If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Of course, Frank Sinatra sang this line about New York, the city that never sleeps: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere!” But there are other places in the world that tell you that once you’ve made it there, you can achieve your goals pretty much anywhere. In states in the southwest of the USA, for example, it is said that most residents do not think much of the legislature or anyone else interfering too much in their affairs. When there are too many rules. When employees join unions. No wonder, then, that Shawn Fain says of the workers’ vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee: “If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.”
Fain is president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), a union that VW employees at the Chattanooga plant now want to join. 2,628 voted in favor of joining, which is almost three quarters. It is the first time this has happened at a car factory in the US states of Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina. Their governors, all Republicans, had urged employees in a joint statement to vote against it: “We want to keep well-paying jobs and continue to expand the auto sector here.” The UAW’s initiative was characterized by “misinformation and fear-mongering”: “Success would halt growth to the detriment of American workers.”
US President Joe Biden, on the other hand, had campaigned for membership, and after the vote he said: “The unions’ successes have caused wages to grow and shown that America was built and is supported by the middle class.”
Why is this vote so important that Daniela Cavallo, president of the global works council at Volkswagen, says of the employees at the VW plant in Chattanooga that they have “written a piece of American union history”?
In the USA there is no company co-determination
On the one hand, this is because there is no company co-determination in the USA as there is in Germany. Only a union can conclude collective agreements; Without their representation, every employee has to negotiate themselves. It is also due to federalism in the USA: California, for example, is considered innovation-friendly, a start-up is founded in Delaware; If you want peace and quiet from legislative interference, go to one of the states in the south or southeast. Tesla, for example, had its headquarters in Fremont, California for a long time, but was officially registered in Delaware; After a judge there declared a billion-dollar package for boss Elon Musk void, the company let its investors vote in June on a move to Texas; The space company SpaceX had already moved Musk from Delaware to Texas in February.
For more than 80 years, UAW has represented employees of the so-called “Big Three”: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the manufacturers of classic US brands such as Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram; Only in the fall did the union celebrate astonishing negotiating successes: hourly wages of up to $40 (at the VW plant in Chattanooga it is $35); five weeks of vacation per year and 19 holidays (workers in Chattanooga previously had to use their annual vacation to get paid when the factory closed in the summer); health insurance, largely paid for by companies; participation in profits via bonuses; Cost of living adjustments, retirement savings and unemployment benefits. Things that are anything but self-evident, especially in the US states in the southeast.
These successes have led to a significant increase in interest among employees in these states in joining the UAW – in recent years the union has twice failed to persuade workers at the Chattanooga plant to join. Now UAW invested around 40 million dollars, with success. “It’s a huge, historic step in the history of our union, but also for our country,” says UAW President Fain: “But it’s only the first step.”
Meaning: UAW has now planted its flag into the soil of the states in the southeast; In mid-May, 6,000 employees at a Mercedes plant in Alabama will vote on joining. At a Hyundai factory in Alabama and a Toyota plant in Missouri, more than 30 percent of employees each voted to join the UAW; the union has not yet requested these elections. “The election in Chattanooga is a sign of the times we live in: Employees are fed up with the fact that in the end no one cares about them,” says Fain: “It’s a message that it’s okay to join unions to merge.”
Next up is Mercedes in Alabama
The success now, as well as the hope for a similar result at the Mercedes plant in Alabama – a few years ago, UAW efforts there failed before the election even came – should send a message to car manufacturers such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Tesla and Hyundai, which could count on lower labor costs and more business-friendly legislation in the southeastern states than its US competitors, which are represented by unions. “It’s a turning point for the entire industry,” says Harley Shaiken, professor at the University of California, Berkeley: “It’s likely to have a ripple effect in this industry, but also in other industries across the country where the majority of workers are still struggling Trade unions are represented.”
In the USA, the view of unions has changed significantly in recent years. According to a recent poll by the Gallup polling institute, almost 70 percent of Americans view unions positively, in 2009 it wasn’t even half that. Most recently, workers at Amazon, Starbucks and Sega agreed to join a union at individual plants; The end of the actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood was also seen as a huge victory for the respective representations.
“It’s always been said that you can’t win in the South; you’ve proven the opposite,” UAW President Fain called out to the Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga: “It’s always said that you can move mountains if only by faith is as big as a mustard seed. We have moved the mountain, now we are moving it at Mercedes.” The message: If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.