United Auto Workers (UAW)

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, January 11, 2024

The electric vehicle maker Tesla has reportedly informed workers at its California plant that it is hiking wages for factory employees across the United States, becoming the latest nonunion car manufacturer to boost worker pay following the United Auto Workers' historic strike and contract victories late last year.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that all of Tesla's production associates, material handlers, and quality inspectors will receive a "market adjustment pay increase" to start 2024, according to a flyer that company management posted at its Fremont, California plant—which employs more than 20,000 workers.

The document did not make clear the size of the raise, Bloomberg noted.

Tesla is run by billionaire Elon Musk, who has been vocally hostile toward organized labor for years—a stance that has drawn scrutiny and rebukes from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In a 2018 post on Twitter, a platform he now owns and rebranded as X, Musk wrote that there is "nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union."

"But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" he added. The NLRB said the post constituted an unlawful threat against workers considering exercising their right to organize.

By Union Jake, Barry Eidlin, Paul Prescod, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, January 3, 2024

By Katie Myers - Grist, December 20, 2023

2023 was marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements. Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded is even more dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition and climate crisis. After decades of hesitancy, several major unions recognized an urgent need to organize those who will do the hard work of decarbonizing the nation’s economy. It doesn’t hurt that public sympathy, and policy, has grown friendlier toward them. As a result, calls for a just transition rattled union halls and corporate offices as organized labor enjoyed one of its most active years in recent memory and environmental organizations, long uncertain about where unions stood, found new allies.

“The choices and solutions are not really gonna work unless labor is involved with them,” said Dana Kuhnline, director of Reimagine Appalachia. It works with union leaders and environmental grassroots groups to bring good jobs to coalfield communities that need them. “I think that’s a lesson climate activists really have to take to heart.”

The reality of a warming world was a central concern for UPS, Amazon, and airport workers who demanded, and in many cases won, concessions protecting them from extreme heat. But the biggest gains were made by the 150,000 members of the reinvigorated United Auto Workers, or UAW, who made a just transition a key demand in one of the most high-profile strikes of the year. Though the union’s primary demands concerned wages and sick days, no small amount of negotiating focused on the looming transition to electric vehicles. Workers wanted to ensure the factories that will make that happen for Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis will be union shops, with wages and benefits equal to those provided at traditional auto factories. Forty years of internal organizing brought UAW to a place where it was willing and able to address energy transition, whereas in previous years, its leaders had gotten fidgety at the idea. 

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 19, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 13, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 12, 2023

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 Union Jake, Isabella Escalona, Amy Stager, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 7, 2023

By Union Jake, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 5, 2023