United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain expects to unionize at least one nonunion plant this year, possibly more.
In fact, in the next week or so, Fain told the Detroit Free Press, the union will announce other nonunion automaker plants where 30% and 50% of the workers have signed cards to unionize. It already has reached the 30% level at Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai plants in Alabama and 50% at Volkswagen Chattanooga in Tennessee.
Fain said all he needs is one plant where 70% of the workers have signed cards, then take it to a vote and win. That would provide the momentum to win more, he said. But unionizing auto plants in the South has been a daunting challenge. Fain said if the union doesn’t get a win, don’t count him out.
“Anything worthwhile, it’s worth the work,” Fain said in a telephone interview Thursday. “I believe we’ll see success in the near term and I think we’ll see a victory in the near term. But we’re in this for the long haul. We’re not going to walk away from this. This is our mission. This isn’t about the UAW, it’s not about me. It’s about the working class people and getting their fair share for the product they produce.”
Fain and the UAW are in a key moment. The union is riding high after big contract wins against the Detroit Three automakers last fall as well as a swell in labor activism and public support for unions in the past year.
According to the Labor Action Tracker, a collaboration between Cornell University’s Industrial Labor Relations School and the University of Illinois’ Labor and Employment Relations School, labor activism has steadily risen in recent years. The number of work stoppages last year increased by 9% to 470 strikes compared with 433 strikes in 2022. The database showed that high-profile strikes, which includes the SAG-AFTRA strike and the UAW’s Stand-Up Strike, composed about 350,000 of the 539,000 striking workers last year.
“We haven’t seen — in many years, really decades — as favorable an environment related to unions and as positive an image related to unions that we’re seeing right now,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert and professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley. “All of that coming together is favorable for the UAW. But favorable and success (in organizing) are not the same thing. Still, this is the moment.”
Thousands motivated? To be determined.
The union launched its effort to organize nonunion automakers last November after it achieved what is widely considered a record contract win amid a historic targeted strike strategy against Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis — the owner of Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat. The new contracts with the Detroit automakers included substantial wage gains and a return of some concessions made in past bargaining, such as cost-of-living adjustments.
Fain said the contracts motivated thousands of nonunion autoworkers.
“We were literally getting cards turned in when we were on our strike,” he said. “Workers were finding an old sign-up sheet we had from 2017 online and workers were sending cards in from multiple different companies. I think that’s a great sign at how eager they are to get their fair share.”
Now the UAW has a webpage UAW.org/join where nonunion employees can sign cards to unionize. The drive covers nearly 150,000 autoworkers across 13 automakers including electric carmakers Tesla and Rivian.
The union has other backing too, including a group of 33 U.S. senators who sent letters to CEOs of nonunion automakers last month urging them not to interfere in organizing efforts. That came after the union filed unfair labor practice charges in January against Honda in Indiana, Hyundai in Alabama and Volkswagen in Tennessee — accusing each of “illegally union-busting as workers organize to join the UAW.” Fain accompanied a delegation of VW workers and community and faith leaders last month as they delivered a letter to management.
In reaction to the UAW’s charges against the automaker, spokespeople for the targeted automakers refuted claims of union-busting and said the companies support workers’ rights.
The turbulent history at VW
So far VW has the most workers signed up. Earlier this month the UAW said half of the nearly 4,000 employees at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant signed cards. At the end of January, the union said more than 10,000 autoworkers across the 13 nonunion companies had signed the cards.
Volkswagen Chattanooga hit the 50% milestone within 60 days of the union’s start of the organizing drive. Fain said the union will announce soon other plants that are closing in on 50%.
“We want to organize all of them,” Fain said. “There are organizers everywhere and there are organizing committee people in these plants. We’re tracking and assessing where people are and appointing resources.”
Volkswagen Chattanooga is the German automaker’s only assembly plant in the United States. The UAW has said when 70% of the workforce there has signed cards, an organizing committee made up of plant workers will demand that the company recognize the union. If it does not, the UAW will file the cards with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and take it to a plant vote.
The speed of getting to 50% at VW Chattanooga signals to some labor experts that the UAW may succeed there first. But it won’t be easy.
“This is an important moment. There are factors aligning to help the union from the labor market to favorable rulings by the NLRB to public opinion of the union,” said Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations and director of the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University. “When that happens, the company’s resistance increases. With any sort of rise in power, comes the rise in resistance.”
‘Companies are afraid’
Fain is aware of that resistance. The biggest challenge he faces, he said, is company pressure when trying to unionize new factories.
