Headline : Riding the wave

Read more from the original article on here at www.ips-journal.eu.

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No. of Paragraph 20

Even though 1 May is not a public holiday in the United States and the actual reason for the day is less well known, the organisation of workers around the world remains right and important. To this end, another milestone was achieved in the US. At the end of April, employees at the Volkswagen site in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted by a large majority in favour of being represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. Although the union had already organised a small operating unit at VW in 2015, it has only now succeeded in doing so for the employees of the entire site. This is a historic success for the UAW, which could have a signalling effect.

But what makes this victory so significant? On the one hand, it is clear that three-quarters of the votes cast were in favour of UAW representation. In total, more than 80 per cent of the 4 300 production workers took part in the election. On the other hand, there have already been two failed organising drives at VW in Tennessee in the past (2011 to 2014 and 2019). Even the mini-success in 2015 did not lead to a collective agreement. The site had long been considered the UAW’s best chance of organising a non-American automotive company in the south of the US.

The fact that this did not succeed despite support from the IG-Metall union was not only due to resistance from VW management and politicians or the right-to-work status of the US state. There were also difficulties between VW’s German works council, IG-Metall and the UAW. Differing strategic approaches and misunderstandings about the stubborn hostility to unions in the South and US labour law – which, among other things, makes it impossible to form a works council without union organisation – also played a role.

However, the UAW’s victory is particularly significant in its historical and geographical dimension: it was achieved in the de facto union-free South. In Tennessee, for example, only six per cent of private-sector workers are union members today. The aforementioned right-to-work legislation is a major contributor to the low level of unionisation. This means that workers do not have to be part of a union to benefit from its services in organised workplaces. As a result, unions have few members and little income.

Read more from the original article on here at www.ips-journal.eu.

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