United Automobile Workers

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Could the Union Victory at VW Set Off a Wave?

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Some experts say the outcome at a plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., may be organized labor’s most significant advance in decades. But the road could get rockier.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.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    VW Workers in Tennessee Vote for Union

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    The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga is set to become the first unionized auto factory in the South not owned by one of Detroit’s Big Three.In a landmark victory for organized labor, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee have voted overwhelmingly to join the United Automobile Workers union, becoming the first nonunion auto plant in a Southern state to do so.The company said in a statement late Friday that the union had won 2,628 votes, with 985 opposed, in a three-day election. Two earlier bids by the U.A.W. to organize the Chattanooga factory over the last 10 years were narrowly defeated.The outcome is a breakthrough for the labor movement in a region where anti-union sentiment has been strong for decades. And it comes six months after the U.A.W. won record wage gains and improved benefits in negotiations with the Detroit automakers.The U.A.W. has for more than 80 years represented workers employed by General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the producer of Chrysler, Jeep, Ram and Dodge vehicles, and has organized some heavy-truck and bus factories in the South.But the union had failed in previous attempts to organize any of the two dozen automobile factories owned by other companies across an area stretching from South Carolina to Texas and as far north as Ohio and Indiana.With the victory in Chattanooga, the U.A.W. will turn its focus to other Southern plants. A vote will take place in mid-May at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., near Tuscaloosa. The U.A.W. is hoping to organize a half-dozen or more plants over the next two years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    VW Workers in Tennessee Start Vote on U.A.W., Testing Union Ambitions

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    The United Automobile Workers hopes contract gains at the Big Three carmakers will provide momentum in a broad effort to organize nonunion plants.Last fall the United Automobile Workers union won big pay increases from the Detroit automakers, and the impact rippled quickly through the nonunion auto plants scattered across the South.Afterward, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Nissan, Hyundai and Tesla raised wages for their own hourly workers in the United States, none of whom are unionized. On production lines in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and elsewhere, those pay increases have been referred to as the “U.A.W. bump.”Now 4,300 workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., will test whether the union can achieve an even greater bump. On Wednesday, they begin voting on whether to join the U.A.W., and the prospects of a union victory appear high. About 70 percent of the workers pledged to vote yes before the union asked for a vote, according to the U.A.W.“I think our chances are excellent,” said Kelcey Smith, 48, who has worked in the VW plant’s paint department for a year and is a member of a committee working to build support for the U.A.W. “The energy is high. I think we are going to nail it.”Volkswagen has presented reasons it believes a union is not needed at the plant, including pay that is above average for the Chattanooga region. But it has also said it encourages all workers to vote in the election, which is to conclude on Friday, and decide for themselves. “No one will lose their job for voting for or against the union,” a company spokesman said.The stakes go beyond the Tennessee plant, Volkswagen’s only U.S. factory. A victory there would add fuel to the U.A.W.’s push to extend its presence to the more than two dozen nonunion auto plants in the United States, mostly clustered in Southern states where union resistance has been strong historically, and where right-to-work laws make it hard for unions to organize workers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Mercedes-Benz Workers in Alabama Ask for Unionization Vote

