COMP NEWS – Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tenessee voted to join the United Auto Workers union, becoming the first plant in the southern US to unionize since the 1940s.

Hourly workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelming voted to join the United Auto Workers late Friday, a major breakthrough in the union’s effort to organize workers at plants nationwide.

Shortly after 11 pm ET on Friday the National Labor Relations Board, the federal body that oversees such votes, announced that 73% of the 3,600 workers at the plant who cast ballots had voted in favor of joining the union. There was an 84% turnout among eligible voters.

“This election is big,” said Kelcey Smith, a worker in the paint department at Volkswagen, in a UAW statement. “This is the time; this is the place. Southern workers are ready to stand up and win a better life.”

There are roughly 150,000 workers at nonunion auto plants in the United States today, roughly the same number as at the American plants of the three unionized automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. If the union can win the right to represent workers across the broad swath of the nonunion auto plants, it could increase their leverage in future contract negotiations.

The UAW’s victory could also provide a high-profile beachhead for unions in Southern states, which have a much lower level of union representation among workers than in Northern industrial states. Most of the nonunion auto plants are spread across the south.

To read more about the unionization effort, click here.

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