“Companies are afraid of workers actually having a say in their workplace and being treated with dignity. We’re seeing the companies respond,” Fain said. “The companies are always trying to spin this narrative that they don’t want unions intimidating workers.”
Fain said the companies are the ones intimidating workers with “closed-door meetings, lying to them by putting out misinformation and threatening to close the plant” if they organize.
“We’ve got to stop being afraid of these companies,” Fain said. “We’re not going to change anything unless we stand up and fight for what’s ours.”
Still, the UAW has a history of trying — and failing — to organize Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant. The first union vote there was in 2014 and the union felt confident a clear majority of the workers favored the union, Shaiken told the Detroit Free Press previously. But the Republican leadership in Tennessee mounted a major campaign to vote no and it succeeded.
In 2019, the UAW again narrowly lost the vote to unionize at that plant, Shaiken said.
Alabama workers show interest
Last month, Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama went public with a campaign to join the union after 30% of the workforce signed cards. Organizers there listed workers’ concerns over stalled pay and benefits at the plant as reasons to unionize. The plant in Tuscaloosa, which was founded in 1995, produces a half-dozen Mercedes-Benz models, including the GLE and GLS SUVs, and has 6,300 employees, according to the company.
On Feb. 1, the UAW said 30% of workers at Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama had signed cards. Workers quoted in a release cited concerns about pay and the toll the work had on their health as reasons to organize. Hyundai builds its Tuscon, Santa Fe SUV, Santa Cruz sporty pickup, and gas and electric versions of Genesis GV570 at the plant, according to the company website www.hmmausa.com. It employs about 4,000 people, the company fact sheet said.
Fain said the union is inching closer to 50% at Mercedes-Benz and “moving along nicely” at Hyundai in terms of getting more cards signed.
“They’re on the rise. I don’t want to get into the numbers yet, but I believe we’ll be at 50% very shortly at one of those,” Fain said. “We have another (automaker) approaching 30%.”
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They said it couldn’t be done
Since becoming UAW president earlier last year, Fain said, he heard he could never regain a cost-of-living adjustment or be able to bargain for retirees. He did both.
“I’ve been told a lot of things we can’t do and we’ve done all those things,” Fain said. “I 100% believe we can win in the South. The workers in the South are no different than the workers in the North or anywhere else in this world. They’re fed up with the massive inequality in this world and being left behind. The only way they’re going to change that is by organizing. Without a union you have no rights.”
Fain also believes the union will get these plants to a vote “quicker than people think” because workers are not fooled by the “UAW bump” raise some carmakers gave last year. Shortly after the UAW won wage gains of 25% across 4½-year contracts with the Detroit automakers, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and Volkswagen all offered raises of 9% to 14% to their U.S. workforces. It’s been reported by CNBC that even Tesla was planning a 10% raise for some employees.
The UAW has “boots on the ground” engaging with workers at the nonunion plants daily, he said.
‘We’re going to hold rallies and different things. There’s different milestones that we have,” Fain said. “I’ll do visits and speak with workers. At the end of the day, it’s the organizing committees on the ground and the people we send in there working together and community groups working with us because they want to see better for workers in their communities.”
And there is the success of last fall.
“We would be foolish not to tell Volkswagen workers, ‘If you had the Ford agreement, you’d get a $23,000 profit-sharing check this year. But instead you’re getting zero,’ ” Fain said. “That’s a pretty strong statement.”
Success so far
UAW membership is far below its 1979 peak of 1.5 million. The union currently counts almost 400,000 active members and 580,000 retired members. But the UAW has had a recent organizing win in the auto industry.
On Jan. 30, nearly 400 workers at Antolin Interiors USA in Howell voted to join UAW Local 163, Region 1A, the union said in a statement. Antolin Interiors makes instrument panels and door panels for Ford, GM, Stellantis, and PACCAR Engine Company. The workforce there launched the organizing drive last October, “after years of disrespect and unacceptable working conditions,” the UAW said.
Antolin workers voted to join the UAW “to be on common ground, to work together rather than against each other, and to gain more respect,” said Jarrod Yost, a shipping and receiving worker at Antolin, in a UAW-issued statement.
Antolin did not respond to a request for comment.
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More wins like that would be a “massive shift” for the union, Fain said. Labor experts say it would be more monumental than that, it would ring a bell across the economy.
“If he succeeds, it will be transformative for the UAW,” Shaiken said. “Just a victory at VW, which is the most likely at this point, sets a standard that the transplants can be organized and that will redefine conventional wisdom and open up continuing possibilities elsewhere — in the auto industry, but in other industries as well.”
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: UAW Fain expects to unionize at least 1 nonunion plant in 2024
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