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    The United Automobile Workers union is mounting its most ambitious effort to gain an industry foothold beyond Detroit’s Big Three.Workers at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Alabama have petitioned federal officials to hold a vote on whether to join the United Automobile Workers, the union said on Friday, a step forward for its drive to organize workers at car factories in the South.The union is trying to build on the momentum from the contracts it won last year at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, which gave workers at the three Detroit carmakers their biggest raises in decades.The U.A.W. is also trying to organize workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee and a Hyundai factory in Alabama, establishing a bigger presence in states that have drawn much of the new investment in automobile manufacturing in recent decades. A vote at the Volkswagen plant is scheduled for April 17 to 19.The drive has taken on added importance as Southern states like South Carolina and Georgia attract billions of dollars in investment in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing. The U.A.W. is trying to ensure that jobs created by electric vehicles do not pay less than jobs at traditional auto factories.A large majority of workers at the Mercedes plant, near Tuscaloosa, had earlier signed cards expressing support for a vote. On Friday they formally petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election on whether to be represented by the U.A.W., the union said.Mercedes, which makes luxury sport utility vehicles in Alabama, said in a statement that it “fully respects our team members’ choice whether to unionize” and that it would ensure that workers had “access to the information necessary to make an informed choice.”Southern states have traditionally been difficult territory for unions, in some cases because of legislation unfavorable to organized labor or because elected officials openly campaigned against unions. The lack of a strong union presence is probably one reason the region has attracted a big share of auto industry investment.Attempts in 2014 and 2019 to organize Volkswagen’s factory in Chattanooga, where the German company makes the Atlas sport utility vehicle and ID.4 electric S.U.V., failed in part because of opposition from Republican elected officials in Tennessee.Toyota, Volkswagen and other carmakers raised hourly wages after the union won pay increases for Ford, G.M. and Stellantis workers. Still, the nonunion workers tend to earn less. In many cases, pay is less of an issue than work schedules, health benefits and time off.In a video on Friday, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said workers were fighting for “work-life balance, good health care you can afford, a better life for your family.”The union has complained to the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes has retaliated against organizers in Alabama. The carmaker denied the accusations, saying it “has not interfered with or retaliated against any team member in their right to pursue union representation.” More

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    After Gains at Big Three, U.A.W. Aims at Nonunion Plants

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    A looming union election at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga could determine the trajectory of union organizing at more than a dozen auto factories.When Shawn Fain, the United Automobile Workers president, unveiled the deal that ended six weeks of strikes at Ford Motor in the fall, he framed it as part of a longer campaign. Next, he declared, would be the task of organizing nonunion plants across the country.“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” he said at the time. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”Four months later, the first test of that strategy has come into focus, and it features a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.According to the union, more than half of over 4,000 eligible workers have signed cards indicating support for a union. Workers say they have done so because they want higher pay, more paid time off and more generous health benefits — and because the recent strikes at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis persuaded them that a union can help win these concessions.“The Big Three, they had their big campaign, and their big strike and vote, and new contracts — we paid attention to that very closely,” said Yolanda Peoples, who has worked at the Volkswagen plant for nearly 13 years.The Volkswagen plant announced an 11 percent pay increase shortly after the strikes at the Big Three. The raise brought the top hourly wage for production workers to $32.40, but the comparable wage for the Detroit automakers will exceed $40 by the end of the new contracts. (Volkswagen said the wage adjustment was part of a yearly review.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For Michigan’s Economy, Electric Vehicles Are Promising and Scary

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    Last fall, Tiffanie Simmons, a second-generation autoworker, endured a six-week strike at the Ford Motor factory just west of Detroit where she builds Bronco S.U.V.s. That yielded a pay raise of 25 percent over the next four years, easing the pain of reductions that she and other union workers swallowed more than a decade ago.But as Ms. Simmons, 38, contemplates prospects for the American auto industry in the state that invented it, she worries about a new force: the shift toward electric vehicles. She is dismayed that the transition has been championed by President Biden, whose pro-labor credentials are at the heart of his bid for re-election, and who recently gained the endorsement of her union, the United Automobile Workers.The Biden administration has embraced electric vehicles as a means of generating high-paying jobs while cutting emissions. It has dispensed tax credits to encourage consumers to buy electric cars, while limiting the benefits to models that use American-made parts.But autoworkers fixate on the assumption that electric cars — simpler machines than their gas-powered forebears — will require fewer hands to build. They accuse Mr. Biden of jeopardizing their livelihoods.“I was disappointed,” Ms. Simmons said of the president. “We trust you to make sure that Americans are employed.”Tiffanie Simmons works in Wayne, Mich., at a Ford Motor factory that builds Broncos.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesMs. Simmons’s union has endorsed President Biden, but “I was disappointed” in him, she said.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.A.W. Announces Drive to Organize Nonunion Plants

