Labor scored a huge victory yesterday in Tennessee.

Hourly workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelming voted to join the United Auto Workers late Friday, a major breakthrough in the union’s effort to organize workers at plants nationwide.

Shortly after 11 pm ET on Friday the National Labor Relations Board, the federal body that oversees such votes, announced that 73% of the 3,600 workers at the plant who cast ballots had voted in favor of joining the union. There was an 84% turnout among eligible voters.

“This election is big,” said Kelcey Smith, a worker in the paint department at Volkswagen, in a UAW statement. “This is the time; this is the place. Southern workers are ready to stand up and win a better life.”

There are roughly 150,000 workers at nonunion auto plants in the United States today, roughly the same number as at the American plants of the three unionized automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Next up is Mercedes Benz, which will likely be a tougher fight.

The Mercedes plant vote, scheduled for mid-May, is expected to be a tougher fight than at VW, which took a neutral position in the vote.

Mercedes has said it respects workers' right to organize and wants them to make an informed decision. But in a letter to employees in January, it said that the union organizers "cannot guarantee you anything" and that some workers had said no to unionization because of Mercedes' competitive pay and benefits."Mercedes is running a much more aggressive anti-union campaign than Volkswagen within the plant," said John Logan, labor professor at San Francisco State University.

After that it will likely be Hyundai, also in Alabama, and Dailmer trucks.
Labor unions are the one place where Biden and the Democrats can draw a stark and obvious difference with Trump and Republicans.

You had Nikki Haley out there saying, as governor, “If you’re union, you’re not welcome in South Carolina.” They’re trying to pass [new anti-union] laws. They did it in Tennessee, they’re trying to do it in Georgia now, where if a company agrees to card-check authorization for unions, the company won’t get any funding from the state. They try to say that [getting workers to sign union cards] is the union strong-arming members. The union doesn’t strong-arm anybody into signing a union card. That’s a personal decision somebody makes.

Six Republican governors have publicly banded together to try to crush any union organizing attempt in their states.

Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas issued their statement in response to "the largest organizing drive in modern American history," which the UAW launched after major contract wins following a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—last year.

"As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by," the Republican leaders said, claiming that "unionization would certainly put our states' jobs in jeopardy" and the UAW is "making big promises to our constituents that they can't deliver on."

"We have serious reservations that the UAW leadership can represent our values. They proudly call themselves democratic socialists and seem more focused on helping President [Joe] Biden get reelected than on the autoworker jobs being cut at plants they already represent," the governors added, nodding to the union's January endorsement of the Democrat—UAW president Shawn Fain also called the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, a "scab."