The UAW will try again to organize workers at a factory in Tennessee. It’s the latest in the union’s attempts to cover more workers at a foreign transplant.
Some hourly employees at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant are seeking a vote to form a UAW bargaining unit. It would cover more than 17-hundred workers. The UAW lost an organizing vote in 2014 by a small margin. In 2015 skilled trades workers at Chattanooga voted to join the UAW. UAW Local 42 in Chattanooga hopes to hold the election late in April.
The UAW won an organizing vote at the VW plant in Pennsylvania in the late 70’s, but the plant closed. A Mitsubishi plant in Illinois recognized the UAW, But that closed, too. Other factories in the southern auto belt are non-union.