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    The United Automobile Workers’ effort, with a long-elusive goal, follows its success in securing big raises in contracts with the Detroit automakers.The United Automobile Workers union announced Wednesday that it was undertaking an ambitious drive to organize plants owned by more than a dozen nonunion automakers, including Tesla and several foreign companies — a goal that has long eluded it.The move comes weeks after the U.A.W. won new contracts from General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis that included wage increases of 25 percent or more over four and a half years for its 146,000 members employed there.In addition to Tesla, the targets of the drive are two other electric vehicle start-ups, Lucid and Rivian, and 10 foreign-owned automakers: Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda and Volvo.The U.S. plants owned by those companies employ nearly 150,000 workers in 13 states, the union said.If the organizing drive gains momentum, it could become one of the largest by the U.A.W. since its infancy in the 1930s. The union’s past efforts to organize even single plants owned by the foreign automakers, concentrated in the South, came to nought. A foothold among those companies would signal a big shift in the American auto industry, where nonunion manufacturers have long had a significant cost advantage over the Detroit automakers.The union said the organizing drive had been prompted by inquiries from several thousand workers at nonunion plants.“Workers across the country, from the West to the Midwest and especially in the South, are reaching out to join our movement and to join the U.A.W.,” the union’s president, Shawn Fain, said in a video posted on Facebook. “The money is there. The time is right.”A Honda statement cited the automaker’s “competitive wages and benefits,” adding, “We do not believe an outside party would enhance the excellent employment experience of our associates.” Subaru did not comment directly on the union drive but referred to a series of wage increases and a comprehensive benefits package.At the DealBook conference sponsored by The New York Times on Wednesday, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said, “If Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.” He reiterated his opposition to unions, saying that “it’s not good to have an adversarial relationship” between groups within a company.Rivian and Volkswagen said they had no comment. The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.On Wednesday, the U.A.W. activated websites where workers can electronically sign cards that serve as an official certification of their desire to have union representation. Earlier, at a handful of plants, the U.A.W. had already received signed cards from more than 30 percent of the work force, the threshold required under federal law for the union to move forward with a vote on unionization, a person familiar with the matter said.The union is now working to send organizers to areas around these nonunion plants to collaborate with workers at those factories, this person said.After the U.A.W. reached agreements with the Detroit automakers to raise wages, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai announced that they, too, would increase workers’ pay.Toyota has told workers that it will raise hourly rates 9 percent in January. Honda will lift wages 11 percent and Hyundai 14 percent next year. Hyundai plans to increase wages 25 percent by 2028.The U.A.W. said Wednesday that it was making a concerted effort to organize a large Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky., that employs about 7,800 workers and produces the Camry sedan and RAV4 sport utility vehicle.U.A.W. members have long earned more than nonunion workers. At plants in the South, wages tend to start below $20 an hour and top out at less than $30. The top U.A.W. hourly wage, previously $32, climbed to more than $40 in the contracts the union signed with the three Detroit manufacturers.The U.A.W. has fallen short twice in the past decade — by narrow margins, in 2014 and 2019 — in unionization votes at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. The U.A.W. lost by a substantial margin at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., in 2017. Organizing efforts at other companies’ plants have petered out before coming to a vote.But after Mr. Fain became the union’s president this year, the union promised a more aggressive approach to its contract talks with the Big Three and vowed to renew efforts to widen its reach in the industry.In addition to wage gains at the Detroit companies, the U.A.W. won agreements to preserve jobs and to keep open a Stellantis plant in Illinois that had been slated to close.Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said the U.A.W.’s wage gains created a stronger case for joining the union.“It shows collective bargaining works and shows the U.A.W. was successful,” he said. “They can say: ‘We saved this plant. Look at what we got. You can have this, too.’”Past organizing drives were hurt because the U.A.W. had a tarnished image, Mr. Wheaton added: Many unionized plants had closed, its members had been required to accept wage and benefit cuts to help the Detroit manufacturers survive the 2009 financial crisis, and federal corruption investigations had implicated senior union officials.“A lot of the negative things about the union — a lot of that stuff has gone away now,” Mr. Wheaton said.Santul Nerkar More

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    Ford Resumes Work on E.V. Battery Plant in Michigan, at Reduced Scale

