This week in North Philly Notes, Abe Walker, author of Reassembling the UAW, writes about the Volkswagen workers’ vote on tenative contract agreement.
After over 500 days of tense negotiations, workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga Assembly Plant are voting this week on a proposed contract agreement. Results are expected by tonight. If ratified, the deal would be the United Auto Workers’ first contract at a major foreign-owned automotive plant. My new book, Reassembling the UAW: Insurgency, Contention, and the Struggle for Unionism in the American South, chronicles the decade-long, hard-fought organizing campaign that led to this moment and offers a tentative prognosis for the future.
For as long as most autoworkers can remember, the story of the UAW has been one of managed decline. As deindustrialization and economic restructuring eroded its Midwestern base, it struggled to make inroads at the new crop of European and Japanese “transplants” that dotted the I-75 corridor south of Ohio. Politicians were eager to sell the South as a low-wage haven for foreign investment and fought back savagely against anyone who dared to challenge their business model, pushing the lie that Southern culture is uniquely hostile to unions. They portrayed the UAW as a job killer that would drive away industry and turn Southern boomtowns into post-industrial wastelands. Meanwhile, the union settled into a pattern of concessionary contracts that did little to attract prospective members.
But in April 2024, the UAW broke its losing streak when workers at a VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to authorize the UAW as their exclusive bargaining agent. As my book explains, the pivotal factor was the resurgence of rank-and-file militancy. Following a corruption scandal that engulfed the union’s top leadership and led to the imprisonment of two former presidents, workers ousted the old guard and installed a slate of reformers. The new leaders struck a combative tone and committed to reversing decades of givebacks. As importantly, the reform caucus resolved to maintain its independence to keep its new leaders honest. Within months, the newly emboldened organization had gone on strike against Detroit’s Big Three auto companies. The resulting contract included historic gains that demonstrated the power of collective action, injected the membership with new energy, and rebuilt the union’s image on a national stage.
Another contributing factor was the transition to electric vehicles. In previous decades, the threat of capital flight was the ultimate weapon in employers’ arsenal. Politicians could credibly argue that companies would move production if the union won. By 2024, this threat had been neutralized, as VW had already invested billions in retrofitting the Chattanooga plant to produce the ID.4 SUV. Together with the Biden administration’s incentive programs, this massive investment in fixed capital effectively anchored the company in place.
Building on momentum from the Big Three strike and buffeted by external market forces, VW workers entered contract negotiations in 2024 with high expectations. If the union’s boldest proclamations were to be believed, after bringing VW to parity with the Big Three, it would parlay its victory across other transplants and take wages out of competition.
But even as the union set its sights on bigger prizes, the tide had already begun to shift. Within weeks of the win at VW, the union was dealt a stinging loss at a Mercedes plant in Alabama. The rank-and-file caucus that helped elect the UAW’s reform slate collapsed amidst infighting, and the Trump administration turned aggressively against electric vehicles.
Back in Chattanooga, VW dug in its heels, and negotiations stalled out. History shows that winning an election is only half the battle; employers often use the negotiation phase to delay, demoralize, and eventually decertify the union. In the intervening years, not only did the UAW fail to organize additional transplants, but it couldn’t even plant its flag at Ford’s own BlueOval.
My book went to production at the end of 2024, and it reflects a certain optimism that has since dissipated. As I note in the Conclusion, the VW victory was highly contingent and dependent on an unlikely confluence of factors. Powerful interests are deeply invested in maintaining the regional wage differential that has long characterized the American auto industry. As the Mercedes defeat and the ongoing contract fight at VW demonstrate, the forces of capital—and the political machinery of the South—remain formidable adversaries. Their entire economic development model is built on the promise of cheap labor. Dismantling that system will be a long fight, and nobody had any illusions that it would disintegrate after a single victory.
The proposed contract is a mixed bag. It doesn’t achieve full wage parity, contains loose language on plant closure, and lacks strong healthcare provisions. Perhaps the greatest disappointment is that the UAW was unable to align the expiration date with the Big Three, whose contracts are set to expire on May 1, 2028. Grouping VW with the other manufacturers would have had both practical value and symbolic meaning.
For now, the UAW’s future in the South remains indeterminate. It has successfully established a beachhead, but the win at VW looks increasingly like a one-off fluke. It remains to be seen whether the UAW can revive the energy and enthusiasm it enjoyed two years ago, or if it will revert to bureaucratic stasis.
No matter what the future holds, the UAW has already demonstrated that Southern workers’ supposed aversion to organized labor has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with a lack of exposure to a fighting union. Any serious student of history will reach the same conclusion. Textile workers in the Carolina Piedmont pioneered the flying pickets that the UAW would later make famous. Indeed, as recently as 1950, Chattanooga had a unionization rate that rivaled Boston’s. Unions are as native to East Tennessee as moonshine. But ultimately, “reassembling the UAW” is not about dredging up the past or restoring a forgotten mid-century form, but creating a new entity capable of navigating the complexities of the 21st-century global economy. If there is a lesson to be gleaned from history, it is that the UAW can only achieve what was previously deemed impossible by reinventing itself on the fly
Filed under: american studies, economics/business, History, Labor Studies, sociology, Urban Studies | Tagged: automotive plant, autoworkers, business, contract, history, jobs, labor, news, politics, rank-and-file workers, UAW, unions, Volkswagon, vote | Leave a comment »
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