{"id":33101,"date":"2024-04-22T12:28:21","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T19:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=33101"},"modified":"2024-04-22T12:28:22","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T19:28:22","slug":"uaw-conquers-hostile-political-terrain-with-tennessee-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/04\/22\/uaw-conquers-hostile-political-terrain-with-tennessee-win\/","title":{"rendered":"UAW Conquers Hostile Political Terrain With Tennessee Win"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nick Niedzwiadek\/Politico<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UAWPeople celebrate after the UAW received enough votes to form a union at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen plant. (photo: Elijah Nouvelage\/Getty)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

21 april 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The vote by workers at a Chattanooga VW plant to join the union tested its renewed organizing effort in the South amid GOP opposition.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For decades the labor movement has seen its power diminish in the South. The United Auto Workers on Friday jump-started efforts to reverse that decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UAW delivered one of the labor movement\u2019s biggest organizing victories in the South in years when Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the union, despite efforts by the state\u2019s Republicans to doom the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UAW has eyed the Chattanooga facility for over a decade, and the union narrowly lost a pair of previous elections in 2014 and 2019, the latter of which was decided by about 60 votes. This time, workers voted 2,628 to 985 to join the UAW out of more than 4,000 who were eligible, marking a key victory for union President Shawn Fain\u2019s ambitious strategy to take on non-union automakers in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany of the talking heads and the pundits have said to me, repeatedly, when we announced this campaign, \u2018You can\u2019t win in the South.\u2019 They said Southern workers aren\u2019t ready for it,\u201d Fain told workers late Friday. \u201cYou all moved a mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UAW\u2019s blueprint drew heavily on momentum gathered as a result of last year\u2019s high-stakes strike<\/a> at the Big Three car companies, which drew President Joe Biden to its picket line and dominated headlines for months. It also bolstered relationships developed with VW workers in the years since supporters first started organizing in Chattanooga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis time the atmosphere has changed,\u201d Renee Berry, a VW worker since 2010, told POLITICO. \u201cThere\u2019s been so many people that voted against it in 2014, 2019, but now they\u2019re on board.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Germany-based car manufacturer throughout each of the organizing drives has officially remained neutral, though the UAW in 2019 contended that VW repeatedly violated that principle and those tensions lingered into this week\u2019s vote. The UAW has filed unfair labor practice charges against VW, accusing it of illegal anti-union tactics, which the company denies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Friday night\u2019s vote, VW thanked the workers for participating in the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to other non-union competitors like Tesla, whose leader Elon Musk unabashedly opposes unionization and has repeatedly battled with the National Labor Relations Board, VW\u2019s position placed self-imposed limits on how it could address UAW\u2019s messaging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That left Tennessee\u2019s top elected Republicans to lead the fight against the union. They argued that the UAW\u2019s presence could deter future investments or encourage VW and other employers to consider bringing jobs to other states instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, then-Sen. Bob Corker, who\u2019d previously been Chattanooga\u2019s mayor, was among those who aggressively worked to turn workers against organizing with the UAW.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is all about money for them. They feel like, if they can get up under the hood with a company in the south, then, they can make progress in other places,\u201d Corker told the Washington Post in 2014<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A representative for Corker declined an interview request with the former senator, who retired at the end of his term in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar messages at the time came from Gov. Bill Haslam and other powerful figures like state Sen. Bo Watson, who called VW\u2019s posture \u201cun-American\u201d and floated the prospect<\/a> of cutting off financial incentives to the company. (Watson\u2019s office did not respond to an email from POLITICO.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, workers in 2014 voted 712-626 against the union, which fumed at the opposition<\/a> from \u201cpoliticians and outside special interest groups.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The GOP used a similar playbook five years later, with Haslam\u2019s successor as governor \u2014 Bill Lee, who owned a construction contracting business \u2014 touring Volkswagen\u2019s plant and extolling the benefits of a non-union shop to workers in Chattanooga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, such foreboding rhetoric didn\u2019t land hard enough this time to discourage workers from vindicating the UAW\u2019s decadelong quest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month Lee said unionization would be \u201ca big mistake,\u201d and he recently joined a suite of fellow Southern governors in projecting a unified front against the UAW \u2014 and tried to sway GOP-leaning workers by yoking the union to Biden, whom the UAW endorsed in January after a protracted delay<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey proudly call themselves democratic socialists and seem more focused on helping President Biden get reelected than on the autoworker jobs being cut at plants they already represent,\u201d the letter stated. \u201cWe want to keep good paying jobs and continue to grow the American auto manufacturing sector here. A successful unionization drive will stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broadside was led by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, whose state is set to be the next battleground as the UAW is scheduled to hold an election of Mercedes-Benz workers there next month. Back-to-back victories could turbocharge further auto-industry organizing and dent the South\u2019s reputation as hostile terrain for labor unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden lauded the VW results and directly rebuked the GOP pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose,\u201d he said in a statement released by the White House. \u201cI will continue to stand with American workers and stand against Republican\u2019s effort to weaken workers\u2019 voice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Niedzwiadek\/Politico People celebrate after the UAW received enough votes to form a union at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen plant. (photo: Elijah Nouvelage\/Getty) 21 april 24 (RSN.org) The vote by workers at a Chattanooga VW plant to join the union tested its renewed organizing effort in the South amid GOP… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33101"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33102,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33101\/revisions\/33102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}