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    A battery plant in Michigan will be smaller than planned, Ford said, citing slower E.V. demand than expected, as well as labor costs.Ford Motor said Tuesday that it was resuming work on an electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan but significantly scaling back its plans in part because of slow E.V. adoption in the United States.A company spokesman said that Ford now expected the plant in Marshall, Mich., to create 1,700 jobs rather than 2,500, but that it still expected production to begin in 2026.Demand for electric vehicles is “not growing at the rate that we originally expected,” said the Ford spokesman, T.R. Reid. In the most recent quarter, large auto companies like Ford reported that E.V. sales had increased, but not at a rate sufficient to keep up with the Biden administration’s ambitious goals.The plant was originally planned to produce 35 gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries annually, which Ford estimated was enough to equip about 400,000 vehicles. Now, the plant will produce 20 gigawatt hours annually, enough for roughly 230,000 vehicles, or a 42.8 percent cut.Ford did not specify exactly how much money it would be pulling back from the project, but said it would be roughly equivalent to its reduction in output. If the 42.8 percent cut in output was applied to its investment, it would represent a $1.5 billion reduction in the initially announced investment of $3.5 billion.Ford said in September that it was suspending construction because of concerns that it would not be able to manufacture products at a competitive price. At the time, the company was in the middle of contentious negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union.Rising labor costs were also a factor in Ford’s decision to scale back its plans for the factory, Mr. Reid said. Ford’s contract agreement with the U.A.W., which has been ratified by union members, raises the top wage for production workers by 25 percent.The agreement will allow U.A.W. members to be transferred to battery and electric-vehicle plants under construction, like the one in Marshall. If workers there choose to unionize, they will be protected under the U.A.W.’s contract.The U.A.W. hopes to keep its membership rates up amid the transition to electric vehicles, but the automakers have pushed back, arguing that it puts them at a disadvantage compared with their nonunionized competitors.The U.A.W. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Ford has also faced criticism from conservative lawmakers over its plan to license technology from CATL, a Chinese battery maker. Lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, or LFP, are not currently produced in the United States. Some U.S. electric automakers, such as Tesla, import LFP batteries from China.It is not clear whether U.S. companies that license technology from other countries will qualify for government incentives to promote the shift from fossil fuels. Mr. Reid said Ford was “confident about the technology licensing agreement for this plant.” More

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    U.A.W. Members at General Motors Ratify Contract

