Tennessee

By Daniel Letwin, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, March 1, 2024

By Bianca Cunningham, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 20, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, January 23, 2024

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, December 7, 2023

Workers at Volkswagen's only U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee announced Thursday that they're launching a public organizing committee with the goal of joining the United Auto Workers, which is aiming to expand its membership to include employees at more than a dozen nonunion car companies after winning historic contracts at the Big Three.

In less than a week, more than 1,000 workers at the Volkswagen plant signed union authorization cards, giving the nascent union drive more than 30% support so far at the Chattanooga location.

The UAW narrowly failed to organize the plant in 2014 and 2019. But leaders of the new unionization push expressed confidence that the outcome would be different this time around as the newly emboldened UAW puts special emphasis on the South, where the unionization rate is significantly lower than in the rest of the country.

"People are standing up like never before," said Steve Cochran, a lead organizer of the Chattanooga union drive. "There are a lot of young workers in the plant now and this generation wants respect. They're not okay with mistreatment by management. They see what's happening at Starbucks and Amazon. They know that standing up to join the union is how you win fair treatment, fair pay, and a better life."

Organizers pointed to the $184 billion in profits that Volkswagen Group has brought in over the past decade while workers' wages have stagnated or declined.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, December 7, 2023

Today workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant announced their third bid to unionize plant-wide with the Auto Workers (UAW).

Riding the momentum of its strike of the Big 3 automakers, the UAW now wants to double its numbers in the auto industry by adding 150,000 workers at companies that have long avoided unionization. Thirteen non-union automakers are on notice: Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mercedes, Volvo, BMW, Volkswagen, and electric vehicle producers Rivian, Tesla, and Lucid.

The union says it has been inundated with calls and online sign-ups by workers at these firms. The Volkswagen drive is the first to go public, after 1,000 workers signed union cards.

The UAW’s two previous attempts to organize the full Chattanooga plant fell short narrowly. In 2014, workers lost by 86 votes. In 2019, the union came even closer, losing by just 57 votes with 93 percent turnout. There were 1,700 workers at the plant then. Some 3,800 workers today build the Atlas and Cross Sport SUVs, as well as the electric ID.4.

In 2015 a smaller group of skilled trades workers won their election by a vote of 108 to 44, joining UAW Local 42, which had formed as a minority union following the 2014 loss. But the company refused to negotiate with the smaller unit, delaying in the courts. The UAW quietly jettisoned the effort, filing instead for the full unit in 2019.

After the 2019 defeat, workers kept the flame of organizing alive, meeting regularly and running a petition for the right to use their paid time off outside the company's annual weeklong maintenance shutdown.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, November 30, 2023

“The company knows that Toyota workers are watching,” said Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on November 3. “And when the time comes, Toyota workers and all non-union auto workers are going to be ready to stand up.”

That time has come—yesterday the UAW announced its plan, already in motion, to organize the whole auto sector. “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 UAW,” said Fain in a new video.

The union says thousands of workers have reached out asking for support in unionizing their auto plants. They’ve scoured the old websites from previous union drives and filled out forms to be put in touch with an organizer.

“To all the auto workers out there working without the benefits of a union: Now it’s your turn,” he said, inviting auto workers to join the organizing push and telling them where they can electronically sign union cards, at UAW.org/join.

Thousands of non-union auto workers are already organizing across the 10 foreign-owned transplants, including Toyota, Hyundai, and Mercedes, as well as in the electric vehicle sector at Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid. Overall, the organizing drive will cover 150,000 workers—roughly the same number of workers covered under the Big 3 contracts—across 13 automakers.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 5, 2023

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, May 18, 2023

Contracts covering 150,000 auto workers at the Big 3 will expire on September 14, and the new leadership of the United Auto Workers is taking a more aggressive stance than in years past.

“We’re going to launch our biggest contract campaign ever in our history,” UAW President Shawn Fain told members in a Facebook live video.

Fain took office in March after winning the union’s first one member, one vote election. Running on the slogan, “No Corruption, No Concessions, No Tiers,” he and the Members United slate swept all the positions they ran for, giving reformers a majority on the international executive board.

While the union has vowed to take on tiered wages and benefits, job security, and plant closures, the transition to electric vehicles (EV) looms especially large.

Since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act last August, companies have announced $120 billion in investments in domestic EV and battery manufacturing. The Act includes big tax credits and incentives for clean energy and EVs.

Ford alone is investing $11 billion in a new EV assembly plant and battery factories in Tennessee and Kentucky. The Biden administration wants EVs to make up half of all new vehicles sold by 2030.

By Brianna Knisley - Appalachian Voices, June 10, 2022

On June 1, more than a dozen Kingston coal ash workers and their families showed up at the Tennessee Supreme Court in Nashville. With them was an incredible showing of faith, labor and environmental justice advocates, many of whom had traveled from across the state after participating in solidarity events in advance of the hearing.

The group gathered in the lobby for a prayer led by the Rev. Gordon Myers of Memphis. There in spirit were many other workers’ families who were too sick or otherwise unable to attend. Together, they filled every seat of the Tennessee Supreme Courtroom.

They were there to watch attorneys argue over an appeal that threatens the workers’ ability to seek financial claims for the injuries they sustained while cleaning up toxic coal ash near the Kingston Fossil Plant.

Workers allege that during the six-year cleanup of the Kingston spill, supervisors told them they could eat a pound of coal ash a day without harm. Supervisors even destroyed respirators and masks that their employees brought to the work site. Since the Kingston coal ash spill in 2008, which was the largest industrial disaster in US history, nearly 60 workers have died and hundreds more are sick.

On one side of the courtroom was counsel for Jacobs Engineering, the contractor hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority to lead the years-long cleanup that involved more than 900 workers. Jacobs has already been found guilty by a federal court of failure to exercise reasonable care in keeping the workers safe.

This hearing dealt with one of the contractor’s recent appeals — Jacobs’ claim that the Kingston workers should have to prove silica-specific injuries like pulmonary fibrosis in order to seek damages because of a state law called the Tennessee Silica Claims Priorities Act.

The workers’ counsel argued that because their clients were seeking claims for injuries caused by other harmful coal-ash constituents such as mercury, arsenic and lead, the TSCPA should not apply. Though the five Supreme Court justices asked discerning questions during the hearing, a ruling is not expected for weeks or even months.

Waiting is something the workers and their community allies have become accustomed to, but never has it been done idly.

By Terrance Ray and Tom Sexton - Means TV, October 23, 2020