participant in) union whistling past the graveyard and next-year-will-be-betterism. And I don’t think Amazon will be easy to crack, but I do believe it’s cracking. For the first time ever, the Labor Notes Conference maxed out at 4,500 participants, most of them young and energetic. There was talk (from folks doing it) of unionizing the south from Waffle House to call centers. A rep from the Volkswagen union in Germany promoted the 33-hour workweek and a confab in India: an autoworker union rep from Italy pitched a similar anti-fascist global critique. I caught a premiere of an inspiring movie featuring trans union organizers at Starbucks.
An era is ending, something is changing, and not just in the Republican Party. — Tom Smucker