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    The United Automobile Workers union hopes the agreements with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis will help it make inroads at other companies.Members of the United Automobile Workers union have given their backing to new contracts with the three big U.S. automakers, agreements that deliver hefty wage increases and other gains that had eluded the union for more than 20 years.In the most closely contested vote, the tentative contract agreement at General Motors won the support of 55 percent of the nearly 36,000 members casting ballots, according to a tally from all the G.M. locals that the union posted on Thursday.Tentative agreements with Ford Motor and Stellantis, the maker of brands including Jeep and Chrysler, appeared headed for approval by more decisive margins, nearly complete results there showed.A spokesman for the union confirmed the accuracy of the tallies but declined to comment further.The agreements are similar across the three automakers and raise the top wage for production workers 25 percent, to more than $40 over four and a half years, from $32. They were reached last month after a six-week wave of strikes that hobbled the companies — a strategy spearheaded by the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, who had vowed to take a more adversarial approach to negotiations than his predecessors.Workers leaving the Ford Chicago Assembly Plant on Thursday.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe agreements appear to have quickly reverberated across the auto industry, with Toyota, Hyundai and Honda announcing significant wage increase at nonunion plants in the United States only days later.“We call that the U.A.W. bump, and that stands for ‘U Are Welcome,’” Mr. Fain said in testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this week. “And we’re very proud of that. And when these workers decide to organize and join the U.A.W., they’re going to realize the full benefit of union membership and get what they’re fully due.”The new contracts also included larger company contributions to workers’ retirement plans and the right to strike over plant closures. All three automakers declined to comment on the ratification votes.Mr. Fain said the union was seeking to capitalize on its momentum by waging muscular organizing campaigns at nonunion plants, and, in remarks submitted to the Senate committee, he added that thousands of workers were already contacting the union and signing union cards.But even Mr. Fain’s tough approach in the talks with the Big Three did not yield terms attractive enough to many union members. G.M. workers at several large plants voted against the tentative agreement by large margins.In contrast, members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters recently approved a new contract at United Parcel Service with 86 percent support, while a new contract between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios passed with 99 percent support.Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University, said Mr. Fain had achieved a major victory despite having taken office only a few months earlier with a goal of reorienting the union.Huey Harris, at the G.M. plant in Flint, said he had voted in favor of the contract despite his belief that it didn’t offer veteran workers like him enough gains.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesDr. Givan said the union’s approach of initially striking at one plant at each of the three automakers and ramping up over time had “really upended a lot of conventional wisdom” in the labor movement and had proved unusually successful at reversing some concessions that the union had accepted years earlier, like the suspension of a cost-of-living adjustment.“This shows that if workers build enough power, they can win things back,” she said.U.A.W. members at Mack Truck also ratified a contract on Wednesday, after rejecting an initial agreement with the company.Across the three automakers, skepticism toward the agreements arose in large part from veteran workers who felt that the proposed contracts did not go far enough to compensate them for years of concessions and weak wage growth, even given strong gains for newer workers. Wages for some newer workers will more than double over the next four years.Huey Harris, a G.M. employee at a large truck assembly plant in Flint, Mich., who has worked at the company for over 20 years, said the deal should have gone further in rewarding veteran workers, though he ultimately voted for it. “The traditional people didn’t think they were offered enough in the contract,” he said.Curtis March, who works at Ford’s Chicago plant and made the inflation-adjusted equivalent of more than $40 an hour in the early 1990s, will make about $36 in the first year of the new contract, he said.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesSeveral longtime employees of the Big Three automakers said that even after the large gains of the new contract, they would not be making more than when they started their careers.Curtis March, who works at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant, said he made about $18 an hour once he reached the top wage for production workers at the company in the early 1990s, equivalent to more than $40 today when adjusted for inflation. He will make about $36 in the first year of the new contract.Mr. March said the deal was likely to pass at Ford because it placated more recent employees, who outnumber veterans like him. Workers at his plant approved the deal after voting against several previous contracts.Despite the ultimate success, the path to ratifying the contracts has included some internal strains for Mr. Fain and the union. Unite All Workers for Democracy, a reform group that played a key role in electing Mr. Fain and six other members of the U.A.W. executive board to their positions, declined to formally recommend that union members approve the contract even after Mr. Fain urged the group to do so at a recent meeting, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Instead, Unite All Workers passed a resolution committing it to stay neutral during the ratification vote, though it stated that the group “celebrates the record gains made in this agreement.”Two of these people also said the union’s General Motors department had been less communicative and less proactive in distributing information about the contract to local union officials and members than the Ford and Stellantis departments.The union declined to comment on these developments.LaDonna Newman, a longtime Ford worker, said about the U.A.W.’s president, Shawn Fain, “I give him a lot of kudos for having the courage to go against the corporations.”Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesRatification could also bring political benefits to President Biden, who waded into the negotiations over the summer and fall, and who risked angering business leaders by increasingly siding with the union’s members.Administration officials were taken aback in August when Mr. Fain called for a 40 percent raise for autoworkers and a four-day workweek. Executives at the Big Three called the White House to ask if Mr. Fain was serious. A senior administration official said Biden aides had reassured them that the union wanted a deal, but acknowledged that the negotiations could go quite differently from the way the automakers were used to.In mid-September, when Mr. Biden was in New York for meetings at the United Nations General Assembly, he joined aides on a video call to make a decision that he and his team had been building toward for weeks: to join autoworkers on a picket line in Detroit. That decision infuriated executives, the administration official said, but the White House saw it as a victory for the president and for workers, by making a clear statement about where Mr. Biden stood in the negotiations.Some autoworkers argued that the union had erred by failing to expand the strike, which eventually included about one-third of the companies’ unionized workers in the United States, even more.LaDonna Newman, another longtime Ford worker who opposed the contract because of its limited gains for veteran workers, said she believed the union could have won more at the bargaining table had it been willing to escalate further.Still, she did not blame Mr. Fain for the outcome. “He walked into a burning building,” Ms. Newman said. “I give him a lot of kudos for having the courage to go against the corporations.”Jim Tankersley More