By voting to join the United Automobile Workers, Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have given the union something it has never had: a factory-wide foothold at a major foreign automaker in the South.
The result, in an election that ended on Friday, will enable the union to bargain for better wages and benefits. Now the question is what difference it will make beyond the Volkswagen plant.
Labor experts said success at VW might position the union to replicate its showing at other auto manufacturers throughout the South, the least unionized region of the country. Some argued that the win could help set off a rise in union membership at other companies that exceeds the uptick of the past few years, when unions won elections at Starbucks and Amazon locations.
“It’s a big vote, symbolically and substantively,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.
The next test for the U.A.W. will come in a vote in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.
In addition, at least 30 percent of workers have signed cards authorizing the U.A.W. to represent them at a Hyundai plant in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri, according to the union. That is the minimum needed to force an election, though the union has yet to petition for one in either location.
“People only take action when they believe there is an alternative to the status quo that has a plausible chance of winning,” said Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal.
Still, it’s unclear how far the campaign may spread beyond German manufacturers. Volkswagen and Mercedes have been relatively friendly to unions outside the United States, and a recent German law could prompt financial penalties against companies that crack down on union organizing.
Compared with previous elections in Chattanooga, Volkswagen’s pushback against the union was mild this time, according to workers. The company presented reasons it believed a union was unnecessary, including pay that is above average for the Chattanooga area, but said it left the decision to the workers.
Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at the research firm AutoForecast Solutions, predicted that most Japanese and South Korean manufacturers with plants in the South would be more difficult targets for the U.A.W. because they have worked hard to develop a close relationship with workers or have butted heads with unions in their home country, or both.
The Chattanooga vote could also lead to a broader political battle over unionization within the region. Business and political leaders in the South say a greater union presence could threaten their states’ economic advantages and slow down job creation.
“If we become less competitive, why not do it in Detroit?” said Gerald McCormick, a Republican who was the Tennessee House majority leader when the U.A.W. first prompted a union vote at the Volkswagen plant in 2014.
Six Republican governors highlighted those concerns in a statement on Tuesday, which said that the union campaign was “driven by misinformation and scare tactics.” Opposition from state and local politicians helped defeat the union in a vote at a Nissan plant in Mississippi in 2017 and in elections at VW in Chattanooga in 2014 and 2019.
The U.A.W.’s political support for Democrats — the union endorsed President Biden’s re-election in January — could also be a vulnerability in such a fight. Isaac Meadows, a worker at the Volkswagen plant, said in an interview in February that the endorsement had led some co-workers to have second thoughts about the union, but that he had advised them that “the political landscape changes every four to eight years and doesn’t directly affect us.”
Even so, a change in presidential administrations could bring a more skeptical National Labor Relations Board, which presides over union elections and enforces labor law and could make it more difficult for the union to win at other plants.
Worker advocates and union organizers acknowledged that the win in Chattanooga could trigger a strong response. “You have to imagine the backlash,” said Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, which helps workers seeking to unionize and bargain collectively. “My hope is that enough people understand both within the U.A.W. and within the union world writ large that you have to defend the union election.”
Organizers also conceded that any momentum generated by the union victory in Chattanooga could be muted until workers there win a contract that brings concrete gains, a process that can take years.
It has been two years since Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse became the first to win a union election at the company in the United States, and they have yet to begin bargaining as the company challenges the victory. The lack of progress toward a contract appears to have complicated organizing efforts at other Amazon sites.
But the Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga have advantages that the Amazon workers lack. Unlike the Amazon Labor Union, their union is well established and can invest millions of dollars in staff and legal work to help bargain a contract. And Volkswagen appears more willing than Amazon to bargain, partly because of its labor ties in Germany.
“If workers in Chattanooga get a great contract, a big raise, better health benefits, and then the same thing at Mercedes, there will be a lot more good opportunities to win good contracts in short order,” said Madeline Janis, co-executive director of Jobs to Move America, a group that seeks to create good jobs in clean technology industries.
Ms. Janis, whose group is involved in unionizing factory workers in the South, said the momentum could travel beyond the auto industry to other manufacturers because employees at different companies in the region often know one another and discuss these issues. “Their brothers and sisters and spouses are working at other plants,” she said. “It will be all over social media.”
And some experts said that a rise in unionization at factories could spread to other types of jobs. “The enthusiasm is contagious across sectors,” said David Pryzbylski, a lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg who represents employers. “People look at it and say, ‘Hey, I think there’s something here. Maybe I should be interested in it, too.’”
Several workers echoed the point, saying they had drawn encouragement from labor actions in other industries over the past few years. Successful campaigns in Hollywood and at companies like Starbucks and Apple “have been a major boon for us,” said Emma Geiger, a worker at Sega of America who helped unionize the video game maker last year. “Especially in the perception of unions on the whole as not something to be feared, but to be embraced.”
Overall, nearly 70 percent of Americans say they support unions, according to Gallup, up from about 50 percent a decade and a half ago. After dropping for several years, the number of union members increased by nearly 280,000 in 2022 and by about half that amount last year, though the percentage of workers in unions dropped slightly because even more people entered the work force. Filings for union elections were up 35 percent in the six months ending in March compared with the same period one year earlier, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
During the mid-1930s, union membership grew by several hundred thousand for three straight years, then jumped by roughly three million in 1937, most of it after the U.A.W. organized General Motors.
Another expansion on this scale is unlikely given changes in the economy, including the shift away from manufacturing as a source of jobs. But Michael Lotito, a lawyer at Littler Mendelson, which represents employers, said the past few years had produced “a lot of kindling” that could make it easier for a fire of sorts to spread.
Citing workers’ frustrations over the pandemic and return-to-office policies, which they have amplified on social media, he said that “from a management perspective, it’s of concern.”
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