After decades of failed attempts, the United Auto Workers on Dec. 4 won its first union election at a foreign-owned auto plant in the southern United States. 

Roughly 71 percent of the 164 skilled-trades workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the union. The workers represent about 11 percent of the plant’s 1,450 hourly employees.

Volkswagen has said it will appeal to the National Labor Relations Board.

If the union victory is upheld, the workers will become the first auto workers at a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the South to win collective-bargaining rights.

The union narrowly lost a 2014 election to represent the plant’s entire hourly workforce after outside interference from anti-union groups and Republican Sen. Bob Corker, whose hometown is Chattanooga.

Gary Casteel, the United Auto Workers’ secretary-treasurer and head of organizing, said the union commands a narrow majority of support among hourly workers at the plant but did not pursue a vote by all hourly workers because of concern they would face “the same outside pressure that we faced last time.”

Labor Notes, Dec. 5

Reuters, Dec. 4